Browsing the blog archives for May, 2010.


Home Staging – How Much Does it Cost, and Does it Work?

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The Benefits Of Home Staging.

One of the hottest trends to sell a home today is home staging, an interior decorating technique for making the most of your home’s attributes and making it more appealing to the widest array of potential buyers. Home staging has been known to boost home sales prices, as well as quicken the amount of time the home stays on the market. But the question is – What is the pricing for home staging-and is it worth it?

Preparing Your Home for Sale.

Most sellers realize the importance of cleaning up their home before putting it on the market. Things like fixing leaky sinks, mending cracks in the walls and completing other minor repairs are also pretty standard. These things are often good to do, and, in many ways, are considered forms of “staging,” or preparing your home for sale.

What Do Home Stagers Do?

There are professionals, however, who will go above and beyond what most homeowners think of when they go to sell their house. While decorating is geared toward the owner, Home Staging is aimed first and foremost at pleasing the biggest possible number of buyers. For a fee, these home stagers will come into your home and use your existing items. Or, bring in items that add that special touch to complete a room and make your house as attractive as possible. Home staging costs often include moving around, removing or adding furniture and adding tasteful artwork or other decoration to make your home really shine.

Staging – Is It Worth It?

The main benefit of hiring a professional to stage your home is that they will look at your surroundings with an experienced, tasteful and objective buyer’s eye. They won’t be attached to a souvenir plate collection, like the homeowner would. They will be able to come in and tell you which items should be removed, what should be added, and how best to feature your home.

While home staging may seem like an unnecessary expense, there probably isn’t a single house that couldn’t benefit from a bit of carefully manipulated staging. Only a mere 10% of home buyers can actually visualize living in your home, or your homes hidden potential. This is why having a vacant home staged is so important. Buyers cannot visualize size and scale, so furniture helps to give them a frame of reference.

Why Can’t I Just Stage My Own Home?

Home owners have gotten used to the way their home looks and in fact it is difficult emotionally to change it. If you can’t view something objectively then you are unable to market and package it effectively. Not to mention, most home sellers don’t stage homes everyday for a living. Staging is more than a “to-do” list, de-cluttering, and painting. Its about decorating a home for potential buyers. Home Stagers, rearrange, shop the home, and pull items from other rooms, to create a whole new look to rooms. It takes a designers eye, to pull the rooms together. And often, suggestions and changes from professionals can amount to significant increases in the bottom line profit when selling your home.

Will My House Sell If It’s Not Staged?

Eventually, every house will sell…it’s just a matter of when and for how much. Even if your house sells quickly in a good market, it doesn’t mean it sold for the amount it would have sold for had it been professionally staged.

How Much Does Home Staging Cost?

Having your home staged, doesn’t cost a fortune. It’s the most inexpensive way to achieve the most dramatic and profitable results. Home staging pricing runs from $200+ depending on the market you’re in. According to a 2003 Survey, by Home Gain, statistics showed an average of a 6+% increase in the final sales price on homes that had been staged, versus those that had not. On a $300,000 home, that’s a $18,000 increase! And well worth the low cost of home staging fees.

To find out how to best showcase your home for sale, contact a home staging professional or your local realtor. Many realtor’s will even offer home staging services as part of their listing package, so be sure to ask if that’s something they offer, or if they can recommend someone in the industry. If you’re willing to put out a bit of money up front, you just might find that the benefits from staging your home can greatly outweigh home staging costs. In the end, Home Staging is really a no risk, win-win situation for everyone involved!

Cindy Bryant – Owner of Redesign Etc. a Home Staging & Interior Redesign Service. Serving Houston’s Bay & Gulf Coast. Featured on ABC Houston, The Houston Chronicle, Live Talk Radio, and author.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Cindy_Bryant

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Setting up your web page, and getting your web site to the top of the search engines is a challenging but worthwhile task. The first step is to take stock of your current web site. How does it stack up in terms of its meta tags, on page factors and off page factors. What would need to happen to get to the top of the search engine rankings in your local market? For $99, I will review your existing site, identify its strengths and weaknesses. Suggest any easy changes you or your computer person can make quickly, and evaluate the steps you would need to take to rank in the top organic listings in your market place. This will include a half hour personal consultation with me, after I complete the analysis. To learn more send me and email together with your web site address, and I will do a free quick evaluation of your site to see whether or not my services would do you any good. Then and only then, will I ask you for a commitment, and payment. Send email to enetwal@gmail.com

Technorati Tags: benefits of home staging, Does home staging work, Home Staging, home staging cost, preparing my home for sale, preparing your home for sale, what do home stagers do

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Home Staging Strategies to Remember!

