May 1, 2021
You Ought to Be in Pictures!
Looking for a new home? Or simply interested in the real estate market? If you are just the tiniest bit curious, chances are you are looking at homes on your phone, on your tablet, or on your laptop. And you are not hunting for the stimulating ad copy – you are looking at the pictures.
The big story is, and continues to be, that the real estate market is really hot right now. Everybody is caught up in the headlines: Everything is selling above asking price! But that’s NOT TRUE. Nationally, about 1 in 4 homes goes over asking, half sell at asking, and 1 in 4 sell at under asking.
If the market is so hot, why are some homes selling under asking?
Because basic principles still apply. Whether it’s a buyer’s market or a seller’s market (like it is right now), you need to properly prepare your home for sale. This means pricing it right AND making sure it looks great – in photos and in person.
If your home is not considered a great value, you will not attract multiple buyers and they will not be compelled to bid higher than asking. Even more important, if the photos are not appealing, you will never inspire buyers to get off their couches and come see your home in the first place. Unless you can attract that critical mass, you are leaving lots of dollars on the table – and setting yourself up for a lengthy, unnecessarily stressful, and certainly less profitable real estate transaction.
There are three key elements to a home sale: location, price, and condition. You cannot change your home’s location, so that leaves price and condition within your control. To maximize the sales price, we make sure to price the home accurately and prepare it properly.
Why is prepping your home so important?
You see, the way we live in our homes and the way we need our home to look in order to make it attractive to buyers are two very different things. The normal clutter of our everyday lives does not look very sexy in photographs. And all the personal touches that we put into our homes to make them uniquely our own may be a turn-off for some buyers.
This is where staging comes in. Decorating is the science of personalizing and customizing a home for your own use. Staging is the science of removing your personality from the home so it can appeal to a broad audience. A home staging expert knows how to emphasize a property’s strengths and minimize its weak points. In addition to decluttering and organizing, they may bring in items to accessorize and polish up the look of the home.
When you invest in preparing your home properly, potential buyers can walk in and envision it as their own. So, when it is time to sell your home, you want to be able to say, “Alright, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up!”
