What Kind Of Home Seller Are You?

After years of being in the home staging business (since 2005) and meeting with countless of homeowners, we can easily identify what types of home-sellers/clients we work with.  Usually, the buyers fall into three groups, however some are intermixed between groups while others who travel from one group to another.

As home stagers, we work hard to educate our clients and help them see and understand that we are their partners. We want them to get the most ROI of the sell of their homes. The key to communicating this point effectively is to know what kind of home-sellers we are dealing with. We understand that not everyone sells a house for happy reasons, and we strive to meet our clients where they are and to help them become more informed and savvy home-sellers.

Here are the three different main groups of home sellers: 

• Motivated Home-Sellers: Motivated home-sellers are proactive and see the big picture when it comes to selling their homes. They first research and then hire proven professionals, such as home stagers and realtors, and follow through on the advice that these professionals offer them. This group of home-sellers are aware that the process of selling their homes is not about them anymore. They understand how they had arranged their furniture, how they lived in their homes, or even how they identified their spaces through wall-colors  and etcetera are not relevant anymore. Motivated home-sellers are detached from their homes and are ready to move on. Again, this is because they see the big picture. They fully understand why their homes have to be transformed into products ready for the market, and this is the important factor. Their hard work and their investment in home staging, whether it is just a pre-listing consultation or a full staging, pays off handsomely. It is always a pleasure for us to work with this group of sellers, since there is a mutual respect and trust.
• Attached Home-Sellers: Unlike Motivated Home-Sellers, and as the name suggests, this group of home-sellers are still attached to their homes and are not ready to let go. They are convinced that the new buyers would want the same the style, furniture arrangements, wall-colors, or space definition as how they had it. By not being able to let go and by saying “NO” to the professionals that they have hired, they make it hard to transform their homes into show-ready complete products for the market. When one makes the sell of their homes all about themselves vs. the buyers, they make the common mistake that is typical for this group of buyers. They create challenges and add obstacles to the process of preparing their homes when it doesn’t have to be difficult. Even though these sellers also work hard like the Motivated Home-Sellers, their energy and use of time doesn’t create as much results. The smaller payoff is due to the fact that they worked against the advice of professionals that they hired.
• Uninformed Home-Sellers: This group of people are passive and hold outdated views on how to sell their homes, which eventually sabotages the outcome of their home-sell.  By selling the homes as they are, without preparing them for the market and without staging, is where Uniformed Home-Sellers hurt their prospects. Time and time again, we get calls from agents or home-sellers themselves saying that their homes/listings have been on the market for extended periods of time without selling. Sometimes we get this type of call after the initial listing prices have been reduced once or twice. It’s always painful for us, as home stagers, to go into homes that have been sitting standstill on the market. Why? Because as professionals, we can see the potential and envision what the home would have looked like if we were called in before the house got on the market. When unprepared homes hit the market, they actually help sell the staged and prepared competition.

Are you planning to sell your home? If yes, what kind of home-seller would you be? Knowing that homes are one of the biggest investments, I hope you will be a motivated home-seller. Even a simple and inexpensive home staging pre-listing consultation can make a huge difference and pay big dividends.

Before putting your house on the market and before making any changes on your own, do your research and bring in the proven professionals. Let them guide and assist you to prepare your home for the market. Your investment and hard work will pay off in any market or economy. Let the years of experiences of your hired professionals work for your benefit.

Be a motivated home-seller, you will get the best results and outcome when you are selling your home. Isn’t this what every home seller’s goal should be?