Avoid these 10 Staging Mistakes at All Cost

If you are about to sell your home, you will need to have it staged for buyers when they arrive for showings. Searching for a home can be an emotional experience. You will want prospective buyers to envision themselves living in your home, eating breakfast in the kitchen, and unwinding after a long workday. You only get one chance to make an excellent first impression, and you will want to make it count to sell your home for more value. 

As the market trends toward a more balanced market, selling your home "as is" is no longer guaranteed. Buyers have much more choice, giving them the freedom to be more particular about what they purchase. Sellers will have to go the extra mile to get their homes ready and shift their focus on the buyer experience. 

With the buyer experience in mind, here are 10 staging mistakes to avoid at all costs, as they could cost you a sale in the end. 

Mistake #1: Going in Without a Gameplan

Some people will start reorganizing their homes and staging them without a plan or direction. You will want to consider how you will market your home to buyers, which features you want to accentuate and focus on, and the type of buyer you will attract before you start moving furniture around. For example, if you are marketing your home as a perfect family home, you will want to stage keeping function and sentiment in mind.

Mistake #2: Layout and Incorrectly Placed Furniture

You want your prospective home buyers to be able to navigate your home comfortably. In this case, you will want to prioritize functionality over style. For example, the way your furniture is laid out may look appealing to you, but if it is a nuisance while buyers are walking through your home, it will be distracting. As a result, you may give buyers the impression that there isn't enough space for their needs. 

Mistake #3: Forgetting to Depersonalize

Depersonalizing your home is one of the most important ways that you can help your buyers imagine themselves living in your space. Family portraits on the walls, kid's artwork on the refrigerator, diplomas or trophies on the wall can make a home buyer feel like they are simply visiting someone's home rather than walking into their next new home. 

Mistake #4: Clutter

Understandably, the average household will accumulate some clutter over time. After all, homes are generally lived-in and will tend to have personal items, paperwork, or items left on counters for day-to-day efficiency. The truth is clutter can become very distracting on the best of days, but it is even more, distracting for buyers. 

Once you have decluttered your home as you usually would, you likely will need to go over it a second time and declutter even more items. Small kitchen appliances, extra towels, and other household items can all be very distracting when buyers visit your home. 

Mistake #5: Too Many Labels and Brands

Labels can be very distracting, including dish soap, shampoo bottles, hand soap, tissue boxes, and food packaging. They are designed this way because brands want their product to stand out on a shelf stacked with other products, likely their direct competition. While this is a great marketing technique, if your home is full of labels and branded packaging, this can also be distracting to buyers. Removing or putting away any branded packaging or decanting these items into neutral containers is best when staging your home. 

Mistake #6: Staging Without Considering How Your Home Will Photograph

Once your home is staged, you will need to take professional photos of your home to market it effectively. What looks suitable to the naked eye may not translate well to the camera. Dark corners, poorly placed furniture, and colour combinations may not be as appealing to photograph, resulting in less interest in viewing appointments.

Mistake #7: Forgetting to Clean

Forgetting to do a deep cleaning before staging and showing your home can be a costly mistake. Everyone has a different criterion for what is considered clean, so it's always better to do a more thorough cleaning than what you consider acceptable. If the lack of cleanliness of your home repulses buyers, they may worry that regular maintenance has also been neglected, even when that is not the case. 

Mistake #8: Scent and Odours

Along the lines of a clean home, you will want to ensure that your home does not have any pungent odours that can turn off buyers. You may not be able to notice if your home has a strange smell, as you tend to get accustomed to the odours over time. In this case, you may want to invite a friend or neighbour into your home to do the "smell test." Be careful of pet smells, cigarettes, nicotine, dust, or strong body odours. Ensure your home has plenty of airflow, so the air doesn't feel stagnant.

While it may be tempting to spray your home with perfume or harsh chemicals to cover up the existing scents, these scents might be too intense for some buyers, so it's essential to strike a balance between them. 

Mistake #9: Cutting Corners

Selling your home can be an undertaking, so it can be incredibly tempting to cut corners here and there when staging your home, but that could be a huge mistake. Once you get buyers interested enough to view your home, you want to make sure that you make a memorable first impression so they will fall in love with your home. In this market, buyers are dealing with higher interest rates and increased home prices, so they are being much more cautious about where they invest their hard-earned money. If you put little effort into their experience, they will consider other homes that have gone the extra mile. 

Mistake #10: Not Hiring a Professional Stager!

In this market, a do-it-yourself approach to staging your home simply isn't ideal if you want your home to sell. Expert stagers can transform your home into your prospective buyer's dream home because they know better than anyone what photographs well, what stages well, and what buyers are looking for. Sometimes the best thing you can do is recognize when you are in over your head and speak to the professionals. 

Complimentary Staging

With Faris Team, you can choose Complimentary Staging from our award-winning in-house Staging Team. Their efforts will truly optimize the presentation of your home and achieve top-selling prices. We recognize that Professional Staging is a necessity when selling your home in this market, which is why we promise to deliver Exceptional Marketing and give our clients the Best Real Estate Experience Guaranteed. 

The results always WOW our clients and buyers are impressed with how well our homes show!

Are You Ready To Start Your Best Real Estate Experience? We’re here to make your experience completely stress-free!

Call us today at 1.888.918.6570, send us an email or book an appointment.

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