Back in the bull market days of 2005-2006 the notion of needing to “stage” your home for a faster sale was nearly laughable. But home sales in the Westchester market are not what they once were. As most seller’s are painfully aware – this is not 2006. There is ample inventory on the market, prices are down and buyers are increasingly picky. Things once deemed insignificant now become major stumbling blocks to a successful sale.
Increasingly, listing agents, myself included, are encouraging sellers to stage their homes prior to putting them on the market. That includes, but is not limited to painting, pointing up and arranging furniture in a way that maximizes the potential of the space and creates a neutral atmosphere. We ask that seller’s depersonalize the space so that buyers can “mentally move in.”
Although I am not one to spend a homeowners money needlessly, there are times when I feel staging is essential. Staging is most beneficial in the following cases:
An Empty Home:
When the sellers have moved out – they tend to leave an empty shell of a house that used to be a home. That house can tend to lack personality and be all too forgettable to a prospective buyer. Right now there is an excess of inventory that is completely unfurnished and after a while they can all start to look the same to buyers. If a house is in danger of becoming that forgettable – it needs staging in order to stand out in the eyes of buyers.
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It is very interesting that just as consumers are demanding ever more hyper-local content and knowledge from agents that we are also seeing another distinct trend in the opposite direction: the tendency to list and sell to larger and larger geographic areas.
The contrast between old-school hyper-local agents and the newer nomad agnet was driven home to me while I was working with two listing agents who still work exclusively in small niche markets. I was at a closing with one of them and she implied that since I had the entire city of White Plains to cover, why didn’t I simply refer out the client who finally bought in Scarsdale?
Can a real estate agent be too local?
I knew that the attitude about staying hyper-local is alive and well though it appears to be a staple of old-school real estate. Still, I was more than a tad surprised. Scarsdale is not the moon. It is the town directly adjacent to the west side of White Plains and about a whopping six miles from my front door to the center of the village. If we followed this line of thinking to its most extreme would mean that a buyer potentially moving from New York City to Westchester NY would have to have as many as five or six agents to explore all the possibilities open to them that were within about 30 minute commute. For the consumer this seems most unwieldy if not highly impractical. Could you imagine the mountain of agents all crawling over each other for the buyer’s attention? What a mess. Not to mention a monster of coordination.
From the agent’s perspective, there could also be a danger to being too local. What if something happens to that small segment of the market you represent? If your geography/price range are razor thin – you are setting yourself up for trouble. This was clearly seen this year when agents who specialized in small high-end markets got creamed because jumbo loan issues bit them in the backside. Another listing agent I encountered was used to selling about 10 major properties a year – but this year had only managed a single sale.
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