How to Sell a Luxury Home Fast with 5 Expert Staging Secrets
11536 Lake Butler Blvd, The Jewel Of The Lake in Windermere, Florida
So you’ve decided to sell your luxury home, and during COVID, no less. If it’s taking longer than you expected, you might be asking yourself , “Why isn’t my home selling?” You may be pinpointing any number of reasons for your lackluster results: you live in a bad market, the housing economy is tanking, or your real estate agent isn’t up to par.
While competition is fierce, homes are selling. Why your home isn’t selling likely comes down to one insider secret: expert staging.
If this comes as news to you, we’re not surprised. We know from our 20+ years of combined experience that sellers can be dubious of staging. You might’ve sold multiple homes in the past without staging. You might doubt that moving furniture around can gain you 1% on a sale or save you 3 months on the market.
But we’ve seen the results of going all in on expert staging and we’re confident you will, too. The real estate staging secrets we’re going to reveal are what finally sold Bill Kitchen’s 3.4 million dollar home after 5 other real estate agents and 10 years on the market couldn’t.
Wouldn’t it be great to sell your home immediately instead of waiting up to 10 years?
We’re going to show you how. You’ll learn the power behind expert staging, the top 5 staging secrets every luxury homeowner needs to know, and what exactly makes a real estate agent uniquely qualified to help stage your multi-million dollar home to sell.
The Enormous Return on Investment of Staging
Why does expert staging matter, really? Why invest time and money staging your home to sell when it’s possible to sell without staging?
You have to understand the domino effect of staging or not staging.
Especially now during COVID, everyone is viewing house listings online before they schedule an in-person tour. If your home is not expertly staged and doesn’t look show ready online, buyers aren’t even going to step their foot in the door.
And when buyers don’t step their foot in the door, your home stays on the market longer. And when you stay on the market longer you have to decrease the price of your home. And the dominoes keep tumbling until eventually you’ve sold your home for 5% lower than the asking price.
In contrast, staged homes typically sell for 1-5% more than non-staged homes and spend an average of 73% less time on the market. Wouldn’t it feel great to sell your home in nearly a quarter of the time?
This domino effect is especially vicious for the luxury market during the coronavirus pandemic. While traditional homes at $300K and below are flying off the market, and even lower end luxury at $500-750K are still moving, ultra luxury at $2 million and up is slowing way down. Jumbo loan financing for these homes is currently a challenge, creating fewer buyers than sellers.
In short, it’s a buyer’s market.
You want to make sure your home is in pristine condition because we’re seeing more choices for the buyer and greater competition. All the more reason to follow the 5 secrets of professional staging.
The 5 Secrets Every Luxury Homeowner Should Know About Staging to Sell
Here at Abode, we abide by one principal philosophy to successfully stage your home:
|“How people live is not how you sell.”
A house becomes a commodity when it’s on the market so it needs to look different than when you live in the home. That means all good staging centers around depersonalizing and decluttering, framing the house in the best possible light for buyers. You’ll find this principal carried through among all 5 staging secrets.
1. Paint is Your Best Friend
Paint is the least expensive and the highest impact item to makeover your home. The fix? Choose a neutral, high-quality shade and re-paint the entire interior of your home before listing.
This change might sting. You might’ve spent years picking out the perfect navy blue for the kitchen, a gentle pink for your daughter’s room, a bright red for the dining room.
Why wouldn’t buyers want to enjoy all the colors you’ve meticulously picked for the home?
Because color makes a personal statement. Buyers want to look at a home and see the potential for their own personal journey. For example, you might’ve repainted the “kids rooms” blue and pink, but your perfect future homebuyers don’t even have kids.
Buyers might not want to use the space in the same way you have. You attract more buyers when you enable them to see their own vision and see themselves living there as the new homeowners by creating a neutral foundation they can mold.
2. Redesign with What You Already Have
The best way to redesign with what you already have is to get rid of the extra items that are cluttering and personalizing your home, like cooking supplies, toiletries, toys, and more.
A perfect example is photos. People are naturally curious. If you leave your photos up, buyers are going to be looking at you and not at your house!
Once you’ve decluttered and eliminated personal items, it’s time to rearrange your remaining furniture for ultimate feng shui. A prime example is a living room. Usually people set up sofas and chairs to focus on the TV, but that arrangement can look unappealing or block an entrance. Move the furniture so that it’s balanced in the room for ultimate elegance
If you’re wondering where to store your belongings, note that most homeowners can store these items in their garage, but not luxury owners. In luxury homes, garages need to be as clean as possible for staging photos. Potential buyers will likely store a few high end toys in the garage - a Range Rover, a Mercedes, etc. - and want to see that their collectibles will have a clean new home.
