Hold the Pickle

This post is for all of my friends, acquaintances, and connections who are residential realtors.

I read a post on Your Modern Cottage recently — “We Buy Homes the Way We Buy Hamburgers” — that presented a slightly different flavor (no pun intended) to home staging. The post said this, in part:

Most people buy (or sometimes build) their homes the way they buy their cheeseburgers.  On the whole, people base their purchasing decisions on marketing, convenience, and price point. Many agonize about the location, thanks to the famous realtor marketing slogan – “location, location, location.”  Yet, very few people spend the time and effort researching if their future home will truly work for them, their families, and their future.

Whoa! That’s one of those statements that makes you stop to see what’s in the bun.

The Secret Sauce

Here’s something that’ll flip your burger: I’ll concede right upfront my vested interest in having you hire The ArtFitters to stage the homes you sell. There. I said it.

But I’ll support the objective wisdom of that interest by citing some statistics from your peers, courtesy of the National Association of Realtor’s 2019 Profile of Home Staging:

• 48 percent of buyers’ agents said home staging had an effect on buyers’ views of homes.
• 83 percent of buyers’ agents said staging a home made it easier for buyers to visualize properties as future homes.
• 28 percent of sellers’ agents said they staged all sellers’ homes prior to listing them.
• The most common rooms staged included living rooms (93 percent), kitchens (84 percent), master bedrooms (78 percent), and dining rooms (72 percent).
• 10 percent of respondents said buyers felt homes should look the way they were staged on TV shows.
• 38 percent of respondents said TV shows that showed the buying process had an influence on their businesses.

At risk of mixing my meal metaphors, how do you like them apples? Staging will help you sell more homes, more quickly. And it won’t leave prospective buyers wondering, “Where’s the beef?” In that sense, it just might be the real-estate equivalent of fast(er) food.

To paraphrase the old Burger King commercials: When you’re selling, don’t forget us/Special orders don’t upset us.

Call us before you get yourself in a pickle.