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June 11, 2008

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Bad For Sale ’snaps’ - June 2008 - Lighting is critical.

June 10, 2008

When you take a photgraph of your family, a beloved pet, or friends, you try to make sure there is a good light source. What’s the point in taking a photo in the dark?

Isn’t it just as important for buyers to clearly see the subject of your real estate marketing photographs? Property photos (we call them Staged Marketing Photos) of a property are the basis for much of the marketing campaign surrounding a property.

Here are some of this months examples - taken from a public website populated by real estate agents in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

bad mls photograph - bad lighting Bathroom photographs should only be used if it is a selling feature of the property. The lighting in this ’snap’ says it best ‘dreary’. If you have to include a bathroom photo, turn on all the lights; be sure to use high wattage light bulbs.

A large room, one of the main selling features of the home. How would a buyer know? Light sells. This ’snap’ says ‘another ho-hum’ room.

This one could be considered artistic. An attempt to add light and drama? The room has lost it’s impact with the eye catching light. Maybe the light comes with the house? Maybe the lamp is hte feature, and happens to come with an extra room?

The picture says it all…. Nothing to add to this one. Next house please!

Hard to know what we are looking at here. Open the windows, or try a different angle. A widescreen lens would work best here. “Maybe this house needs some repairs?” OR “Seems a little run down” could be some of the buyer’s thoughts on this one - “What are the sellers hiding?”.

Ahhh… setting the mood with lighting. Buyers want to see the updated bathroom, but the photographer went a little too far ‘mood setting’. Is that someone in the mirror? If you have an updated bathroom - show it off.

Property photographs are often a buyer’s first impression of a home. If the buyers cannot clearly see what is being sold, the seller is off to a bad start.Over 87% of home buyers search for properties online, not to mention the Realtors that search the MLS. Once they’ve entered their search criteria, price, location, etc., marketing photographs are how they decide which of those to visit.

As a result, how your property looks online is critical for attracting buyers and their agents—the more visits, the better chance of an offer. Your property needs to beat the competition.

Give us, the Open Door Staging team 15 minutes, and we will tell you how to make your listing look better than the compedition online to sell your property faster. (c) 2008 - Open Door Staging Inc.

South Florida’s Premier Home Staging Professional Services Company.

http://www.opendoorstaging.com

Have us present at your brokerage or organization.

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The secret truth about Home Staging Statistics - 0.4% - the truth is in the numbers.

June 9, 2008

This is a very different post about home staging statistics. These home staging statistics are irrefutable, and highlight the secret little truth about home staging and the real estate industry that no one seems ready to talk frankly about on the record.

The June 2008 edition of the Realtor Association Magazine is received by all Realtors in the United States, and contains a featured article “10 Ways to Make Your House More Salable“.

Surprisingly, this article, read by Realtors nationwide fails to make a single mention of home staging, preferring to focus on the obvious selling preparation tasks ranging from small repairs to better wattage bulbs. If this is the opinion of the real estate industry magazine, is it any wonder that home staging remains in the real estate shadows?

How could this happen? If we leave real estate industry magazines aside, how could the majority of Real Estate Agents still not know about home staging given the numerous HGTV shows on the home staging, the exhaustive marketing by the home staging community and weekly home staging presentations at real estate brokerages nationwide?

Though home staging has been an established practice within the real estate industry, we are surprised to find that less than 10% of South Florida Real Estate Agents that we meet with have ever mentioned the need to stage a home for a faster sale to their home sellers.

To investigate this statistic, we did a little ‘home staging statistics’ research. (Hardly scientific, but enlightening nonetheless.)

SHOW ME THE NUMBERS. How are Real Estate Agents communicating the home staging message to their sellers? Do they simply cut and paste or are they trusted advisors?

A Google internet search for the term “10 Ways to Make Your House More Salable” produced more than 550,000 results.
- Most were real estate agent websites aimed at home sellers nationwide.
We extended search to include the terms “10 Ways to Make Your House More Salable” *and* “home staging”,
- There are 22,000 web page results on real estate agents websites aimed at home sellers.
- Yet when you search for “home staging”, there are 2.3 Million web pages returned.

SO WHAT? WHAT DOES IT MATTER?

Sadly, interpreting the results;

Less than 0.4% of real estate agents believe in updating their website to communicate the importance of home staging to their sellers as one of their top tips on selling a home.
Most simply cut and paste web content they find elsewhere, without improving it to include their value added comments.
Yet, many multiples more claim that they talk about home staging to their clients - hardly convincing.

WHAT DOES THAT NUMBER MEAN TO ME, the real estate agent / the seller?

It means that there will be a lot of unhappy sellers. These sellers are getting less than the level of service they should be getting, and their homes are sitting on the market. There is no commission for an expired listing and unhappy sellers find new agents and are not a good referral source,
Conversely, it means there are a small percentage of real estate agents that are leveraging home staging, selling their listings and have happy sellers.
It means that sellers have had to educate themselves on the home selling process and are seeking out home staging aware real estate agents. Real estate agents need to mention home staging during their listing presentation or sellers will find an agent that does.

From the numbers above, it is clear that home staging has a long way to go before it is adopted by the real estate community at large.

Perhaps this explains why over 75% of our inbound home staging inquiries come from educated home sellers. These sellers have taken the preparation of their home and it’s market presentation upon themselves. This is an increasing trend, and we are happy to refer these sellers to ‘home staging aware’ real estate agents when they request a referral.