Staging your home for sale
In today's Charleston South Carolina real estate market with inventory of available homes at very high levels, it is important to make your home stand out among the many choices the buyer has. One of the most popular techniques in today's real estate market is to stage your home, highlighting the various ways the rooms can be used and making the buyer feel comfortable when viewing the property and seeing themselves living in the home. It is one of the reasons that builder's model homes are professionally decorated.
On the other hand, poor staging can almost have the opposite effect and create a distraction for the buyer. I recently saw a home that was staged and furnished from a consignment shop. The home was vacant and the seller felt that it would be better to furnish than leave it empty. While the furniture was adequate and demonstrated the utility and size of the rooms, the decor (especially the pictures) was comical to the point of being more distracting than beneficial.
To give you an example because I didn't have my camera handy and I likely wouldn't want to potentially embarrass the seller anyway, a few of the pictures were too large for the wall they were hung on, several were still wrapped in cardboard corners as if they were for sale rather than the home and in most cases, they were downright ugly.
The quick seller tip, then, is staging can be a good strategy to help enhance the saleability of your home but consider investing in professional staging rather than an amateur effort. In the long run, it will achieve the desired effect of making your home stand out from the crowd and get an offer.