Why Home Staging Is Needed in Colorado, No Matter The Listing Price

If you’re like many real estate investors in the Denver area, you know the value of staging a home to get a larger ROI on your property.

In today’s Colorado market - this strategy has become a vital part of the selling process. 
Proper home staging turns a ho-hum, personal-to-you space into something that potential home buyers can imagine themselves living in. This is the key to selling a home. Painting the future for home buyers.

​Intrigued? Good. Here’s what you need to know about home staging before putting your next investment property on the market.

Principles of Home Staging

​At Tower Staging & Design, we get questions about this topic a lot. First, it may be helpful for us to explain what home staging is not. 

It’s not home decorating in the traditional sense. While it’s true that we replace a home owner’s furniture with “new” furniture and we do redecorate, it’s not just any furniture and it’s not just any redecorating job. 

A staged home is filled with furniture that fits the target market. In other words, every buyer is different, they may be interested in one of the following styles of homes:

• Traditional
• Modern
• Rustic
• Transitional

Or, they may need the help of a professional home stager to decide.

Potentially, buyers of this imaginary Colorado home can picture themselves on a frosty winter night sitting in front of the fire, cuddled up with their own afghan around their shoulders, with a steaming mug of coffee on the end table. Life is better in this home, and these buyers are better, because they live in it.

That’s really the principle behind home staging that we follow at Tower Staging & Design. Once our crew finishes a home staging, that home becomes aspirational. A better life awaits the buyer of this home.

Is Home Staging Worth the Expense?

​In a word, yes. Because the home looks like the buyer, they feel more inclined to buy it, often at a higher price than what the homeowner is asking for.

This isn’t just our opinion about the power of staging. According to a 2017 survey done by the National Association of Realtors, working real estate professionals found that a home’s price could increase by up to 15% when the home is staged.

However, a higher selling price isn’t the only thing that excites homeowners. We've seen difficult-to-sell homes that have been on the market, sometimes for months, get sold pretty quickly. 

According to at least 39% of real estate professionals (polled in the same survey), homes often sell within just a couple of days or weeks after they’ve been staged, even the ones that have been on the market for a while. 

What About the Homeowners’ Belongings?

​Clutter is the death of home sales. For homeowners who aren’t moving out of their homes while it’s on the market, it’s important to get rid of all of the clutter and to give the home a deep cleaning. It’s also imperative that they air the home out by opening the windows. Candles and other types of air freshening devices should be avoided: Potential homebuyers could have allergies to these items.

Next, it’s important to make a home look open and bright. Investing in good lighting is helpful, and it might even be necessary to do some remodeling. For this step, some homeowners who work with us rely on our advice for the remodeling work. Regardless, updating the home as much as possible makes it infinitely more attractive to potential buyers. 

In addition to making the home’s interior look inviting, we also remind homeowners and investors to pay attention to the home’s exterior, its curb appeal. A beautiful front yard is the first thing that most buyers will see when they visit the home in person.

Finally, we do recommend, if the budget allows, that homeowners move out of the space (or that it remain empty if no one lives there). Investing in a thorough home staging usually pays for these expenses, making it worth it in the end.

How Much Will a Home Staging Cost?

​Like most investments like this, it really does depend. That’s why we give homeowners and real estate investors a quote: We offer a couple of home staging packages at different price points.

Additionally, it’s important to mention that the price to stage a small bungalow will be different than the price for staging a large home in the hills of a city like Telluride. However, regardless of the price, we generally start any staging project by dealing with the most important rooms first, though all homes get a thorough treatment by the time we’re done with a project.

If you're curious how much your property would cost to have it professional staged, fill out our pricing request form and we'll contact you with a price.