


Preparing and Presenting Homes For Sale in Rockland and Bergen



Free monthly
newsletter with advice for selling homeowners.
Visit our Castle of the
Month.
Articles:
On-Line Photos Sell Your House
Select an Internet-Savvy Agent
Printable Info Sheet:
Home Staging Speeds Sales



Discount for downsizing seniors (65+): 10% off our home
evaluation fee.
FSBO and listed home sellers:
No offers? A professional home evaluation that identifies barriers to sale will help you sell.
Vacant houses: Buyers need help visualizing how they will use a room, so a vacant house is a challenge to sell. That's why builders provide a model. We
can help you sell sooner by creating vignettes in your main rooms.
Renting rather than selling? Make your house attractive to renters.
Gardens: Improving and presenting your walkways, decks and gardens can enhance your home's curb
appeal and make it more spacious and inviting.



We have succeeded to the business of home stager Rockland Home Staging.
To arrange a professional consultation by a home stager in your home, give us a call or email us today:
The Staging Prince
9 Woodland Terrace
Orangeburg, NY 10962
PO Box 1226
Pearl River, NY 10965
845-875-4561
201-505-0005
Email us




© 2009-2010 The Staging Prince
Web design by Prince Global LLC
|

|
Our Services
|
To Sell Your Home in Weeks not Months, Start with an In-Home
Evaluation
If you are thinking about putting your home on the market, you
should prepare it to appeal to buyers before you list it. With a home
evaluation we can advise you just what preparation to do to save money,
sell quickly, and maximize your equity upon sale.
If your home is already on the market but not drawing offers, ask us
about a home evaluation during which our expert advisors will identify
barriers to sale and recommend changes to overcome them. Our advisors
are not critics. Their goal is the same as yours: help sell your house
quickly.
Sellers are learning about home staging from cable tv shows. Home
staging makes a home more appealing and more competitive. It is
actually Step 6 in a 7-step process of preparing and presenting
your home for sale that starts with a 2-hour in-home evaluation:
- In-home evaluation by a professional home staging advisor
- Repair
- Update
- Declutter
- Clean
- Stage
- Photograph
The Staging Prince can help you with all of these steps, including
advising you on which updates make sense when you are selling. Our help
will ease the stress of your coming move.
Since the staging step is least well understood, we'll show you in
the next few paragraphs what it is. We'll also tell you why
professionally staged homes sell faster than unstaged ones, especially
in today's buyer's market.
Then we'll tell you how to sell your home in weeks instead of
months, and the importance of selecting a savvy real estate agent who
understands the benefits of professional staging. Most agents don't
understand how it works. If your agent tells you your home is
"well-enough staged" or "you can do it yourself", your agent is
probably referring to decluttering rather than staging.
Staged homes typically sell faster than unstaged ones -- 80 percent
faster in a 2009 survey. That is amazing! But it's been documented
over and over. So what is home staging? First, staging is not
decluttering. Nor is it decorating. Partly an art, home staging is
designed to achieve one goal: To connect a prospective buyer to your
house -- to make him or her want to move in.
Staging highlights the best architectural features of your home,
removes distractions and helps the prospective buyer imagine your home as
his or hers – living in it, relaxing in it, entertaining in it --
which will lead to a sale. This brief virtual tour will help you see how
it works.
Behind the Numbers
Staged Homes Spend 80% Less Time on Market. Why? It’s the
Internet!
A 2009 StagedHomes.com survey of over 1000 homes (55% vacant, 45%
occupied) that were sold from November 2008 through May 2009 across the
US and Canada found that unstaged homes spent an average of 182
days on market before sale, while the 94.8% of staged homes
(staged by Staged Homes-trained professional stagers) that sold spent an
average of 37 days on market before sale. That's 80%
less time on the market for professionally staged homes.
Professional staging works. What accounts for its increasing success
rate? Answer: More buyers are searching on-line: 90% of all home buyers
used the Internet to search for homes in 2009, according to the National
Association of Realtors. In today's competitive market, buyers
simply weed out houses that don't look great in on-line photos.
Since unstaged homes don’t look as good in photos, unstaged houses
just don't get the same traffic. Unstaged homes don't show as well during
visits either, so they draw fewer offers. Result: Unstaged homes spend
longer on the market – 4 times longer, on average.

Sell Your Home in Weeks
Do you want to sell your home in weeks instead of months? Follow our
advice:
- Prepare your home and have it staged by a rigorously trained
professional home stager.
- Don’t take photos until your home has been staged, to avoid
being weeded out when viewed on the web.
- Make sure your photos are ultra-wide angle, sharp and
well-lit.
- Post your photos everywhere buyers will see them or hire a
savvy agent to do it.
- Even if you don’t list with an agent, pay a commission to
buyers’ agents.
- Price your home competitively based on recent sales of comparable
homes.
As a home seller, you are competing against all other homes in your
area. You can take advantage of our advice to sell your home ahead of the
others whose owners haven't learned about staging. For more on reaping
the benefits of home staging, see What is Home Staging?.
Some real estate agents understand these benefits and enthusiastically
recommend professional home staging. Whether yours does or not, tell her
(or him) that you want your house staged by a professional and
photographed only after staging. (The cost of an evaluation is modest,
and the evaluation is essential for a fast sale.) Also, ask how she plans
to use the Internet to market your home. If you follow our advice, you
CAN sell your home fast. Don't let your house sit on the market waiting
for a price cut. See Select a Savvy Agent.
|
What Services does The Staging Prince Offer to Homeowners?