Home Staging tips

Have you ever heard a real estate agent say that “It’s a buyer’s world out there”? The sentiment rings true because due to the economic problems that the United States and the rest of the world has experienced for the past few years, the housing industry has also sank to record lows. While things are still getting back to normal as far as the real estate industry is concerned, how can homesellers make sure that they are still getting top dollar for the residential real estate property that they selling? How can homebuyers get the best value for their hard-earned bucks? This is where home staging comes in.

Here, we will take a look at the reasons why home staging is necessary when selling or buying a home, and also enumerate the top tips on how you can stage your home in such a way that your home buying or home selling goals will be met.

Why is Home Staging Important in the First Place?

So why is home staging important in the first place? Experienced real estate agents would know this: staged homes sell twice as fast as a hastily prepared house prior to selling. Again, this is a buyer’s market that we are talking about so if you are a home seller and you do not exert enough of an effort to make sure that buyers will be interested in purchasing your home, then it might stay in the market for quite a long time.

Another reason why home staging is necessary is simple: staged homes sell for more money. If a real estate property for sales sits on the market for a long time, the seller will usually get lower offers because buyers think that there is something wrong with the property that you are selling. If you want the selling process to be over and done with quickly, you need to make sure to stage it properly.

Next, no matter which part of the house it is that you stage – be it your porch, kitchen or living room – these will have an instant impact to a potential buyer. When potential buyers drive over to your home, make sure that they will be enticed enough to actually get out of the car and get a closer look, rather than just driving by. More importantly, staged homes attract real estate agents; they get more advertising; they can be appraised for top dollar; and it helps you as a seller to speed up your move.

Staging Your Home to be Sold for Top Dollar

Now that you already have a basic idea about the importance of home staging from both the buyer’s and the seller’s perspective, how about when you are a seller? How can you make sure that the way that you are staging your home is good enough for it to be sold at premium value, despite the economic crunch?

It all boils down to how staging your home will make an impact to a potential buyer. To help you out, here are a few home staging tips that you need to keep in mind if you want to sell your house for top dollar:

1. Learn what home staging is all about.
Simply put, home staging is a cost-effective way of enticing home buyers to purchase your home. It’s all about getting a potential buyer to imagine how it is to live within the walls of your home, or beautify the existing garden even more. The basics, however, involve decluttering and cleaning the premises. Make sure to get rid of all the personal clutter like family portraits. Even if those things have a sentimental value for you, a buyer would want to have his or her own family portrait in the living room – not yours.

Remember that home staging is all about teasing a buyer’s imagination so that living in the house in the future would seem like a viable prospect.

2. Remember that home staging is more than decorating.
After decluttering your home from all the personal effects, you can use strategic decorations such as mirrors to make a room appear larger, for example, but home staging goes beyond that. Make sure that whatever furniture’s left is artfully arranged to highlight a focal point in the room. Upgrade accessories if you need to. Naturally, you should have already attended to the needed repairs and fresh paint is always necessary.

3. Do to the exterior what you are doing with the interior of your home.
Sometimes, all it takes is the sight of a white picket fence to entice a buyer to purchase your home. Make sure that the exterior is as inviting as the inside of your house. Replace any dead plants, trim the lawn and add a few outdoor furniture if you have to or go for strategic lighting to highlight the features of the house’s exterior.

On average, a staged home sells twice as fast as the average home on the market. In addition to speeding up the selling process, taking the time and effort to properly stage your home will greatly increase its asking price. It wouldn’t even matter if you take the economic crunch into factor. Generally, a staged home has a better selling value as compared to a run-of-the-mill, freshly painted home.

How to Use Marketing or Design Psychology to Up Your Home’s Value

There is one more important factor that you need to take into account when it comes to home staging. What you can do is combine marketing and design psychology so that the value of the house that you are selling will increase. When creating flyers, for example, create a copy which goes straight to the heart. Instead of saying that the large backyard has a built-in barbecue grill, indicate that the property has a ‘private backyard park with a built-in barbecue where you can entertain your friends.”

At the end of the day, being a home seller or a home buyer requires some effort on your part so that you can go about proper home staging. By doing so, you can sell your home to your target market at top dollar if you are a home seller; and get the best value for your real estate property if you are a home buyer.

