Why Putting Home Staging Details in Your Listing Matters
If you’re selling your home and have come to realize that it does need home staging to stand strong in the market, have a clear discussion with your selling agent. This transparent communication needs to happen up front to avoid any surprises or disappointments.
This article is quick rundown on why you need to have the details of third party services in your listing so that you are fully aware of what that listing cost actually is.
Staging is an investment
To be clear, home staging is not cheap. Great, professional home staging that does more than traditional home staging is an investment. As such, you need to have clear strategy and expected return on that investment. Of course, you’ll need the scope of this investment in writing and numbers that are reflected in the listing. This kind of third party investment in a service is something that will be discussed with your real estate agent. This is something that is not included and is usually out of the homeowner’s pocket, depending on specifics of agent terms.
Allow your real estate agent to walk you through the terms of the listing to see what they include in their fees. Once you see what your own budget is and where you can give to home staging, you can further the terms of the listing agreement. How badly do they want to sell your home? How badly do you? Again, home staging is a real investment.
It is the seller’s choice
It boils down to the decision of the homeowner. If you wish to include home staging as a service within your listing and allow the home staging firm and your real estate agent to get down to the nitty gritty, that is your choice. Just be sure to stipulate this in the listing agreement. If you prefer to handle the home staging agreement on your own as the homeowner, it is your decision. Do so with caution, however, as real estate agents and home stagers do work closely and have a way of moving the process along swiftly in tandem. If you are new to the home staging and home selling world, you might delay processes that could be handled quickly.
Frank discussion with real estate agent
When the real estate agent is working with a third party professional home staging industry, ask to see an agreement in writing. This agreement should show you, the homeowner, what you are paying for. This means any extra fees, hidden costs, up front price, and exact specification of the rooms to be staged or excluded services. What you don’t want to happen is to agree to miscellaneous items and find out later the items end up being something like a complete demo of a wall for an open floor plan home stage. While you may want this, it should not be an undisclosed cost that later comes up.
It is perfectly okay to tell your real estate selling agent that you do not want to pay for certain things and to leave them off of the home staging list. It perfectly okay to suggest the rooms you do want to work with. Although, keep in mind that many experienced and professional home stagers will know exactly what needs to be staged and how in order to get the strongest return on your investment. These candid conversations should happen as soon as possible when working with your real estate agent.
Summary
Once you have had a conversation about the costs, fees, and parties responsible for payment, you can move forward. Get the details in writing and be sure to review the agreement. Once you do this and feel good about it, you can sit back and allow the professional home stager and real estate agent get to work on selling your home for maximum value. This is what home staging is all about - getting you a faster sell at strongest selling point. To get a quote from The Stagency, contact us today.