House for Sale A Long Time
One of the my most rewarding opportunities as a Home Stager is when I am called in to help you get a listing sold that has been on the market for months or years with no offers. Why? Because I believe I have learned the “secret sauce” to tip buyers into taking action, and as a result, I have helped sell house after house in this situation quickly, at a solid price.
The scenario looks something like this….
You have a listing that has been on the market for several months. You feel it is priced right, and you are doing all you can to market the property, with no success.
The feedback from potential buyers has been general at best, or pointed to an improvement or modification to the home that is unrealistic and too costly for the seller. It’s almost as though the potential buyers are making up excuses to not buy your listing!
You cringe at the thought of suggesting another price reduction, and you have invested significant time and money in marketing the home. You are at a crossroad with your listing.
Sound familiar? Don’t give up!
In this article I will share the two main things I look for to build a staging plan when I am called in to help sell a home that has been on the market a long time. Ask yourself these questions as you look at your listing with a fresh perspective:
- What is the potential buyer seeing in the first 7 seconds? Are you giving them something to LOVE during that time so that they are emotionally connecting right way? If you do not grab them in that initial time frame, the opportunity to connect with them is gone.
- Are there rooms where the function is not clear? If the buyer cannot see themselves in the home and understand the purpose for each room, it leaves them with questions about how to live in the home that need to be answered in their house hunting process. If you have a room that lacks purpose, that is a good place to start with staging.
Answers to these two questions provide me with the foundation to build my staging plan for homes in this situation.
Here is a recent success story to encourage you…
I recently staged a home that had been on the market for 124 days.
The seller had already purchased another home and it was getting stressful. The real estate agent felt it was priced right, and the feedback was that the kitchen was outdated, the master bathroom had a bad layout, it was dated, and more. I knew there was more to it, and answered the above two questions to lay the foundation for my staging plan, then created a detailed staging plan for each room based on the answers to these two questions.
What was the result? We uploaded the new pictures with the home staged Saturday evening. We had two showings scheduled the next morning, and the first potential buyer to see the home after it was staged made an offer and it closed the next month.
In this series of articles, I will take you room by room with this redesign so that you can apply what I learned to your listing, and position you and your seller for success!
As a sneak peak, I have included a before and after of the master bathroom from this home. We overcame the objections from previous potential buyers with some simple staging techniques.
BEFORE
After