The Staging Prince advises homeowners on preparing their homes for
market, presenting them to potential buyers through home staging, and
maximizing our clients' equity upon sale. We help you sell your home
quickly and at the best possible price, and we take the hassle out of
preparing to sell and move. If your home is already on the market, we
can identify barriers to sale.
Following our initial home evaluation, The Staging Prince offers these
services to homeowners:
- We provide advice on which repairs and updates to make to maximize
return -- whether you are ready to sell near-term or planning for the
future;
- We can find contractors and handle the bidding process for you
;
- We can recommend a savvy listing agent who is good at marketing
houses in today's competitive market;
- We can help with packing and decluttering, even manage a garage
sale or arrange for charitable gifts;
- We can stage your home so that a potential buyer can see it as his
or her new dream house.
- Many Hudson Valley homeowners also own businesses; as consultants to small business clients,
we can handle issues ancillary to a move, including small business
renewal, cash flow issues, computer services, even interim
management.
- In short, as your advisors The Staging Prince can take the hassle
out of preparing to move, from start to finish.
We offer advice to home sellers as well as to homeowners who are
planning for the future.
Reminder: Sign up for our monthly
newsletter. 
|
Q. What does The Staging Prince do?
We advise homeowners on how to present their home and how to maximize
the return they’ll get when they sell.
Q. Don’t real estate agents do that?
Not really. The real estate agent’s goal is to market the house
so it sells quickly, not to maximize the seller’s equity. So if a
house needs some repairs and maybe has dated kitchen and baths, an
agent’s advice may be to set the price below comparable homes so it
has a chance of selling quickly.
Q. What does the homeowner do about it?
Sometimes the homeowner sets the price low to avoid the hassle of
making home improvements and gives away a lot of his or her equity.
Sometimes the homeowner, not understanding the marketplace, elects to set
a high price "to test the market". He may even choose an agent who
recommends setting a high price just to get the listing. The agent knows
the house won’t sell at that price but may use the listing to find
buyers to show other houses to. Eventually, after there are no offers,
he'll recommend cutting the price.
Q. So either way the homeowner loses?! What can The Staging Prince do
to help this homeowner?
While we're not appraisers, we can advise homeowners on which repairs
to make and, if they like, also find contractors to make them and
coordinate their work. The cost is nearly always less than the discount a
buyer will demand to make those repairs – because the buyer would
need to finance the repairs on top of having just gotten a mortgage.
Q. What's the process that you use to make recommendations?
To assess the homeowner's needs, we would provide an initial home
evaluation for a modest fee and then give the homeowner a report that
includes our recommendations. We will review them with the homeowner and
chart a course of action to implement them according to the homeowner's
wishes and budget. The homeowner is under no obligation to implement our
recommendations, of course, and may want them purely for planning
purposes. Whatever they do, they should take advantage of the opportunity
to have their home looked at objectively by a professional staging
consultant.
Q. When should a seller contact The Staging Prince?
If homeowners call us early, while making the decision whether to sell
or not, they get several benefits. They can use our repair and upgrade
recommendations as part of their planning. They can take time to do the
repairs and upgrades with less disruption. And they can actually enjoy
the upgrades while living in their home. They may even like the
improvements so much that they postpone selling for a year or two. So
they should call us early if they can.
If they have no time to wait, that's ok. We can often complete repairs
and improvements in a week or two, sometimes in a few days. But it is
important that the house be properly prepared to sell before the first
open house, which brings the most traffic.
Q. Do seniors in Bergen and Rockland have special concerns?
Bergen County became suburban in the 50's after the War and in the
60's after the lower deck was added to the GW Bridge, while Rockland
County became suburban in the 60’s and 70’s, spurred by
completion of the TZ Bridge and the Palisades Parkway. Many Rockland
County residents moved their families from the city and have been here
– generally in the same house – since then. Having reached
the status of seniors, many longtime Bergen and Rockland residents, as
well as those throughout the Hudson Valley, are now selling their homes
and moving to warmer climates and to areas with lower property taxes. But
many seniors are not in a good situation. If they’ve lost
retirement money in the stock market and then have to sell their home at
a depressed price, they may struggle during retirement. While homes are
selling, it's a challenging environment in which buyers are choosy. The
Staging Prince can help downsizing seniors and other homeowners maximize
their equity when they sell.
Q. So The Staging Prince is a homeowner's advisor, not just a
professional home stager, right? Can you summarize what you do for a
Hudson Valley homeowner?
The Staging Prince takes the hassle out of preparing to move. We
advise homeowners on readying their homes for market, presenting them to
potential buyers through home staging, and maximizing their equity upon
sale. We can help homeowners sell their home quickly and at the best
possible price.
With our advice, chances are the seller will get more money for the
house and also will sell it much faster than if it is left as-is. To
learn how staging actually works, see Home Staging. 

|

The Staging Prince is committed to the success of its clients
in selling their homes. To arrange a professional home evaluation, give
us a call today: 845-875-4561 or 201-505-0005, or click here to email us.
|
Our Services: Preparing and
Presenting Your Home
Home Staging: Sell Your Home Faster
and for More Money
Walkways & Gardens: Enhance Your
Home's Spaciousness and Appeal
About Us: Our Unique Perspective Can
Help You Maximize Your Equity
Contact Us to Arrange a Professional
Home Evaluation



|
|
We are advisors to homeowners on preparing and presenting homes for sale in Bergen County, NJ, and Rockland County, NY, and the Hudson Valley. We stage homes to sell faster and for more money in New City and Pearl River, NY, River Vale and Woodcliff Lake, NJ and surrounding towns in Rockland County, New York and Bergen County, New Jersey.
|
|