"The Power of Home Staging" with Guest Blogger Amy Copley, Founder of Lotus & Wolf Home Design

We are thrilled to have our long-time business partner Amy Copley of Lotus & Wolf Home Design joining us as a guest blogger this week to share the benefit of staging your investment properties.

Thank you, Amy!

THE POWER OF HOME STAGING

When it comes to selling your home, let’s be honest, you want the most dollar you can get. Would you bake a cake and serve it without the icing? Probably not.

Then why would you pour your blood, sweat and tears into a renovation without staging it?

Staging your home not only helps potential buyers imagine how to use the space, but mentally move in. Staging is about perfecting the art of creating moods.

As a home stager in Northern Colorado I enjoy working with home owners and agents, but what I find more rewarding is working with investors. To stage an investment property is to really showcase all the hard work you've put in and make it stand out against the competition.

You buy a home with a vision of its true potential, work to renovate it into a home that buyers will swoon over and hopefully walk away with an amazing profit! But what if you could sell it faster and for more money?

A staged home evokes an emotional reaction. People buy on emotion, they get excited when a home is aesthetically pleasing and can envision a place they could call home and excited people SPEND MORE MONEY!

A lot of investors will make the mistake of thinking they can skip staging to save time and money, but that's usually not the right perspective to take. Staging will highlight the homes strengths while minimizing any weaknesses.

The proof is in the numbers:

• Almost a third of buyers will overlook property faults when the home is professionally staged.
  
  
• Professionally staged homes spent 73% less time on the market.
  
  
• When the seller spent an average of 1% of the value of their home on staging, they saw on average a 1000% return investment.
  
  
• In a 2015 National Association of Realtors stated over 81% of Buyers said it was easier to visualize the STAGED property as their next home.
• ~Staging often brings a higher price for the home; sellers are estimated to make 7% to 10% more when a home is staged.
  
  
• ~95% of buyers use the internet for their home search. You want the photos to stand out!
  
  

Staging highlights a homes best features, ensuring its photos, marketing materials and open houses surpass the competition.

When you're a real estate investor, time is of the essence, whether you're flipping a home to sell it or to rent it, professional home staging can really pack a punch. The average cost of staging is usually much less than a price reduction on your home!

It doesn't really cost to stage, IT PAYS!

Amy Copley