Staging vs Market Preparation in Luxury Real Estate
Last week I talked about staging and market preparation and came on pretty strongly against staging.
This week, I want to clarify and expand on those thoughts, keeping in mind that my purpose is to help drive you to create points of difference between you and other agents.
Market preparation expertise is key to accomplishing that. In last weeks’ video, it came across as never staging. Let me clarify: I am not saying never stage or that staging is bad. What I am saying is if you are going to use a stager, bring the stager in under your direct control.
As part of my market preparation process, I use a market preparation checklist. I believe this is the magic bullet in my listing presentation. I also know that if I am trying to differentiate between myself and my other competitive agents, my expertise and market preparation is a key component. Part of this expertise is knowing when a stager is needed and what that stager needs to accomplish.
There may be times when I need to bring in a stager to fix a room or two, or to do the whole house. Over time, my stager may get to know what I like to create to make the eyes of a buyer light up when they walk into a house. What we do not want, as I have often said, is for buyers to feel manipulated, played or for the house to not look real. Share on X
All this being said, it’s good to be a little controversial sometimes. It brings out the comments! What is interesting is that almost all the comments were positive. The one that did not was a person whom I hold a great deal of esteem and respect. I understand exactly where he is coming from. He works with a stager who totally understands him and how he works. Many of us may get to that point. This is much like the way I’ve trained my photographer to capture the cover shots of my listings. My USP however, is the fact that the photographer works under my direct control and supervision. I call it art direction.
In conclusion, I am not saying never stage. I am saying if you want to create points of difference between yourselves and the competition, that your market preparation expertise is a prime way of doing that. And as part of your market preparation expertise, you may decide that a stager needs to come in and do certain parts of the home or the whole home under your direct control and direction. Nobody can compete with your expertise with market preparation. It is my unique point of difference. And if you want a unique point of difference, here is one path.
Let me know what you think and I will clarify further if I need to.
Watch the above video to learn more.
Until next time, make it a great week.
