Is Home Staging Worth It? | Seller's Market vs. Buyer's Market

Is Home Staging Worth It? | Seller's Market vs. Buyer's Market

Transcript:

(00:06):

Okay.

(00:07):

Hey, so we're back on my porch again. Welcome back. And today I want to continue the conversation we've been having about is home staging worth it. So last time we talked about the investment, how you invest money up front, obviously shortens your time on market. If you factor in carrying costs of keeping that house sitting there on the market, right? Your mortgage direct expenses, you can shorten that time, how much money you save when you stage first. Okay. So what we're going to talk about today is just a couple examples that I've seen that I've worked with on how that affects, you know, two different types of market, right? So in a sellers market, right? If you're in Colorado Springs and you have a home that's under 400,000 things are flying, maybe under 500,000, right now just flying off the market is insane, right?

(01:07):

I mean, you might not even last a weekend with that house listed, sitting there on the market. Right. So we're definitely, it's kind of like, well, if it's going to sell so fast, why would we invest in staging again, is home staging worth it in those price, in that, in that market. Right. and so let's talk about that. So what I've been saying is that when even when a home is selling faster, if it looks, if it's priced right, and it looks amazing, buyers are going to want that property more. What that does is brings in more offers, creates a little bit more of a bidding war and ultimately lands you with a better offer, right? You bring in more money, so you sell faster, right? So going to sell fast, maybe can't sell faster. These days in that market, it's got to sell fast, but now you're bringing in more for that house.

(02:00):

Cause you get some additional, you know, we've had multiple bids, you know, coming in on the houses, in that price range in our market. So better. It looks the higher, those bids are going to be. And I want to give you an example of a condo I did that you might think, Oh, it doesn't need to be staged cause it's going to sell so fast. And it did, it was an insane selling process. So I had a, we did a condo, it was a two bedroom, you know, a thousand square foot condo, you know, older, you know, nothing really fancy about it. It was put on the market for 162,000 So, you know, that's gonna like last seconds, right. Seconds these days. And it did, I mean, it ended up actually selling to the first went live at like right before eight o'clock in the morning.

(02:49):

And it was the first bid came in at 8 was ended up what ended up selling the house ended up going for, but that day there were 21 showings off the bat. I mean, we ended up having 13 offers that came in. You know, a lot of bids going on, a lot of negotiation and it's sold for $170,500 was what the final agreement was. So obviously there is a $8,000 over asking price and a scenario that of a tiny little condo know that you knew was going to sell fast. Anyway. Now the question is, is like, well, those condos are already selling fast, did it still need staging? Well, the beauty of this condo is that literally like 10 condos down, this same exact condo was also listed prior to this one. Right. So nothing was different about it.

(03:54):

Same layout actually had some nicer upgrades. They had updated like the vanity bathroom. Their kitchen was a little bit nicer with some of the features. But it wasn't staged, so that home, I still went over asking price. It's sold for 162,000. So there was still a, Oh dear. I'm having a hard time. What was it? It sold for 165,000. Yeah. So it was 65. So we still ended up having $5,000 that the staged condo brought in over the comp down the street. So even if there was an investment in that property of staging, which was about a $2,000 stage, right? What was that worth it for this price market? Well, I think the the sellers would say yes, because they walked away with an additional three grand on that sale.

(04:58):

So you can't go too wrong with that right now. Let's talk about the buyer's market. So once we start getting into higher price listings, we have a different kind of market that's happening in our area. So in our, in Colorado Springs, that buyer market shifts, when you start getting above like the seven, $800,000 mark. Okay. So I'm going to talk about $3 million houses that I recently worked in the summer and how quickly those were impacted because it also because of staging, so one house, we actually did a more of an occupied consultation. So that's one service we did where we, we took out a lot of extra decor. We appeal to more buyers. We simplify what's going on. We depersonalize and, you know, take down. They had a lot of knickknacks, things like that, that one under contract within two weeks ago at the market, we had another house that was listed for 1.5 million.

(05:59):

That was a vacant home that we staged. And you have to understand it. And for this price point, you're expecting probably to sit on the market for six months to a year, right. That is pretty standard. When you're getting the million dollar prices, price point, you have a smaller buying, you know, buyer niche. So it has a tendency to sit longer. Well, this $1.5 million home, it went under contract again two weeks. So way under the expectation of what you're trying to sell it for. Right. And then finally, the we just had a, another listing that was $1.3 million kind of, I mean, it was a beautiful home, had some odd features like an indoor pool, which is going to narrow that buyer niche.

(06:47):

And,

(06:48):

And it had a little more Mediterranean style, which again, narrows that buyer niche. So we tried to open it up with staging appeal to more buyers and that house actually went under contract in 30 days. So, you know, in both markets, the sellers market and the buyers market staging has an impact. That's going to benefit those sellers and bring in more money and ultimately ultimately have more successful sales for them. So don't think that because your home is priced low, that you don't need to stage it. And also don't think because you already expect your home, that's priced high, that it's going to take a long time to sell. We can make an impact and really impact your staging. And my, my daughter is actually right here. So I'm gonna sign off. All right, well, we got some crazy hair. Alright, thanks.