Selling your home is a huge undertaking and can be overwhelming—especially in a fast-paced market like Nashville and Middle Tennessee. In the midst of packing, cleaning, and preparing to move, is it worth it to focus on staging your home as well? That’s a great question and one we often encounter! For this post, we partnered with our favorite local stager to explain the benefits of staging, how it works, and ways we make staging a valuable part of your home selling process.
What is Home Staging?
Home staging is the process of rearranging, updating, or otherwise organizing your space in a way that attracts and appeals to buyers. Similar to interior decorating, home staging takes into account more than just current design trends. Staging also considers local real estate trends to make your home appeal to a wider range of people.
In some cases, staging involves minor updates to paint color, light fixtures, and other cosmetic elements of your home such as cabinet hardware. These are suggestions that a professional stager may make prior to rearranging furniture and decorating your space.
There are two types of home staging: vacant and occupied. If you are selling a home that is currently vacant, the stager will bring in their own furniture and decor to prepare the space for photos and walkthroughs.
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If you remain living in your home while it is for sale, a stager will often use your current furniture and decor in their design. They may also recommend bringing in different items to help accent the space.
How Home Staging Works
Our goal is to make your real estate process as smooth and stress-free as possible, and one way we do that is by offering free staging consultations.
You may feel worried that getting your home “sale ready” will require a large investment of time and money. That is why we offer suggestions on the best ways to improve your home’s value within your budget, including home staging. We partner with Aspirational Space, a local staging company we love and trust, to bring you the best advice possible so you can decide if staging is worth the investment.
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At your consultation, the Aspirational Space team will do a walkthrough of your home and then send you and us a list of recommendations for staging your home. These recommendations include paint colors for different rooms (if applicable), items of furniture and decor to store, how best to clean your home for showings, any suggested updates, and a plan for rearranging furniture and bringing in decor.
If you choose to move forward with updating paint colors and other elements of your home, Aspirational Space also provides recommended local vendors and coordinates all of the work. That way you can focus on the details of your move without worrying about the details of listing your home.
Once we decide which elements of staging you want to include, the staging process is fairly simple!
- You and your family work with the stager to declutter your home. Staging works best when you’ve stored/removed about ? of your personal belongings.
- Updates/painting are scheduled and completed.
- The stager arranges a date to rearrange your furniture, decorate, and prepare your home for professional photos.
- You’ll be given tips and suggestions for how to keep your space clean and staged for showings and walkthroughs!
Staging typically involves all areas of the home, from the kitchen to your walk-in closet, and the stager will even make suggestions for the garage. The process is simple and straightforward, but it has a powerful impact on your home sale!
The Value of Home Staging in Nashville
Nashville and Middle Tennessee have a competitive real estate market. Staging your home for sale gives it even more of a competitive edge. Why? According to the National Association of Realtors, 82% of buyers’ agents said that a staged house made it easier for buyers to visualize the property as a future home. Sellers’ agents reported that staging could increase the offer amount 1% to 5% compared to similar unstaged homes. Some even noticed a decrease in time on the market for staged homes.
In Middle Tennessee, those numbers are even more significant. According to Aspirational Space, 98% of the homes they stage sell for 5% to 10% more money, receive multiple offers, and sell within 3 days on the market.
Staging doesn’t just make your home look nice to buyers. It helps you get your home sold faster and for more money. Some of the unseen benefits of staging include reducing or removing the issues that buyers often use for price negotiation. Those small fixes you make before listing go a long way in improving the value of your home.
Not only that, but many buyers’ agents are eager to show staged homes, increasing the number of showings and the chances of receiving multiple offers—driving up the final sale price of your home.
Home Staging Before and After
Here are just a few examples of homes that Aspirational Space staged for our clients. Before we took photos for the listing, the clients worked with the stager to repaint and rearrange furnishings to create more open, inviting spaces that would appeal to a wider audience.
For this dining room, the stager did the following:
- Removed wallpaper
- Repainted the walls a bright, neutral color
- Removed extra furnishings
- Added simple, modern place settings and greenery to enhance the room
In this bedroom staging, the stager worked with the homeowner to store away electronics that were visible in the room. They then also cleaned and removed excess clutter, and the stager brought in coordinated decor to liven up the space.
You can see the difference natural light makes as well! By opening the curtains for photos and walkthroughs, the room appears much brighter and welcoming after it is staged.
Finally, this was a vacant staging for a new construction home. Instead of leaving the bathroom as a blank slate, the stager brought in neutral accessories that enhanced the gorgeous woodwork and tile work, as well as the natural beauty of a clawfoot tub.
For more before and after examples, visit AspirationalSpace.com.
Work With a Professional Stager
The best way to get the staging expertise you need to sell your home is to connect with a local real estate agent. When you choose to list your home with ConnectHome, you not only get our expert advice and real estate knowledge, but you also get the benefit of a free consultation with a professional stager. Together, we are able to provide recommendations to get your home ready, listed, and sold faster than most unstaged homes on the market.
