sell it faster!

by Patricia L. Garcia

home stagers share insights for a successful sale

Selling your home is an emotional process. It can bring about all kinds of feelings:
excitement for your new home or chapter, anxiety about selling your home, sadness about moving from where your family grew or frustration with the moving process.

One way to help allay any negative feelings about selling your home can be to work with a home stager. A home stager helps sellers create an objective, yet desirable, space that will appeal to as many buyers as possible. “If you’ve decided to sell your home, you need to emotionally divorce yourself from the home, and do the things necessary to sell the home,” says Edgar Marroquin, owner of ABQ Home Staging, adding that staging is not interior design; it’s marketing. “We’re going to come in and create the best image of your home for buyers. You have to showcase the positive aspects of the home and minimize the negatives.”

Some sellers believe they will save money if they stage their home themselves or skip this step altogether, but that can be a costly mistake, says Trish Tilley, co-owner of All About Staging in Albuquerque. Tilley says the first impression is everything — six seconds is all it takes for buyers to decide if they like a home — and if you lose potential buyers, a home can sit unsold for weeks, or longer. That can lead to price reductions.

“The best time to hire us is prior to listing,” Tilley says. “Sometimes we get calls from Realtors or their clients when their home has been on the market for several weeks. … The investment for a vacant staging engagement is usually far less than the first price reduction that the Realtor may recommend.”

“Often my clients get 10 percent to 20 percent more of the original price of the home than they ever thought they could.”— Mindy Abramson

Mindy Abramson, owner of Distinguishing Style and the only Certified Staging Professional (CSP) in New Mexico, agrees that sellers can lose money by trying a DIY method to staging. “If you want to lose money, you don’t need my help, you can lose money by yourself,” she says. “But often my clients get 10 percent to 20 percent more of the original price of the home than they ever thought they could” because of her services. Abramson works with sellers still living in their homes.

Tilley says that stagers help sellers put their best home forward.

“It’s about creating desire and temptation — not letting another buyer make an offer before you can,” says Tilley. “Let’s face it: selling a home is a competition. We believe that tasteful staging will help it stand out in a positive way.”

resources

ABQ Home Staging
All About Staging
Distinguishing Style