Let the Mark Z Home Selling Team help you find your next dream home… Are you looking for Bank Owned Homes in Michigan? How about Commerce MI Real Estate or homes in Oakland County. For more information you can contact us at 248.937.1337.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mark_Z

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Setting up your web page, and getting your web site to the top of the search engines is a challenging but worthwhile task. The first step is to take stock of your current web site. How does it stack up in terms of its meta tags, on page factors and off page factors. What would need to happen to get to the top of the search engine rankings in your local market? For $99, I will review your existing site, identify its strengths and weaknesses. Suggest any easy changes you or your computer person can make quickly, and evaluate the steps you would need to take to rank in the top organic listings in your market place. This will include a half hour personal consultation with me, after I complete the analysis. To learn more send me and email together with your web site address, and I will do a free quick evaluation of your site to see whether or not my services would do you any good. Then and only then, will I ask you for a commitment, and payment. Send email to enetwal@gmail.com

Technorati Tags: de-cluttering, design psychology, Home Staging, Staged Homes

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Top 10 Reasons Home Staging is a Great Home Based Business

Home Staging tips

If you have a flair for decorating and an interest in real estate, Home Staging could be the right career for you. This service business, also called Real Estate Staging, is based on the art of decorating a home to sell quickly and for top dollar.

Home Staging is a great service business to run from a home office for these 10 reasons:

1. It is a low cost business to start.

You can work from your own home office. You don’t need a store front or inventory. You also don’t need expensive advertising to grow your home staging business successfully.

2. There is no need to invest in inventory or recruit others into the business. Home Staging is not a multi-level marketing scheme.

If you’ve researched the subject of home-based business, you’ve probably encountered lots of schemes that want you to buy inventory and recruit others into the business too. These are multi-level marketing businesses. Home Staging is not a multi-level marketing business. You don’t have to buy anything and you don’t have to recruit anyone else to join the business. This is something you can do on your own without any recruiting pressures. You aren’t expected to pester every friend and casual acquaintance you’ve ever had to invest in your “unique opportunity.”

3. It has been recognized as one of the best growth businesses.

Entrepreneur Magazine identified home staging as one of the hottest growth businesses, and the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program is the ONLY home staging business opportunity recognized by the magazine for the last three years in their business start up guide books.

4. The financial rewards are there if you work hard to build your business.

Home Stagers create real wealth for their clients by effectively decorating their homes to sell quickly and for top dollar. Once clients realize the significant return they can make on their investment in home staging services, they don’t feel it’s unreasonable to spend several hundred dollars for even two hours of a stager’s time. In other words, working only half a day, you can make what many people take a whole week to earn. If you have five clients in a single week, you can earn more than you did in an entire month of working full time.

And with real estate markets slowing in many parts of the US, the demand for (and interest in) staging services will continue to grow as desperate home sellers look for an alternative to the costly price reductions their agents recommend.

This business can also thrive in a hot real estate market as savvy home sellers realize the greater profits they can make when they have 10 or 15 buyers bidding on their homes, instead of the two or three they might have had before staging.

5. You can still have time for your family or other demands while running a your business.

You control when you meet clients. If you only want to work during the day when your children are at school you can arrange it that way. “I have an opening for you on Wednesday morning at 9:00 AM works well!”

Or, if you want to start this business on the side while you already have a full time job, then you can meet your clients on evenings and weekends. Many of them will really appreciate it as they work themselves.

6. You will have daily opportunities to be creative and meet interesting people.

Home Staging projects very much depend on the creative solutions you develop for your clients, and each one is unique. You get to see the end result very quickly and meet lots of different people as you deal with real estate agents and homeowners.

7. You will enjoy variety and a sense of adventure in a Home Staging business.

Home Staging projects are very short term in nature, lasting days or a couple of weeks. Each house is different and you’ll be visiting streets and neighborhoods you didn’t know existed as you build your home staging client base.

8. You decide who you want to work with and what kind of projects you want to take on.

Since a project is short term in nature, if you find yourself with a “client from hell,” you know they won’t be in your life very long. If you find there are certain real estate agents that don’t share your approach to business, or treat you with less respect than you deserve, don’t work with them again. There are thousands of real estate agents to choose from in most markets. Did you know that in California alone there are 200,000 agents? Clearly not all of them are equally good or equally pleasant to be around.

9. Since you visit clients in their homes, you do not need to worry about what your own home looks like to run a successful staging business.

Nobody needs to know where your home office is and they certainly don’t need to visit your home. So, don’t worry if your house isn’t a reflection of what you want to present to Home Staging clients. The most important thing is to always present yourself in a professional manner.

10. It does not require specialized training or official credentials.

Despite what some organizations claim for their own marketing reasons, there are no official credentials to be a Home Stager. You can call yourself a Professional Home Stager today and no one can say anything about it.

Of course calling yourself a Home Stager doesn’t mean you’ll automatically know how to price your services, build your business and get clients. These are important skills to acquire if you want to be financially successful. The main point is that you don’t have to undergo years or even months of training to get into this business.

