We recently had a team meeting and our newest team member asked a great question that maybe you have struggled with before. It definitely came up for me at the beginning of my business and is one that I think all of us real estate professionals can struggle with at times when working with staging clients.
“How much should we ask our clients to do to get ready to sell?”
I actually think this question is really asking two things: what is important and what is realistic to have the client do to get ready to sell.
First thing…it is our job to inform our clients of potential issues that buyers will pick up on. Does that mean they have to correct everything that we mention? Absolutely not. Some things are of higher priority than others and some things can be minimized by strategically styling.
That's where our second job comes in. Our second job is understanding return on investment (ROI) for our clients. Return on investment in terms of time, energy, effort and financial resources.
And in order to understand return on investment from a staging perspective, we need a framework to work from.
When I first started my business I didn't really have a framework for knowing what was important so I overwhelmed my clients with my recommendations. I had watched every staging show on HGTV after all and they have people changing every light fixture, sink faucets, etc. But this was not awesome for a seller on the other end of miles and miles of recommendations. And honestly, not realistic.
What I didn't realize at the time was that great styling can negate the need to do so many costly projects.
Fortunately, early in my career, I was challenged with some properties that would have needed significant updating that just wasn't possible to change from a time and financial perspective. So, we had to prioritize every little decision that we made and we had to style the heck out of these houses.
And those houses taught me valuable lessons about how much buyers are willing to overlook if you stage strategically for both the photos and showings.
Here is the framework that I have put into place and as a team, we continue to use this formula with our staging clients in our Styling Evaluations:
Top Recommendations for Your Staging Clients
Super Important Rooms
We want the first impression of every house to be ridiculously amazing. So we prioritize anything that needs to be done in the first few rooms that people are going to see when they walk in the door. All of this has to feel as simple, updated, welcoming and as fresh as possible. Believe it or not, a lot of this can be accomplished with throw pillows, art and accessories.
We also consider the path that a buyer will take from where they park their car to where they enter the house a Super Important. I wrote about what we look for in the blog post “15 Unexpected Curb Appeal Mistakes” that I see all the time in listing photos. You can click here to take you to that post.
Bottom line, if you are looking at a house that needs tons of work, focus your recommendations on the Super Importants.
Next up…
Super Important Views
Within each Super Important Room, there are Super Important Views. We actually call them High ROI Views. These are the focal points that a photographer will want to capture in a photo or the first views that buyers will have of the rooms as they walk through them.
The best way to figure out what your high ROI views are is to walk into your house and start touring it the way that you think buyers will walkthrough. The first views you see in each room will be your most important ones and will have a high impact on your buyer's feelings about the house so make 'em gorgeous!
Sometimes your highest ROI view is something viewed right at eye level. For example, replacing a dining room chandelier with something more modern can have a higher impact than changing the wall color because it is at eye level and a focal point in the room.
Speaking of dining room chandeliers, here's a little bonus for ya! These are some of our favorite looks for our staging projects (download the shopping links here)
The View Through the Lens
If your first point of sale is the online photos, those photos have to be spot-on perfect. What will the photographer capture, what draws your eye away from the actual attributes of the room? We have to be thinking in terms of the camera always. So get your photographer pants on and photograph each room to see what grabs your attention. Our team does this throughout appointments to make sure we aren't missing something glaring.
The Giants
These are tasks that impact the super important rooms and will likely take more time or involve tradespeople. Typically, Giants are things like lots of built-in bookshelves, home offices, bedrooms that were turned into storage, large furniture that will not be needed to style the space, painting, carpet cleaning, etc.
And the last thing….I always tell my clients this and it's verbiage I think you can use too….
“It's my job to tell you this. What you do with it is up to you, your timeline and your budget. But, if you get feedback on something I didn't tell you about, you will wonder why I didn't say anything about it.”
Your clients will appreciate this transparency and they will appreciate that you have a framework guiding your recommendations. Now go work it!
(Oh and let me know if you have any guiding principles for how to prioritize your recommendations for clients in the comments below!)
If you want to dive deeper into how I do this with our clients, download “Sell Your House In 72 Hours” or really go for it and take the “Stage Your House To Sell” mini-course.
xo,
Lori
*This post includes affiliate links. You can learn more about how this impacts you here.
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