Selling Vacant Homes

By Catherine Brown

Most people find it difficult to visualize the potential of a home – or make an emotional connection – when a property is vacant. That’s why builders showcase their new homes by having interior designers and decorators create an enticing model home. Unfortunately, this has given the inaccurate perception that decorating is the same as staging.

For a successful sale, buyers need to identify with the space and aspire to the lifestyle presented. The trick is to identify the demographic of buyers the property should appeal to, and then sell them the lifestyle they desire by using furniture and decorative accessories.

People don’t buy houses, they buy homes. Many properties on the market today are vacant – either due to a home owner’s death or because of job relocations. An Accredited Staging Professional, who can rent furniture and decorative accessories to sellers from their own inventory and/or rental sources, are filling a valuable niche in today’s real estate market.

Successful staging enhances a home’s selling features and merchandises the rooms for their intended use. An Accredited Staging Professional creates the appearance of a model suite in a resale property, turning a vacant space into a warm, inviting home.

Due to the popularity of HGTV shows, consumers are far more familiar with and interested in interior design trends. And the average Canadian buyer has higher standards when shopping for their next home.

Sellers mistakenly think that viewing an empty property will give buyers a better sense of available space, when actually it’s difficult to estimate the size of a room without furniture as a reference point.

An empty room allows buyers to focus on negative details instead of getting a sense of overall space. In oddly shaped vacant rooms, buyers must use their imagination to visualize furniture layouts.

The need to stage smaller properties with larger windows, such as condos, becomes more important where it can be tricky to gauge how furniture will fit. Newer condos may have higher ceilings, but they may also have smaller rooms; staging helps buyers envision themselves in the space and emotionally connect to it.

If you must vacate your home before a sale, don’t forget to leave some furnishings for viewings…or better yet, have your Accredited Staging Professional rent furniture to make it feel like home. After all, it can make a tremendous difference in how fast you sell…and for how much.

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Catherine E. Brown is an Accredited Staging Professional and owner of Staged to Move. Catherine is committed to helping clients sell their home for the best price in the least amount of time. She can be contacted at (519) 868-7171 or by email at catherine@stagedtomove.ca. Visit her Web site at www.stagedtomove.ca.

Published in Networking Today, December, 2006