When Staging, Should Your Home be Vacant or Occupied?
When you’re planning on selling your home, you probably have a million different options before you. But only one staging choice truly guides how potential buyers will view your home. Indeed, you need to choose whether you will show your home as vacant or occupied.
While there are important considerations on both sides, there’s little argument among real estate experts today: Occupied is the way to go if you want prospective buyers to view your home in its best light. If you’re still on the fence regarding your staging options, consider these three factors and you’ll see why occupied home staging is the best option overall:
Factor #1: Optimizing a Home’s Best Features
If you’ve lived in your home for some time, you’ve almost certainly had time to settle in and take advantage of everything your house has to offer. In fact, you likely highlight some of your home’s best features by simply living in it!
Many vacant-style showings possess the same potential to highlight these key features, but without the ability to really demonstrate to prospective buyers what your home looks like when it is living and breathing with familial life.
When a touring family asks about kitchen or bedroom arrangement, your properly-staged occupied home will be able to vividly show just how well your home handles both.
Factor #2: Visualizing a New Space
When a home isn’t occupied, it’s harder for buyers to visualize what they can’t actually see in front of them — like a functional living room or modern kitchen. When prospective buyers tour a house, they are often encouraged to visualize themselves and their family making it into a home. Simply put, it’s easier for many buyers to imagine how they might come to love a home if they can see how your family has occupied it up to this point.
Also, if your home is staged as occupied, your staging professional will have a much easier time arranging your house to make it appealing. Adding and subtracting items from your house will be easy in this regard, given that all of the items on your inventory will still be present.
Factor #3: Time Considerations
Depending on your specific living situation (that is, if you haven’t moved into a new home yet), it may simply be easier and more time efficient to remain in your home throughout the showing process.
Doing so will allow you to better maximize your showing efforts without the distraction of simultaneous packing.
The Bottom Line
At the end of the day, occupied home staging is the best option for most homeowners when it comes time to put their current home on the market.
An occupied showing takes skill and poise to execute properly, which is why you should contact Nancy Safran, owner of Show House Home Staging. As a professional home stager leading the way on every job, she will provide you with the kind of personalized consultation and assistance you need to sell your home. Contact Nancy today for your consultation!
