Expectant and new parents often live in units and predict they’ll stay living there for at least a few years, even with a baby. These parents often don’t realise that before you can say, “Please sleep through the night!” these tiny little humans already bring some big baggage.

Suddenly, the cot, nursing chair and change table you had space for also come with rockers, walkers, capsules, ride-a-long toys, playmats and playpens. You blink, and that spacious 2-bedder simply doesn’t feel big enough for the three of you!

While most of us would love to hang on to a unit and afford a house, this is out of reach for most young couples. With that in mind, you need to make your saleable asset as profitable as possible to produce a sizable deposit to secure your next family home. 

The market has also recently dropped in Sydney, which means it’s great timing for those of you who are planning to upsize.

If you’ve heard of “home-staging” or styling your property for sale, you might be wondering whether it’s worth the cost.

We dove into the research and spoke to Harwood Property to determine whether home-staging is worth your while and the principles for staging your property to gain a maximum return on your sale.

 

Is it worth staging your property before selling?

Home staging helps direct buyers’ attention to the most attractive features of your property. In conjunction with your space, they use their expertise and materials to impact buyers’ abilities to imagine themselves in your property and their evaluations of its worth.

Evidence suggests that home staging or styling:

• presents homes more attractively online, increasing prospective buyers’ willingness to visit properties.
• reduces the time properties spend sitting on the market.
• increases buyer perceptions of property values by presenting the home as visually larger, cleaner, modern and livable.

Tips for styling your property for maximum pay-off

Harwood property has home-staging experts to help you style your home for maximum return. Some of the home-staging fundamentals that guide their work are:

Make it modern

Newness is considered desirable in a home as buyers infer that the property will require less maintenance, renovations, repair costs, and long-term expenses. So, where the interior appears dated, homes are viewed as less valuable. So when styling your house for sale it’s important to remove any dated-looking items.

You should also make any small updates you can afford. Updates such as new tapware, handles on kitchen cabinetry, or a coat of paint won’t set you back much but may give a significant boost to the perceived value of your home by reducing the amount potential buyers imagine they will need to spend on renovations.

 

Cleanliness is key

Cleanliness is positively associated with minimal upkeep and gives the impression that a home has been taken care of. Homes that have not been properly cleaned, may make prospective buyers think that the property requires more work, both in cleaning and repairs. Even clean homes may also appear less desirable if the items within the home area make it seem cluttered. 

Invest in a professional clean, and if you’re unable to remove your furniture altogether, store any smaller items away that you can. A clean home suggests to potential buyers that the property involves less housework and more easy living!

 

Get back to basics

Homes full of your furniture and other personal items can impact prospective buyers’ ability to see themselves living in your property. Instead, properties for sale should ideally reflect the buyers’ tastes. Since we can’t know their preferred tastes, it’s safest to opt for a neutral colour palette, most likely to please a wider audience. Colourful walls and bright home items that you might deem features may put buyers off. 

Wherever you can, keep colours and tones as neutral as possible. Giving a wall or two a lick of paint or hiding bold, bright decor like artworks, vases and throws can help depersonalise your home so that it doesn’t loudly announce your personal style.

 

An empty nest is never best

You might think that removing everything from inside your property allows people to imagine how their furniture and items would look inside it. Typically, however, this is too difficult for our brains to envision. Research has shown that “only 2 out of 10 people can visualise what is not there.” 

When homes are vacant and free of furnishings, buyers struggle to view themselves in the property. Rather, they focus on imperfections that they would be unlikely to notice in a furnished home, such as chips in paintwork or scuff marks on walls and floors. On the other hand, home staging enables people to imagine themselves residing inside the property- relaxing, entertaining loved ones and living the lives they dream about.

Surprisingly, empty properties also tend to look smaller and feel colder than furnished homes and negatively impact the property’s perceived value.

 

Get free expert home-staging support

Professional home-stagers can boost your property’s perceived value compared to other properties with a similar price and tick similar boxes for them (like location, proximity to transport, etc.). While we’ve discussed some of the fundamentals above, the home stagers at Harwood Property have many other tips and tricks at their disposal. Their home stagers will work with you to make your home appear modern, spacious, livable and exceedingly valuable- and supply all the materials you can use to do it!

For a limited time, Harwood Property is offering a free consultation with one of their experienced and helpful home stagers to Mums of the Shire readers. Simply get in touch with the team and mention “Mums of the Shire.”

If you’d like to know the value of your home, you can also book a free appraisal through Harwood Property today.

Contact the Harwood Property team for your free consultation or appraisal today and make your assets work for you to move onwards and upwards!