“I wouldn’t hesitate to use staging in a vacant house that has a challenging floor plan. Most buyers don’t have vision, and helping them see how furniture could fit and how it could look young & trendy with some accessories is well worth the money for those homes.”………..YES!!! That’s music to a stager’s ears!

Best of luck to you!

I do think that staging can help many homes, but the spaces that don’t show well in this house wouldn’t get much of an impact from staging. If I can just get them to drop their price from $242,900 to $237,900, I think it will make a big difference. We’re probably about 3 weeks away from them getting realistic. We were there a couple of weeks ago, then we had a rush of showings and a lowball offer. My interpretation of that activity is that all the people that saw the house and walked away combined with a person that thought it was worth much less would tell me I’m priced too high. They choose to interpret it differently, and feel that the increase in traffic will eventually result in the one person that ‘has taste’. She already told me that come April 1 she’ll be ready to drop the price and she agreed to a carpet allowance for the upstairs bedrooms. I’m whittling them down slowly.

I wouldn’t hesitate to use staging in a vacant house that has a challenging floor plan. Most buyers don’t have vision, and helping them see how furniture could fit and how it could look young & trendy with some accessories is well worth the money for those homes.

I have to ask…….have you considered having the house staged? It will cost less than a price reduction and can help buyers see how good the house could look, rather than allowing them to focus on the present decor and flaws. When a house is vacant, it’s downfalls are magnified.

Of course, they have already moved out of town and the house has been sitting vacant for a few months now. I followed your lead and reminded her that to her it is her ‘Home’…the place where she had her babies and started her family, but to buyers…it’s just a ‘House’. They are buying a product, and have no emotional attachment to it. She finally heard what I was saying. She still hasn’t agreed to drop the price, but finally stopped talking and started listening, and I think she got the point. I think it will take another 3 or 4 weeks, but eventually she’ll come around.

Thanks for the great tip on an effective way to present this concept to unrealistic sellers.

Preparing a home to be sold by removing all the items one accumulates in a life time can be hard but necessary. I like the way you thought of this very true and it is what we do to sell homes.

My grandpartents had a very tidy home but packed. When my grandfather died and grandmother remained there as long as she could. Finally she agreed to move with family.

The decluttering began she had every newspaper in trunks since the start of the town paper over 75 years worth. We donated it to the paper as an archieve and they were thrilled. She saved every button and zipper on every article of clothing in her life. Actually some of the old buttons from the 40′s were cool.

Family members one by one came and collected many different things and off she went to Florida with a car load of treasures to decorate her room.

It took several weeks of all day sorting to accomplish the declutter everynight people were pulling up and going thru a wall of trash at the curb looking for a treasure we might have thrown out was really kinda annoying.

The funniest one was the neighbor said she saw each of the grandchildren came and took some of the lilac bushes home. My grandfather had the pretiest yard lilacs, magnolia, azalia, hydrangia’s.

So it was hard for everyone when she left not just Nanna! Moving someone who is elderly is difficult because so many memories for so many especially if they have always lived there.