Selling Your Home In Today's Market

Home buyers today are very busy people. A large portion of these buyers are two income families, shuffling kids to school and daycare, rushing to work, car-pooling and commuting. When they do find the time to look for a new home, the first impression they have of your home needs to be a great one. Today's home buyer does not have a lot of spare time to remove your old wallpaper, paint over your peach walls, and re-carpet your light blue living room. Or if they DO have the time, they immediatly come in with a lower offer because they know that You know that your home is not in top condition.

If you have plenty of time to keep your home on the market, and are not too concerned with getting anywhere close to your asking price, good for you, you can stop reading now! For the rest of you, it may be time to mention Home Staging.

Anyone who has watched HGTV for ten minutes has heard of Home Staging, but what is it really? Simply put, Home Staging is the art of making your home appealing to as many buyers as possible, while accentuating the positives and minimizing the negatives. Home Staging can be done by the homeowner themselves, or the help of a Professional Home Stager may be needed. Home Stagers are a wonderful resource. Most offer an in-home consultation (for a fee) to give you some great ideas you can do yourself: choosing paint colors, decluttering, rearranging furniture. A Home Stager can also come in and do the physical staging themselves. Renting or purchasing furniture if needed, adding updated accessories, creating a good "flow" through the home.

Statistics prove that staged homes sell faster and for more money. If you have a home on the market that is not selling, you have few options. Lowering the price is usually the chosen option, but having a Home Stager come in is almost always less costly than that first price reduction ( not to mention the second or third!) Often times the seller has spent so much time in their home they don't notice the clutter, or walls of family pictures, or mismatched oversized furniture. Seeing the home through someone else's eyes can be completely eye-opening.

For more information on Home Staging please contact Gretchen Wheeler of Creative Spaces Home Staging and Interior Design in Erie Pa
www.creativespaceserie.com 814-881-2999