Spotlight on Staging for Real Estate Photography
Why Staging Your Own Home is Hard
Moving is difficult in the best of situations. Even when every reason for your move is a step in the right direction, there can be emotional hurdles. Unfortunately, a move can also be tied to negative life changes and then selling your home becomes just another item on a list of things you don't want to do - at all. Whether it's a good move or a sad move, taking a hard look at your home and preparing it to be loved by another family can be a difficult project.
One of the reasons we know this is because we were real estate agents before we started photographing homes. We watched all kinds of people, from singles to multi-generational families move into and out houses. In those days, shopping online for a home was a brand new thing and most people didn't see a house until they visited in person, but properly staging your home was important, even then. Online home shopping caught on like wildfire and now more home buyers see their new home online before they see it in person. That means the visual aspect of your home is even more important than ever before.
We're a Pair of Vagabonds
Long before we were real estate agents, we were vagabonds. Bill didn't grow wings on his ankles until after he was a teen, but at 18 he left Egypt to come to the United States. That's a pretty drastic move. He'd be hard pressed to tell you just how many rooms, roommates, landlords and apartments he went through before building his first house in his early 30's, but it was a lot. Jane, on the other hand, has only lived in the States, but she moved around with her family, because her dad was transferred frequently in his career. By the time she was 11, she'd had to learn 6 different addresses. By age 18, she learned another half dozen.
We're sharing our vagabond credentials so you'll realize we speak with the voice of experience. We've moved for happy, exciting reasons and we've moved for heart-breaking, disappointing reasons. We've done it so often, we've learned how to take off our home owner hat and put on our staging hat. We set our jaw and look at our soon-to-be ex-home with a critical eye. Then we clear out the clutter, depersonalize everything, re-furbish, re-fresh and re-do. But while we know it can be hard, we can also tell you just how much money we've made, because we didn't get emotional about a place we weren't going to live anymore. Staging alone can put tens of thousands of dollars in your pocket and that's a pretty penny.
That's what we want you to understand, whether you are leaving your current home for great reasons or awful ones, it's a good idea to put your emotional baggage behind you. Nothing can change the reasons for your move, but you can have a significant impact on the money you will earn from the sale of your residence - if you listen to the experts and go that extra, uncomfortable mile in the staging process.