Buyer Tip – Look Past the Staging

In more and more parts of the United States, the days of walking into a home for sale and seeing kids’ photos, favorite team pennants on the walls, and a kitty litter box in the bathroom are long gone.

They’ve been replaced by “staging,” in which most or all of the seller’s possessions are cleared out and replaced by specially chosen and designed furniture and accessories. The final effect should make the house look both inviting and thrilling — a place to imagine your life will be better than it’s ever been.

Do I encourage staging for sellers? Absolutely: I’ve seen it produce fast sales at full price or above in too many cases to doubt its effectiveness.

But if you’re a home buyer, you need to keep your wits about you. Remember that, as wonderful as homeownership might be, your life will still involve the need for things like space for normal-sized furniture, storage, and so forth.

When a it’s a beautifully done staging job, it makes everyone who sees it go, “Aww.” As a seller, I’d be delighted.

But if you’re the buyer, you have to ask yourself: Will this room fit a bed and desk for when the baby is a teenager? Maybe not. Using pint-sized furniture is a common way for stagers to make a small room look bigger. In fact, you might want to bring a tape measure and a list of measurements of your important pieces of furniture.

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