Here are the photos before and after. The before photos are taken when I pulled all the contents out of the closet and BEFORE I “moved” every personal property out of it, so you have to look beyond the boxes and clutters. It was not like this when mom was living there.
That staging is lovely! You certainly could have made improvements (for free) just by moving out the junk. But adding the nice furnishing/staging touches and and taking photos with good lighting help even more.
@artloversplus, the staging was worth every penny. And undoubtedly the painting and new appliances are also.
When we bought our current house two and a half years ago, the seller included a list of everything they had taken care of before putting it on the market. It totaled around $33K. You might consider doing that, so the prospective buyers know, for example, that the appliances are brand new, etc.
We’ve seen a few clues of what this house looked like before they did those things on the list – for example, hiding behind the carbon dioxide detector there is a piece of hideous wallpaper; because the upstairs doors have a one-inch gap at the bottom, we’re assuming there was awful carpeting throughout. When we saw the place, it was empty – no staging – but clean, newly painted, floors all re-done and looking gorgeous. It felt wonderful to move into a house that we knew was fresh.
I think the before/after pictures are a bit deceiving. In before pictures, rooms are cluttered with loose items scattered everywhere. Tidying them up would’ve made a big difference. In addition, the pictures are taken up close in before pictures giving cramped impression. After pictures are taken at a diatance with more light. I can’t really see what staging has done.
Yeah, these before/after pics aren’t really comparable, but they’re still fun to see!
I’ve been following the local market because a good friend had her house for sale. It’s a great house that everyone always admired because of the interesting decor. She is an artist and used color and textures in ways I would never have thought to have done, but she pulled it off beautifully. I can’t think of a person who didn’t love it. I was so sad to hear she repainted everything to a single neutral color. To me, part of what made her house show so well was the attention to detail and interesting use of color. I think it showed wonderfully as is. Well, the house still hasn’t sold in several months (our market is red-hot with many getting multiple offers within days), though it’s finally under contract. Who’s buying it? Artists! Funny, because I think they would have loved it even more in its original state, and she would have saved herself lots of trouble redoing everything.
^That’s sad. A friend of mine took pictures herself when she was listing her house with an agent. She followed the daylight all day taking pictures when the sun was at a right angle for a particular room. Either that or something else, she sold her house in three days.
Yes the before pics are a bit of deceiving as those were taken without any thoughts of “putting the house for sale”, rather , they were taken to record “what was in the closet” for my distance brothers to pick what they want out of the house.
To reach the “staging” state, other than those “hard costs” listed in the previous post. The hidden costs are plenty:
Sweat Equity: I spent days at a time to "ransack" the place to make sure every valuable items are accounted for and being removed. My brother spent $$$ to remove the paintings and shipped it to the East Coast.
The home was vacant for two plus month before the moving out and renovation could be completed
The home is a condo on the forth floor, mom had stuffed all the available storage to the hilt, and if I have to pack and move every content to a self storage, it would cost a fortune to move and store. The storage cost by itself would be over $500/mo and the disposition of the items will be a problem. We could not have a traditional on site estate sale, I do not think the tenants or HOA in the gated condo would like to have a barrage of strangers to walk through the condo and carry their bounties out. Besides, there were large pieces furniture that require professional movers, we could not allow buyers to move stuff and damage some thing in the common area. So I decided to sell the contents to a liquidator and have them be the mover of the contents. It took the liquidator three days to pack the "valuables" and moved out all the stuff. I received only $2000 from the liquidator for the contents, and believe me I had several estimates, where mom had spend 10s 1000s. She had some "collectibles" which is not antique but costs a lot of money to buy. I am sure the liquidator could sell the contents for over $10,000.
The renovation could not start until the home was emptied out, so if some one wants to be “staged” and live there for a long time, you’d better to find an interior decorator to the the job. Besides, the "staged home is only for exhibition, not practical for every day living, @FallGirl
Good real estate photos are always a bit dramatic. They tend to use a wide angle lens to capture the whole room and make it look bigger and they also tend to take the shot from a lower angle which pulls you into wherever the floor is going. Your photos are great! Let us know when the offers start rolling in.
We have set an offering deadline next Tuesday. But the early offer came pretty strong, about 100K over the list price. We intentionally priced the home about 200K below what it should be sold for or target price. I think we can reach that at the end. The real estate is red hot in this ares. Low priced homes that requires total renovation from roof to the floor are getting 30 bids in a week.
The open house attracted a lot of foot traffic, over 40 ppl came, not including the neighbors. Finger crossed.
Sorry. I didn’t realize it was personal pictures. I thought they were staging pros pictures.I didn’t mean to be critical. Congrats for getting offers already.