Entrepreneur and Home Staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva, knows how to make money as a Home Stager. Discover her secrets to business success in the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. Free quiz to see if a home staging business is right for you at http://www.stagingdiva.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Debra_Gould


Setting up your web page, and getting your web site to the top of the search engines is a challenging but worthwhile task. The first step is to take stock of your current web site. How does it stack up in terms of its meta tags, on page factors and off page factors. What would need to happen to get to the top of the search engine rankings in your local market? For $99, I will review your existing site, identify its strengths and weaknesses. Suggest any easy changes you or your computer person can make quickly, and evaluate the steps you would need to take to rank in the top organic listings in your market place. This will include a half hour personal consultation with me, after I complete the analysis. To learn more send me and email together with your web site address, and I will do a free quick evaluation of your site to see whether or not my services would do you any good. Then and only then, will I ask you for a commitment, and payment. Send email to enetwal@gmail.com

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Home Staging – Why It Works

Home Staging tips

Here is another in my series of articles from Home Stagers who have learned how to drive traffic and back links to their sites by article marketing.

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Home Staging – Why It Works

With the popularity of home staging television shows, many are wondering if staging works in the “real world.” Home staging is more than just good entertainment on a Saturday afternoon, it is a proven technique that sells homes in Hollywood and across the country.

HOME STAGING DESCRIPTION: Home staging is the art of preparing your house for sale by highlighting the home’s features through furniture arrangement, accent placement, and color choices. An Accredited Staging Professional is a real estate expert that performs an objective evaluation of a property to determine any obstacles that may hinder buyer interest in your home. Staging is not decorating. Home staging involves using interior design principles and marketing strategies to best represent your home.

WHY STAGING WORKS: Home staging works because a properly staged house is a house shown at its best condition. Each room contains important design elements: highlighted focal points, proper furniture placement to create a larger space and smooth traffic patterns, tasteful color selections on walls and through home decor, and properly placed home accents. All these principles working together create an atmosphere that triggers buyers’ emotions, causing them to fall in love with the home.

In a staged home, buyers will see that:

* Staged homes look well cared for: staging addresses updating the home’s decor while working within the home owner’s budget.
* Staged homes are uncluttered: staging involves removing excess items so buyers can see the home’s features.
* Staged homes have a pleasant atmosphere: staging displays the best furniture layout for your home, highlighting the focal points and creating easy pathways around the furniture.
* Staged homes appeal to a wider range of buyers: staging neutralizes a homes decor, giving it a model house-like appeal, thus attracting more buyers.

These elements help to generate buyer interest causing wonderful side-effects

HOME STAGING SIDE EFFECTS (BENEFITS):

1. Higher Asking Price: Statistically, homes that have been staged command higher asking prices than non-staged homes, because the house is in top showing condition.
2. Faster Sale Time: Statistically, staged houses sell in one-third time than non-staged houses
3. Greater Rate of Return: Statistically, the investment in staging is returned to the homeowner when their house sells. The average rate of return is about 120%. For example, if a home owner invested $500 in staging their house, they are likely to receive $560 back from the sale of their home through fewer (if any) price reductions or from an increase in asking price.

HOME STAGING STATISTICS:

Staged homes sell quicker than non-staged houses…

* Nationwide, staged home is on the market for an average of 31.9 days
* Nationwide, non-staged home is on the market around 160 days
* 93% of ASP homes sell within one month
* This could mean the difference between days and months!
* For complete statistics visit the Staged Homes Website

Staging is a win-win situation. The sellers win because their houses are sold in a shorter amount of time compared to a non-staged homes, and the real estate agents win because their listing sell faster than agents who don’t recommend staging. Results do not lie. Story after story has been told of how staging made the difference in the sale of a home.

For more information on staging or to view gallery photos of staging projects visit: www.kfmstaging.com.

Kristina, owner of KFM Staging & Design, is an Accredited Staging Professional and has been working with Realtors, builders, and homeowners in the Twin Cities for over ten years. KFM Staging & Design specializes in consulting as a real estate expert, performing vacant and occupied staging services, and working with re-design clients.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kristina_Mosloski

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Setting up your web page, and getting your web site to the top of the search engines is a challenging but worthwhile task. The first step is to take stock of your current web site. How does it stack up in terms of its meta tags, on page factors and off page factors. What would need to happen to get to the top of the search engine rankings in your local market? For $99, I will review your existing site, identify its strengths and weaknesses. Suggest any easy changes you or your computer person can make quickly, and evaluate the steps you would need to take to rank in the top organic listings in your market place. This will include a half hour personal consultation with me, after I complete the analysis. To learn more send me and email together with your web site address, and I will do a free quick evaluation of your site to see whether or not my services would do you any good. Then and only then, will I ask you for a commitment, and payment. Send email to enetwal@gmail.com

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, selling houses, Staging

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