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Preparing Homes For Sale in Rockland and Bergen



Free monthly newsletter with advice for selling homeowners.





We can help you prepare your home for sale. To sell your house in weeks not months, start with an evaluation by a professional home stager.

Contact us for an in-home evaluation now.

Staging Services to Help You Sell Quickly

Home Staging Works!

How does a professional stager help a home seller before listing?

If you are thinking about putting your Rockland or Bergen home on the market, the house should be prepared to appeal to buyers before you list it. We can tell you just what preparation to do to save money, sell quickly, and maximize your equity upon sale. We will discuss with you what will work for you, and we will work within your budget. We help our clients sell their homes quickly and at the best possible price.

If you want to sell your house quickly. . .

1. Don’t take photos until your home has been staged.

More buyers than ever 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. They simply weed out houses that don't look great in on-line photos. As a result, unstaged houses just don't get the same traffic. Because unstaged houses don’t show as well in person either, prospective buyers that do visit are less likely to make offers. So unstaged houses spend longer on the market.

How much longer? According to a 2009 survey of 1000 homes sold between November 2008 and May 2009 by Staged Homes, unstaged houses spent 182 days on the market on average vs 37 days for houses that had been professionally staged.

2. Don’t hold an open house until your home is properly prepared to sell.

You are competing for buyers against the top 10% of houses in your area, so to sell your house fast, you need to make sure that it is priced right and that it shows as well as the top 10%. The key to showing well is staging by a professional home stager. Professional staging will make your house look great in photos on the Internet and entice buyers to want to move in when they visit.

3. Start your selling process not by interviewing real estate agents, but with an evaluation by a professional home staging advisor.

Your house should be prepared for sale and photographed before it is put on the market. As home stagers frequently say, you get only one chance to make a first impression.




Already on the market? Home staging costs less than a price drop -- and may be more effective

If your home is already on the market, priced competitively but not drawing offers, it is in your interest to call us with all deliberate speed. We will identify barriers to sale and recommend changes to overcome them. A house that languishes unsold costs you mortgage interest, property taxes and utility expense. A house that remains unsold is perceived by potential buyers as being worth less and less as time passes. It doesn’t have to stay that way. As you have seen in the cable tv shows, your house can be made to look exciting, desirable and appealing to potential buyers.

Don't rely on your agent to solve this problem. Most agents can't or won't do it. Their responsibility is marketing, not presentation. Your agent may not want to tell you about presentation problems because she is afraid of hurting your feelings and losing the listing and her commission. Stagers are in a totally different position. We have no commission to lose. We work for you, get paid for the time we spend, and will do only what you want us to. We want to help you sell your house. And staging works.




To sell your house in weeks not months, start with a home evaluation

A staging evaluation is not expensive. And we are not critics. Our goal is the same as yours: to get your house sold quickly. Few buyers today want to do any work in the house they buy. They want it move-in ready. If your house needs work, buyers will nearly always look elsewhere unless you sharply cut the price. It takes just 2 - 3 hours to find out what you will need to do to gain a competitive advantage over other houses in your area.

The Staging Prince is a full-service staging firm. Following the home evaluation, we offer these services to homeowners:

  • Locate reliable contractors and get bids;
  • Help with packing and decluttering, arrange for off-site storage, even manage a garage sale or arrange for charitable gifts;
  • Professionally stage your home so that a potential buyer can see it as his or her new dream house;
  • Photograph your staged home so it appeals to buyers searching on the web.
  • Recommend a savvy listing agent who is good at marketing houses in today's competitive market;

We can take the hassle out of preparing to move, from start to finish.

How will you benefit from an evaluation?

There are 7 steps to preparing a house for sale. The evaluation will tell you what you need to do to get top dollar for your house in today’s competitive Rockland County and Bergen County markets without laying out money for updates that won't make a difference. Updates that do make a difference need not be expensive, and a home stager will advise you which ones will get you the most bang for your buck when you sell. After evaluating your home's readiness for market, we can help you prepare it and make it attractive to your target buyer and then take photos of your staged home for on-line marketing. Proper preparation will give you a huge advantage over your competition. Just what you need to sell your home fast.

The 7 steps to preparing your home for sale:

  1. Home evaluation by a professional home stager
  2. Repair
  3. Update
  4. Declutter
  5. Clean
  6. Stage
  7. Photograph

What is the home staging step?

As described on our home staging web page, staging is Step 6 in the 7-step process of preparing and presenting your home for sale that starts with your in-home evaluation by a home stager: Staging makes a home both more competitive and more appealing to prospective buyers so it sells faster and often for more money.

Some Rockland and Bergen County real estate agents understand the benefits of staging and enthusiastically recommend the services of a professional home stager. Whether yours does or not, you should insist that your house be evaluated and staged by a professional stager and photographed only after staging. If your agent tells you your home is "well-enough staged" or "you can do it yourself", she is probably referring to Step 4 (decluttering) rather than staging. To get an offer, it is important to make the house look appealing not to the seller but to the buyer. This requires objectivity and is the goal of a home stager.

The cost of a home evaluation is modest, and the evaluation is essential for a fast sale. You CAN sell your home fast. Don’t let your house sit on the market waiting for a price cut.

Great photos are important

Nearly all buyers (90% of them) start their search for houses on the web. So your home has to show really well in on-line photos. If your home doesn’t show well in photos on the web, buyers will never visit. This is a fact of life in a buyer’s market -- in which there are a multitude of sellers vying for the attention of a small pool of buyers. And if buyers don’t visit your house, you’ve lost any chance of getting an offer from them. Since you want a potential buyer to see how attractive your house is, make sure your on-line photos are top-notch. Here’s how:

  1. Prepare your home and have it staged by a professional home stager.
  2. Don’t take photos until your home has been professionally staged, to avoid being weeded out when viewed on the web.
  3. Make sure your photos are ultra-wide angle, sharp and well-lit.
  4. Post your photos everywhere buyers will see them -- or hire an Internet-savvy agent to do it.

If you hire an agent, review the quality of her photos for other listed houses and ask how she plans to use the Internet to market your home. See Select a Savvy Agent.