Another important note for luxury homeowners: beware of your pride. You might have worked really hard to buy some expensive home decor. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but homebuyers today may not want to see what you bought 20 years ago, no matter how expensive it is.
For example, drapes, curtains, and rugs from 10 or 20 years ago were extremely expensive and popular. You might’ve spent $10-20K for a drape set or up to $100K for an oriental rug. If you’ve got a good real estate agent or stager, they’re going to tell you to take it down. While beautiful, these items aren’t in style and buyers will get turned off by them.
And if you’re worried about eliminating items before you’re out of the house? Think of it this way. You’re going to be moving anyway, so you might as well start packing now.
3. Invest in Professional Staging When You Really Want to Sell Quickly
If you want to sell very quickly, it’s worth investing in a professional staging company. Stagers have the skill and the equipment to redesign your home in the most appealing light possible. The 5 secrets we’re outlining here? Professionals have at least 500 more up their sleeve.
While this means investing money upfront, the return is worth the cost. A traditional home can be staged for $2-3K while you might spend $10-20K on a larger luxury home. Either way, the typical return on investment for staging is around 200% and your home sells faster.
Here at Abode, we hire professional stagers on about half of our luxury listings. When it comes to selecting stagers, we know exactly which companies have the right personality or style for a particular home or seller. The other half of homes we’re able to stage professionally ourselves based on our 20+ years of experience and our market understanding. No matter what, we encourage you to have a professional experienced in staging in your corner.
4. Every Photo Must Be A Professional Photo
141 Glenridge Way in Winter Park, Florida
Home staging principles apply online as well as offline. It’s VITAL to have professional photos. And it’s not just photos anymore, especially during COVID-19. Virtual home tours are taking off as well and establishing a new norm, especially for luxury homes. Here at Abode we’ve been doing videos for 6 years and have started including 3D tours for all our luxury listings.
This goes back to the domino effect. You want people to be impressed with your home photos and videos online before they ever step foot inside. That’s how you hook them. If an agent is taking shots with their iPhone and the lighting isn’t right, people are seeing that and never walking in, starting that domino effect towards a lower sale.
At Abode, we include professional photos and videos for all our clients because we know it’s a make or break for a successful home sale.
5. Craft the Story Buyers Want to Live
When you’re selling a luxury home, you’re not just selling a house. You’re selling a lifestyle. You need to stage your home in a way that crafts a story buyers want.
For example, Orlando offers plenty of lakeside luxury. If you’re selling a home with a dock, it’s pivotal to stage that dock in a way that inspires buyers to see themselves spending sunny afternoons sipping lemonade or launching out on their boat for a restful evening of enjoying the sunset.
Highlight the exceptional features of your home to create a dream lifestyle. This might include your pool and spa area, an outdoor kitchen, or even master bedroom walk-in closets. In most traditional homes a closet is just a closet. But in a luxury home, that closet transforms into a gallery of Gucci handbags and Ferragamo shoes. Identify what makes your home unique and elevate it into a story.
Your Game-Changer: An Agent Uniquely Qualified to Stage Multi-Million Dollar Homes
Linda Sitek & Steven Ritz of Abode, Keller Williams Winter Park
Before reading this article you might’ve been confused as to why your home isn’t selling. By now, we hope you see the impact of excellent staging.
Staging was the game-changer for Bill Kitchen’s $3.4 million home on Lake Butler. You’d think this luxury home would’ve flown off the market - lakeside, gorgeous pool, fully-stocked home gym. But 5 high profile professionals with successful backgrounds failed to sell the home over the course of 10 years.
That changed when we came in. Bill asked, “What are you going to do differently?” We explained how we’d stage the home to highlight its best features. For example, there was a big rug covering great hardwood floors that we told him to remove and a number of fake flowers throughout the home that didn’t appeal to buyers.
His reaction? Nobody had ever told him that before. When we asked him later why he hired us he said it was because we gave him new ideas and sold him on redesigning elements of the house to maximize sell-ability.
What do we think made us different from the 5 other agents? It’s our ability to stage multi-million dollar homes.
A real estate agent uniquely qualified to stage multi-million dollar homes has a deep understanding of what luxury buyers want TODAY. Having a proven-track record of selling luxury properties (like we do) is important, but understanding how homebuyers change with the times is essential to continued success.
These are the qualities you need to find in any agent who you’ll choose to sell your multi-million dollar home. If you’re looking to sell your home in the Orlando area, we’d love to be that agent.
Get in touch with Linda Sitek, our Listing Specialist, at 407-963-6544 or by emailing here.