Why Staging Matters
Where do buyers see your home first? ONLINE—yes! Ninety-eight percent of buyers start their journey online to purchase a home, and in the hot markets of 2020, 2021, and 2022, we’ve seen the numbers skyrocket of buyers purchasing homes sight unseen. In fact, in 2020 Paige Schulte was recognized by the Wall Street Journal for her use of virtual tours for buyers during the height of the Coronavirus pandemic.
It’s no secret that our firm is obsessed with marketing. So obsessed that we pay for every element that makes your home more attractive to buyers. This list includes drone footage, 3D tours, professional photos, lifestyles videos, social media reels, YouTube shorts and videos, and full websites so all the media is located in one place for buyers to look through.
We look at every angle to see how it will show on screen, because that’s where we need to sell the buyer first. The first impression of your home will likely be on a small iPhone screen, and we all know that first impressions matter.
That’s why we include staging in every single listing–at no cost to you–and why we think it’s so beneficial in amplifying your listing.
We will stage your home, even if you live in it, and even if our favorite designers picked out all your current furniture. We help you edit, pack, purge, and play up the gorgeous style you already have.
At one of our houses in east Gig Harbor we had about 80 showings and received multiple offers. We went through the house from top to bottom with contractors and did everything from working on the floors to windows to plumbing. We had everything looked at before we listed, and then we also brought in our designer and our stagers to make sure that everything looked perfect in every corner from every angle.
We have a robust team of stagers, and that way we can bring in a stager that fits for your style home. In Gig Harbor we don’t have a ton of modern homes, so it was important that we had a team of stagers that really knew how to capture the essence of this particular home. Not every stager can do modern, and so being able to capture exactly how this home can communicate to the buyer that’s perfect for this house is really important.
We have four stagers that are on our team so that we always have a stager available on your timeframe, not ours, and who has enough of a breadth of inventory to be modern, traditional, farmhouse—any type of style that fits you. We do occupied staging and vacant staging, and then we also have stagers that will take anything that you don’t want to move with you and they will consign it for you to make your life easier. So we are full service, and regardless of the price of your home, you get the same incredible value with our team. We are here to make sure that we can amplify all of the particular elements of your house to make it look even better, and we care deeply about the product we put out into the world.
When you’re looking to list your home, we invite you to check out all that we offer. From an army of contractors to the most incredible listing and marketing team and a family of agents who obsess over perfect pricing, we promise to maximize your return on your investment.
One careful distinction: There’s a time and place for virtual staging, and most agents who use it are cheap. In the 250+ homes we’ve sold, we’ve used it 3 times, all for very specific reasons when traditional staging wasn’t an option. (Remember when COVID rules said no to stagers? That called for some creative alternatives.) If an agent offers to virtually stage your vacant listing, politely decline—it’s a cheap way to get out of investing in your home. The experience from online to in person is a bummer and leaves the buyer disappointed. We know; we’ve been on tour with them when they can no longer see the vision of those big empty spaces.
THOUGHTS FROM THE REST OF THE TEAM
Michelle Charlton
Staging is important because, on average, homes that are professionally staged sell for 15% more than homes that are not.
Falynn Auston
We stage every single one of our homes. It’s so important for us because it does depersonalize the home, allowing the buyers to come in and envision themselves in the home. But not only that, the trend with staging is shorter days on market. And we just like to present the best home for all of our buyers.
To learn more about what it’s like to work with us, visit us at AskPaigeSchulte.com or give us a call.
If you want to get a head start on prepping your home for market, download our free 30-day step-by-step guide at AskPaigeSchulte.com/sell.