How Home Staging Works? 10 Steps to Success

Do you know how home staging works? Usually, people who aren’t that deep into real estate associate Home Staging with pillows and decorations (if they have any associations whatsoever). Such a pleasant and light work, arrange a few accessories, take photos, and done! Today, I would like to deal with this myth and show you how the whole Home Staging process looks like backstage. How to home stage effectively and why do it?

QUESTIONS FIRST

How to sell a house for top dollar? How to rent a flat fast? These questions are googled first when we’re preparing to sell or rent a property. Then we usually come across this magical term – Home Staging. It allows us to rent or sell an apartment quickly and at a high price. But how Home Staging works and to make effective?

HOME STAGING – 10 STEPS TO SUCCESS

Home Staging is a whole range of steps to make your property much more attractive in your prospective buyers’ eyes. It will help you find a buyer or tenant of your apartment much faster. Also, you will be able to get a higher price than you would get by selling or renting an apartment without Home Staging.

HOW HOME STAGING WORKS AND WHAT ARE THE STEPS?

1. Consultation
2. Identifying the target customer
3. Calculations
4. Decluttering
5. Depersonalization
6. Fixing and refreshing the apartment
7. Managing the orders and transport
8. Stylization and decorations
9. Cleaning
10. Instastaging

1. CONSULTATION

If you hire a Home Stager the first thing you are going to do is a consultation. During the consultation you will be discussing the scope of work, taking photos, and making main arrangements. You should also define who your target customer is and briefly discuss the marketing process. The Home Staging consultation should be followed by a valuation of the work that the Home Stager will have to do. Almost always it is an individual valuation, as the scope of work can vary greatly. Usually, such a meeting lasts about 30-60 minutes, but for the Home Stager, it is a much longer time (preliminary market research, commuting, and talks before the meeting are about 2-3 hours in total).

2. IDENTIFYING THE TARGET CUSTOMER

Identifying the target customer and researching the market is the next step in the Home Staging process. Unfortunately, not all Home Stagers do it, but I believe it is one of the most important tasks in this profession. How else will you prepare the apartment to charm the right client? The one who dreams of a flat like yours? It is this expertise and ability to analyze the market that makes Home Staging such an effective marketing strategy. Thanks to it, owners and investors can quickly sell or rent a property and complete transactions for above-average prices. Cushions and decorations are only a fraction of the whole strategy that a Home Stager should follow during their work.

3. CALCULATIONS

What next? Calculations! How much can you increase the profit from the transaction thanks to Home Staging? How high are the necessary costs? Which costs are optional and how all that affects the final price? Conducting a financial analysis, establishing a budget, and planned profits is also a necessity if Home Staging is to be effective and efficient.

4. DECLUTTERING

Decluttering is recently a very popular term which means that everything that takes up unnecessary space in the apartment and has no specific function should be removed from the apartment. The presentation of an apartment that has too many items can make customers feel that it’s simply too cramped and non-functional.

5. DEPERSONALIZATION

A properly prepared flat should allow the clients to imagine themselves living in it. To envision them starting a new chapter in your flat instead of seeing you and your current life. That’s why it is necessary to create such an opportunity by removing all your souvenirs, photos, and other personal things.

I know it’s one of those harder steps, especially when you’re parting with an apartment you really liked. However, the sooner you separate your emotions from the sales process, the greater your chance of success. What you like doesn’t have to appeal to your client, so one of the goals of Home Staging is to prepare the apartment in such a way as to show its potential to the prospective buyers. To present the vision showing that their life in this flat will be just the way they expect it to be.

6. FIXING AND REFRESHING THE APARTMENT

Home Staging isn’t about pasting over the cracks and flaws (never!) – everything that needs fixing or refreshing should be refreshed and fixed. If you have any doubts about it just imagine a situation where your client finds one of those flaws. Surely they’ll think there are more things covered up, they’ll feel distasted and the transaction will not be finalized.

7. MANAGING THE ORDERS AND TRANSPORT

There are a lot of these orders and purchases (who has ever done a renovation, knows!). Furniture from various shops and all kinds of accessories. Managing this is one of the most important tasks because everything has to be on time so that the whole project is prepared as quickly and efficiently as possible. It is also important to ensure all payments have been made and to collect all invoices for cost documentation, which can then be useful for tax purposes.