Are you planning to get your home staged?
Home staging can help to sell your home quicker and for a bigger profit. Professional home stages have perfected the craft of making properties look inviting and beautiful.
Whenever you want to sell your property for a top dollar, it doesn’t hurt to contact a home stager and see what they can do for you, advises Bigham & Associates. That’s because home staging focuses on maximizing the appeal of your property.
Home stagers use various strategies to accomplish this task, including…
- Making the most of your available floor space through optimal rearrangement of your furniture and other components of your home
- Depersonalizing your home so that potential buyers would have an easier time imagining themselves living in your property
- Decluttering and cleaning the spaces in order to make the entire house look more attractive and inviting for the buyers
- Bringing in furniture and decor to add to existing items or to properly furnish an empty home so buyers connect emotionally when they walk in the door
As you can see, home staging covers a variety of useful methods that make it easier to sell your home for the best price. However, it’s essential to realize that there are limits to its power.
Home staging can’t address all the potential issues in your home, especially the severe kind of problems that are often dealbreakers for buyers. Now we’ll list the most common issues that you can’t fix with home staging services.
Roof Trouble
Serious roof issues are going to lower the price of your home. A roof is a crucial component of your home’s structure as it stands between you and the outside elements. Roof issues are a significant concern for buyers.
For instance, home staging has no role in the following scenarios:
Your roof is leaking. Roof leaks are a big problem. At first, these leaks can cause unsightly stains and discolored areas on your ceiling. As more time passes, more severe issues are likely to follow, including rot and mold.
Your roof has heavily aged. Depending on the type of roof you have, you may or may not be dealing with an aged roof. But it’s not only the type of roof that holds significance here. The climate conditions and quality of its installation predict its useful lifetime as well. Before selling your home, it’s better to replace essential parts of your roofing that might have worn away.
Your roof is threatened by adjacent trees. Do you have any trees growing very close to your roof? When the tree branches start rubbing against the roof components, the surfaces may seriously deteriorate over time. Gaps and cracks could form that will lead to leaks.
Problems with Your Foundation
Foundation issues are common dealbreakers in home sales. Homeowners have found that it’s challenging to sell a house with serious structural flaws like a failed foundation.
This is a classic case where home staging has no purpose. Foundation problems demand a fix because the entire structure rests on this vital part of your home. As a seller, you can decide between the following two strategies:
Repair & Sell. You can fix the foundation issues before starting to sell your home. This is a common strategy among sellers. When buyers learn that your home has structural flaws, they are more than likely to lose any enthusiasm over buying the property. But when you can show receipts and documents that prove you have repaired all the problems, many prospective buyers will still be interested in your home. The key here is to have proper proof and paperwork prepared so that people can have peace of mind.
Sell. When you are selling your home with foundation problems, you need to provide full disclosure. There is no point in downplaying the damage because a standard home inspection will uncover the foundation trouble in any case. The only way you can sell your home with structural flaws is by offering a generous discount. The discount has to be large enough to cover all the costs associated with the repairs. While you don’t have to deal with the repairs, this approach could make it hard to find a buyer even if you offer a discount.
Floor Damage
In many cases, professional home stagers can’t help you with damaged floors. Some common scenarios involve squeaks, creaks, and a strange bounce when you are walking on the floor. These are more serious problems that have to be dealt with in another way.
Please never ask your stager to hide known flaws or issues in your home with staging items. That is deceptive to the buyers, and could get the stager in hot water. Instead, the seller needs to disclose all known flaws and not conceal things that could be an issue for buyers when they go to their final walk-through and find surprises they did not know were in the house.
Water Damage
When you have any water damage in your home, you need to find the root cause. After you have clarified what has caused the water intrusion, it’s essential to fix the underlying issue.
It’s unethical to use home staging for a quick cover-up of serious water damage. Since this is often a dealbreaker, you should let the prospective buyers know that there is trouble related to water intruding your home.
Retain all the documents that show you have taken care of this vital issue. Then the buyers are assured they aren’t buying a problematic home.
In a Nutshell: Flaws You Cannot Hide By Staging Your Home
Home staging provides an excellent value for anyone looking to quickly sell their home for the best price. But there are numerous occasions where you need the help of other professionals to fix your property’s flaws.
Foundation issues, roof problems, water intrusion, and serious floor damages are some of the typical troubles that can’t be fixed with the help of a home stager. You need to hire a professional focusing strictly on these repairs instead.
Bigham & Associates manages rental properties in Austin, Texas and surrounding cities. At Bigham & Associates, we are committed to helping you realize your investment goals. We are here to use our experience and tools to boost your rental income so you can achieve your objectives.