Selling Your Condo: The Truth About Staging
Combined with cleaning your condo, staging it for sale is probably the most important thing you can do to prepare your condo for sale. Staging is simply the process of making your condo appear as attractive as possible to as many potential buyers as possible.
Condos that are staged properly sell faster and for more money than those that are not. I am always baffled when I walk into a condo and discover that it has not been prepped for sale, or worse, is filthy and cluttered. Sometimes I can even see the vendor’s money flying out the windows…
Some of my own personal tips for staging your condo for sale:
- Understand your target market. Before you start making changes to your condo in preparation for sale, you should ask yourself a simple question, “Who is the most likely person to buy my condo?” You have to understand your target market and what they are looking for in a condo before you attempt to give it to them. It’s a very simple marketing concept that is lost on most agents when selling a condo.
- Listen to advice. If your agent is experienced in selling condos downtown, they should know what it will take to get your condo looking it’s best. Sometimes it can be done without professional help, sometimes a staging company is required. But the principle here is you need be able to see your condo through the eyes of potential buyers, and this requires an unbiased, 3rd party perspective.
- When in doubt, get rid of it. Removal is nine-tenths of staging. Expose as much counter top as possible, as much floor possible, as much storage space as possible, and if you can live without something for a few weeks, get rid of it before listing your condo!
- Light it up. Proper lighting is crucial to a well-staged condo. It’s very difficult to have too much lighting. Have at least 2 sources of lighting in every room, and try to keep the lights on for when people enter your condo.
- The 5 second rule. Your goal should be to capture buyers’ attention and make them love your condo within the first 5 seconds of them entering it. First impressions are the only thing buyers remember when viewing 10-20 condos.
If you are thinking of selling your condo and would like to hire me, drop me a line or give me a call today.
