Enter “home staging” into a Google search and more than 135 million results will pop up. It’s evidence that home staging has long been a part of the real estate selling process.
What do Santa Fe home sellers need to know about home staging in today’s market? While your Barker broker is the best source of information about home staging for your particular property, many real estate professionals and industry experts agree that home staging is a critical element when selling a home.
Survey Says Home Staging Matters
In fact, a 2021 National Association of REALTORS® study on home staging provided a few findings we thought worth sharing.
- Eighty-two percent of buyers’ agents reported that staging a home made it easier for buyers to visualize a property as their future home.
- Buyers’ agents said that photos (83 percent of respondents), videos (74 percent), and virtual tours (73 percent) have become more important for listings since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Sellers’ agents citing having photos (58 percent), virtual tours (45 percent) and videos (43 percent) available for their listings as much more important since the start of the pandemic.
- From the buyers’ perspective, staging the living room was reported to be most important, followed by the primary bedroom and the kitchen.
- Sellers’ agents said that the most commonly staged rooms were the living room (90 percent), the kitchen (80 percent), the primary bedroom (78 percent), and the dining room (69 percent). Thirty-nine percent of sellers staged a home office or office space.
- With staged homes, 23 percent of sellers’ agents reported an increase of one percent to five percent of the dollar value offered by buyers, in comparison to similar homes.
- Thirty-one percent of sellers’ agents reported that staging a home greatly decreased the amount of time the home was on the market.
Home Staging Methods
Santa Fe homes for sale can be staged a number of ways. Although it’s possible for sellers to live in a staged home, they must be ready to keep it in peak viewing condition when buyers come for home viewings. When sellers can move into a new home before selling, however, that creates a clean slate for home staging, which often will present the home in the best light.
According to the NAR home staging study, nearly half of the sellers’ agents surveyed said they used a staging service. About 25 percent of respondents offered to personally stage the home themselves.
We also want our sellers to know that Barker Realty offers virtual staging services. Virtual staging involves taking high-quality photographs of vacant rooms and using sophisticated software to virtually furnish rooms. Ask your Barker broker what home staging method is best for you.
Staged Rooms vs. Vacant Rooms: What’s Better?
Our real estate experience tells us that home staging benefits the seller more than listing a home with empty rooms. The NAR home staging study backs that up, with 82 percent of buyers’ agents saying that staged rooms make it easier for buyers to envision the property as their future home.
Home staging visually characterizes rooms for buyers. Imagine a room with nothing but a light fixture hanging from the ceiling. By definition, that’s a dining room. Add a table set for dinner and surrounded by inviting chairs and a sideboard or two, and you’ve created a space for family and friends to gather.
Depersonalizing is an important part of home staging. Buyers want to visualize a home for sale as their future home—not view personal possessions, travel memorabilia, and family photographs.
Matterport Virtual Tours and Home Staging
We offer our sellers 3D virtual tours using virtual tour software provided by Matterport. Once the home is staged and photographed, Matterport software creates a virtual tour that can be viewed as a floor plan and as a three-dimensional space. The user can virtually move through rooms, zoom in on details, and even take measurements.
Matterport 3D virtual tours helps buyers who view homes in real life by capturing a record of the home they’ve viewed. It’s a virtual tour they can view again and again as they evaluate their purchase.
We’re seeing an increasing number of home sales from buyers who purchase remotely, without an actual visit to Santa Fe. Matterport 3D tours help make the home-buying process easier for remote buyers—and that helps our sellers.
Your Barker broker can give you more details about Matterport and all the information on home staging for your particular listing. We’d love to hear from you!
