Are you worried that if the real estate market is slow, there won’t be enough demand for home stagers and staging services? Quite the opposite is true, once home sellers know about home staging and understand that it can help them sell their homes more quickly.
At least 10% of the population moves every year, and there are lots of reasons for this: marriage, divorce, new baby, retirement, new job location, etc. All of these life events make the need/desire to move quite strong, regardless of the state of the housing market.
As we head into spring, more homes come on the market because people want to show their homes when their gardens look better, and because they want to be able to sell and move between school years.
In the spring real estate market, and especially if it’s also a slow real estate market , it’s not unusual to see several houses for sale on the same street.
Real estate agents will pressure home sellers to drop their prices because it doesn’t change the agent’s commissions all that much (it’s only a few hundred dollars less if the sale price drops by $10,000). Yet home sellers resist price reductions because that’s money right out of their pockets. And preserving equity is the key goal in this economic climate!
Desperate home sellers will scramble for ways to make their homes stand out from the competition and attract an offer. That’s where staging comes into play.
By decorating a home to be more appealing to buyers, home stagers offer the perfect solution. We make a home more appealing with staging for less than the cost of a price reduction. And with a faster sale, the owners don’t have to carry their non-selling house as long (a key benefit for people moving to a new city, divorcing, etc., who may be stuck with two homes).
Here’s why staging works, especially now
The reality is that in a slow real estate market, buyers have less incentive to make an offer today because they know that increased inventory means that asking prices may go down even more tomorrow. They also feel no pressure to make a speedy decision because they know there are tons of homes to choose from. This makes it less likely that a property they’re interested in will disappear too quickly— again making them less likely to take action and make an offer.
As a result, there’s a vicious cycle with home sellers trapped in their non-selling houses for longer and increased pressure from their agents to continue lowering their price. But home staging offers a way to end this costly inconvenience, because staged homes have been proven to sell faster.
I’ve written more than 50 stories that prove home staging works, especially in slow real estate markets. These stories are based on the actual home staging successes of Staging Diva Graduates in a variety of locations.
Plus, if you don’t have a copy of my Free report, “Ask Staging Diva: Can I grow a home staging business in a depressed economy?” you can still download it now. It’s full of free information about:
- How the current economy and real estate market can affect your home staging business.
- How to estimate the size of your local market.
- Why home staging works especially well with first-time buyers (the growing segment of the market).
- And much more!