Stephen Burke, of Sutton Group West
Coast Realty, had a condo on the market for months with
no offers. People were touring it but nobody was buying
it. In an extra attempt to sell the condo he decided to
call DEKORA, a local home staging company. After staging,
he received multiple offers and the condo ended up selling
within 30 days.
“Having listed a penthouse apartment for an extended
period with no offers, I needed to create the ‘wow’
factor,” said Burke. “DEKORA chose the perfect
furnishings and created a welcoming ambience for our target
buyer. The result [was] multiple offers and it sold for
more than the asking price. ”Since then Burke has
become a fan of home staging and he is not alone. Andrea
Kavanagh, another Vancouver realtor with RE/MAX Select
Properties, has also used DEKORA’s services to help
sell one of her listings. She now considers home staging
a key ingredient in successful home sales. “I wish
all of my sellers would engage in home staging prior to
listing their home for sale. It would certainly create
a faster sale and in many cases result in a higher selling
price,” she added.
So what exactly is home staging? Some might call it business
art. Others might label it an effective marketing tool.
According to John Carter, one of DEKORA’s founders,
it is a home make over that helps people see the potential
of a living space instead of getting distracted in the
previous owner’s clutter.
Home staging includes consultations with homeowners which
give them ideas on how they can enhance their home to
obtain a higher price and faster sale. It includes everything
from landscaping to painting to minor repairs. Carter
said the concept of home staging is new to Lower Mainland
residents but the concept itself is not a new one. “Developers
in Vancouver have spent years developing show suites.
They won’t even have ground broken and they already
will have show suites in the trailers,” he said.
“There is a reason they do that, I mean, they
wouldn’t spend thousands of dollars on it if it
didn’t make a difference in their sales.”
Joy Valentine, an associate broker with Coldwell Banker
in Los Altos, CA, conducted a home staging survey in
1999 to try and figure out if there really was a significant
difference. She analyzed 2,772 properties sold between
March 1 and September 30, 1999 in eight cities: Atherton,
Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Menlo Park, Mountain View,
Palo Alto, Portola Valley and Sunnyvale.
Out of that group she took a sample of 129 properties
that had been staged. This sample represented condominiums,
townhouses and single-family residences. They ranged
in list price from $229, 000 to $4.8 million. From the
group of 2, 772 properties, the average number of days
on the market was 30.9 and the average difference in
sale price over list price was 1.6 per cent. For the
129 homes the average number of days on the market was
13.9 and the average difference in the selling price.
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