How staging a home can attract a buyer and bump up the sale price

As much as you love them, your great aunt’s old brown armoire and the gold leafy wallpaper you couldn’t live without could be  stumbling blocks for a potential home buyer.

If you want to sell your house faster and snag more money, according to real estate professionals and design experts, hire a stager to make it a showstopper.

Home stagers dress up a home on the market with the hope their creative touches will dazzle prospective buyers.

Staging has become a vital part of selling, said Francis Mangubat, a real estate agent with Advance Philly of Keller Williams in Center City Philadelphia, who handles condos and houses in the city’s gentrifying areas. Most of his clients are 25 to 40 years old.

“Recently, I took clients into an unstaged house in Brewerytown. They weren’t interested. Later, we went back when it was staged, and they made an offer,” Mangubat said.

The National Association of Realtors reported last year that 62 percent of 1,894 sellers’ agents who participated in a survey said they believe that staging a home decreases the amount of time it is on the market.

Source: philly.com