ADVERTISEMENT
It’s a hard job to do as a real estate agent: Tell your clients they need to stage their home or make repairs before selling it.
Most of us have had the fun of a listing of a house that was in less than stellar condition for showing homes. Maybe they need fresh coats of paint, new carpet, a different furniture layout or to hire someone for junk removal services. It’s not just lower end listings that suffer from this – many high end listings and luxury homes often need some prep work before selling.
The way to convince your sellers they need to stage their home is easy:
Repeat This Phrase to Yourself Until It Comes Naturally:
You hired me to be 100% honest with you and to sell your home as quickly as possible for the most amount of money. We need to clean, stage, and make this house really outshine the rest.
For some agents, this is easier to do than others. And naturally this will have a LOT to do with the type of clients you are working with. Even I have had clients that no matter what you tell them, show them, or contemplate beating them with do not understand why a house needs to be fixed up in order to sell it.
If repeating the handy dandy phrase above is not enough to convince your sellers (and there’s a good chance it WON’T be!) here’s a few other ways to gently convince them they need to stage their home properly:
1. Take Them For A Tour of the Competition: There’s nothing like seeing houses through the eyes of a buyer. Schedule a quick hour with them to go see the closest homes to theirs in the area. Emphasize what the seller is doing right – and what is going to turn off buyers immediately.
2. Make them Watch Designed to Sell: So I’m not a huge fan of the Designed to Sell show on HGTV, but it will get your sellers thinking differently hopefully. Watch it with them – if you tape it off TV & just catch the “important parts” it might only take 5-10 minutes without all the commercials.
3. Provide them With a Checklist: Doesn’t every real estate office have some sort of checklist on what to do before you sell your home? Make sure you give your sellers one.
4. Offer an Incentive: For some sellers, it’s a matter of not wanting to spend any money. But what if you offered them a rebate in the closing costs for any improvements? For example, let’s say they need carpeting in the main rooms of the home. You shop around a little and find out someone can install a low grade yet vastly improved carpet for around $500. Offer them, in exchange for a one year exclusive listing contract, you will rebate them $500 at closing from the commission price for the carpet. Make sure you work out what happens if you don’t sell the house for some bizarre reason and it’s in writing – but this could be a bargain if it saves yourself from price reduction after price reduction and 6 months of pointlessly trying to sell a hopeless listing! (Make sure you also check with your broker or law department before offering this too!)
5. Show Them How Much They Will SAVE: Badly staged homes or homes in need of repairs typically don’t get close to the asking price – some might be lucky to even get an offer of 90% or less. If you’ve got a client who hates spending money, show them how you can list it higher initially AND the increased likelihood of a higher priced offer.
Have any other good tips on convincing clients they need to stage their home? (I know you do!) Share them in the comments below.
8 Comments
Very well stated and good ideas and you want the seller to agree that putting the best image on the house will get it sold quicker. I’ve found that where they start to balk is when they find out how much their years of neglect is going to cost. So, I now offer my ideas in writing and if they don’t want to do what I suggest, I smile and say ok, but please sign the statement and lets put the sign in the yard tonight!
I am always amazed when you see people on these tv shows who can’t sell their house for years and when you look inside it looks like a bomb has hit it.
Those are all excellent ideas. People who live in their homes usually have a strong emotional attachment to the home and think people stopping by for the first time will feel that warmth and love the home. Not so. I’ve seen some of those shows where people have a home for sale but it looks like a disaster area, or they didn’t do much-needed repairs. People just aren’t going to buy your home if it doesn’t look clean and liveable. Kudos to you for being honest with your clients — you’re right, that IS what you are there for, and the home will sell faster if you do your job right and ask them to work on staging and fixes.
I love the idea of taking the seller on a tour of the completion. I always do this myself, but it makes more sense for them to see what they are up against. A picture is worth a thousand…
Staging is so important. I met with a staging person just last week. Thanks for the info in your blogg.
The question I get the most from sellers reluctant to stage and fix up goes something like this:
If I do all your suggestions– how much can I sell it for? If I dont do them, how much can I sell it for?
I sometimes tell them that If they dont do the fix up and staging they wont sell it at all.
Its super expensive to stage a vacant house. It can cost 700.00 a month or more. But I think its worth it.
I have only had one home not sell that I had staged. I think it was because of the neighbors who kept camping out in the front yard.
Those points will get for sure the client into your pocket. thanks for sharing.
Love that phrase! I worked for Carpet Supply Company, a company that caters to REALTORS with a No payments ’till Closing program for transactions. I learned a lot from that experience to help me get my clients to understand the importance in a buyers mind of staging and otherwise conditioning the home.
One Trackback
[...] With some time and effort spent in sprucing up your home, you are likely to fetch a higher price for the property. All it takes is some imagination and creativity. Staging the Outside Of Your Home HGTV’s – The “Stagers” You Need to Stage Your Home [...]