Recent social marketing trends place an extreme emphasis on the way a property presents in order to attract prospective buyers and maintain their attention. This can then lead to more inspections on the property in contrast to it's un-styled or un-kept competitors.
This has seen a rise in Property Styling, or Home Staging as it may be known, in Australia and with that, a rise in Digital Staging. So what is the difference and what is best for you? Let's take a closer look..
Property Styling
This involves hiring a professional stager to review your property and offer an unbias evaluation from a buyer's perspective on how to prepare your property for sale. This can include paint touch ups, layout tweaking, de-cluttering and de-personalising your home along with any other recommendations that may be relevant to ensure that your property presents at it's best. This ensures that you're not giving away your bargaining power when it comes to selling because things require fixing or updating for example.
A professional stager may then recommend hiring furniture and accessories for staging on an agreed term (approximately 6 weeks) which can be used in vacant, unoccupied homes to create life and that 'homely' feeling, or it can involve tweaking your current furnishings or layouts to accentuate space and provide on-trend accessories to suit your target market and style of home. The aim in this is to accentuate your property's best features, create a warm and welcoming environment, appeal to the widest range of buyers in your target market and to display a lifestyle that your prospective buyers can fall in love with.
Property Styling for real estate marketing varies in cost region to region, and house to house due to size, demand, and style however as a general guide, you would anticipate to pay $1500 + for partial / occupied staging and $3,500 + for full vacant home staging.
A Property Styling campaign commences in the pre-sale and marketing stages of selling your home which means the property will be photographed at it's best, with all the custom details from your stager, after you have completed your pre-sale preparations. What this also means, is that, when your ad catches a buyer's attention and they come to inspect, they are viewing the property exactly as they anticipated from the listing and the property is more likely to reach, or exceed, their expectations from the listing than digital staging.
The buyer can walk through the space and get a real feel for how they could live in the property and make it their home.
Digital Staging
Digital Staging is becoming more and more popular and is a cost-effective way of virtually staging your property for advertising online. The average cost is approximately $40 - $50 per image and can be completed on vacant homes, furnished homes to present better online if the decor is outdated or in poor condition, and on developments which are yet to be completed. It involves generating 3D images of the spaces in your home with modern furnishings which can be completed by your agent, photographer or other professional CAD artist.
Digital Staging is a great method for attracting buyer attention on social media and for development projects where you are buying off the plan. However, a major con in digital staging is that, often when the buyer attends the inspection it does not meet their expectations as the property may be vacant and left feeling cold, or the existing decor does not reflect the lifestyle they were searching for when viewing online. If the property is vacant, this also exposes every mark, scratch, crack and speck of dirt that can leave your buyer wondering what else might be wrong with the property and if it was well cared for in it's past life because repairs mean money which will result in lower bids.
Both forms of Staging have their pro's and con's. Digital Staging is by far the cheaper option however once the buyer is in the door, Property Styling offers a tactile experience which is what will sell them the lifestyle and make them fall in love with the spaces within.
With Property Styling having the potential to increase the value of your property and sell faster than it would have un-styled, giving your property the upper-hand on it's competitors, why wouldn't you invest in your biggest asset?
Amy xx