- In this video, you'll learn if staging a home
can help sell your home faster.
How much it costs,
and if you can do it yourself.
That's coming right up.
- [Announcer] Welcome to Homebuyer's School
brought to you by Brookfield Residential.
- Hi everyone, I'm Carl.
Welcome to another Homebuyer's School video,
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So today I'm joined by a special guest,
local realtor Brad McCallum from Remax First
and the topic we are going to answer today
is staging your home.
Brad, I think the very question
is does staging your home actually help it sell?
- 100%.
It completely helps a home sell
and in fact, if you look at all the data on it,
what it will tell you is that
it helps the home sell faster
and it helps it generally sell
for a little bit higher price.
The problem is, is when you condense that down
to a home by home basis, is did it actually help
or make the difference on that particular home
and that's the thing
that sellers often have a challenge with.
- If it does help your home sell,
how do you go about staging it?
- As a realtor, if you are really trying
to look out for your best interests of your clients,
and they've got a vacant home, or an empty home,
you're going to want to make some suggestions
on how it's going to look best
and oftentimes that means staging
either with their existing furniture,
or removing some of their own personal items
that they have in the home to maybe declutter
and make it present better.
But if you actually have to bring in a separate company
to do the staging, there is various different ones,
in virtually all cities,
that you can check out their google reviews,
see what other past experiences that people have had.
There's some great ones in town
that we often recommend and these are companies
that will come in and they'll take your home
whatever it is and try to make sure
that it appeals to a broad base of homebuyers.
- So you raised the point about making it less personal,
is that an important thing?
- Yeah, I think when someone comes into a house,
they need to feel like it's a home,
but I don't want to feel like I'm in Carl's home.
There's something about seeing all the personal effects
that can feel a little bit like you're invading
their personal space and that's not the feeling
that you want to convey.
So, when you come into a home
and you know, it smells great,
it's clean, there's elements of home,
right, these things that make a place feel nice and cozy,
these kind of things,
they make people imagine themselves in the home.
So, that's the line that you try to draw
is make it feel like a home,
but not someone else's.
- But as someone who's selling a home,
that would be kind of a little difficult
especially if you've lived in the home a long time
and you have all these pictures,
how can you possibly get that stuff out?
- You're going to want to work with a realtor
that you can trust because along the way
if that realtor doesn't have the confidence
to speak up on their craft,
they might not advise you
to do some of that decluttering or depersonalize it
and that can affect the sale.
If you're someone who is vehemently opposed to hunting,
you probably don't want
to go into a home that has that.
We work with so many people from different backgrounds.
I've worked with some who have a prayer room,
for example, and they'll often say,
should we take it down?
And I would say no.
You want to find a balance,
this is still your home during the process,
what you want to do though is just take away
those things that might clutter.
The difference between our home and a show home,
oftentimes is all the little knickknacks
and all these little personal effects.
You remove them, it could help
the place feel larger, bigger, cleaner,
and have a broader appeal.
- Is it actually better to have a home staged
or completely empty?
- I find it's really, really hard
to have clients envision a home
if it's completely empty.
And the problem with that,
is because people will walk into a room,
and without a reference point,
they'll have no idea if it'll fit their couch.
But that's the challenge, is that people
just need a reference point,
so even if you put in a small couch for the room,
or a large couch for the room,
people can say, I think that's smaller,
or I think ours is a little bit bigger,
it would still be fine.
- You can go with a realtor,
can you even do it yourself?
- Yeah, you can definitely stage your home yourself
by just watching some simple YouTube tutorials
or some simple videos.
If you've already got nice things
in your home there's just some basic tips
that you might want to follow,
to just depersonalize it,
or to make it feel large and open.
One other thing though,
is that if you are going to hire a company
to bring in, you are going to have an upfront cost
that is generally greater than the cost
of carrying it from month to month.
So, and that's just because
the staging company will come out
and they have a lot of upfront costs,
you know, with actual labor coming
and setting it all up,
and maybe moving some of your existing furniture around.
And sometimes those costs can range anywhere
from $1200-$2000 depending on the size of the home,
for the first month,
and then your next months after that are usually
somewhere between 60-70% of that initial upfront cost.
So, if you think of a home that is 90 days on the market,
and you have a successful sale at the end of it,
you might have to allow
anywhere from $3500-$5000 in staging fees.
But, if it helps your home sell in a tough market,
or helps people have a higher opinion
of that home's value,
that's money, money well spent.
- Is it personal preference
if you want to hire through a staging company,
or are there actual times
when you should actually use a staging company?
- If the home is empty,
bring in a staging company,
because the economics of buying some of these pieces
and trying to imagine,
and put it all together,
it just doesn't make sense.
If you're a builder, or an investor,
or someone who flips homes,
you might want to buy a set
and, you know, amortize that cost
over four or five builds.
But for the average person, like you and I,
you are going to want to hire a professional,
because they just know the stuff that we don't know.
- If I were to decide to stage my home myself,
do you have any tips on how to do that?
- What you want to do, is think about the home
in terms of someone completely with fresh eyes.
So, I would say the best way to do that
is to actually ask some of your friends,
and your family what their opinion of your home is.
Those are the kind of things that you want to know
because we're not generally that cognizant
of our own spaces we live in
so get some opinion from friends and family,
and ask them to be blunt, or to be very truthful in it
and then just don't take offense
because the reality is, is when the market comes out
and views your home,
they're going to have no attachment
to any of your furniture,
to any of the pieces in your house,
and they're going to be very brutal
with their opinions of the place.
It's so important to have your house ready
for that first impression
and that's why staging is so important.
It's kind of like if you were going to go meet
the girl of your dreams or the guy of your dreams
and you showed up in pajamas and you were unshaven,
and you were unwashed.
You wanna to make sure
you put your best foot forward.
- It's very hard though, to maintain
that level of cleanliness
as long as you're living in the home.
- The challenge for realtors,
is oftentimes they don't communicate
just the whole process of selling your home.
All the emotions that you go through,
you really have to understand,
or educate your client to help them understand that,
listen, don't take offense,
there's only going to be one buyer for this house
and it's going to be, for them,
it's going to be the perfect home.
Everyone else, it's good to get through those people,
you have to go through many people
before, oftentimes, before you find
the right buyer for your home.
And it's not going to be right for those.
- Do you have anything else to add
in terms of staging your home?
- When it comes to staging your home,
it's almost always a good idea
to at least have a consultation
with a professional.
It's often free to do that.
If you are selling a home
that is completely free of furniture and vacant,
and if that home isn't selling,
for say, just the value of the land,
or as purely as a fixer upper
and it's going to be a bargain in the market,
always go with staging.
It's going to make a difference in the long run,
you'll be happy you did.
It's actually the smallest price
that you'll have to pay to retain
the greatest return on your home.
And especially in a tough market,
your home has to stand out above everyone else's.
- So the question of the day I have for you is,
have you staged your home the last time you sold it?
Did you use a realtor or did you use a third party?
Let us know in the comments section below.
And if you want to know more about selling your home,
we've got a great playlist here
as well as additional videos here.
Don't forget to subscribe,
and we'll see you in the next video.