COVID-19 has made staging your home before you sell it even more important. In general, pandemic or not, staging is the single most important thing you can do to sell your home. Staging ranges in price, from approximately $3000 for an already well-furnished condo to up to $20,000 for a vacant home. That is a lot of money, of course, but you will make much more money on the sale of your home than you would have otherwise made. We recommend staging and painting over almost anything else. Finish your basement? You won’t make your money back. New flooring? Not worth it. High-end kitchen? Nope. Nope. Nope. Staging will get you more money than any of these other improvements. But, during COVID staging has taken on heightened levels of importance:
Three reasons why staging has become even more important during COVID
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Buyers are reluctant to view houses for public health reasons. Therefore, they will often give good houses a pass because the houses don’t show well in the photos. Staging a house is one of the best ways to make it camera-ready.
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Buyers have limited time in your house: COVID protocols make it impossible for us to double-book appointments. That means that appointment times for a showing are limited to 15-30 minutes. That is not much time to make a huge financial decision and staging a home well really helps to ensure that buyers see your home at its highest potential.
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Secondary decision-makers aren’t viewing homes. Pre-COVID times buyers would often view a home and then bring in secondary decision makers to a second showing. Usually, these are parents, siblings, or children of the buyers, whose opinions the buyer highly values. These second showings often make or break a buyer’s decision to make an offer on your home. However, with COVID restrictions in place, only the primary buyers are allowed in a house. Therefore, the secondary decision-makers are advising from photos and videos alone. These people often skew negative because they are worried for their family and want to give good advice. You need to present your home digitally in the best possible way for these conversations.
As always, give us a call if you have any questions about listing your home.
Stay safe!
Robyn VanderVennen
The Kim Kehoe Team
