 |
| An empty home is easier to keep clean. Aptartment Therapy |
The Advantages of Unoccupied Property
- No one is messing up the place on a daily basis. There's no cooking, sleeping, showering, coming and going, or hanging out. The house stays clean, except for whatever dirt a house tour creates, and some dust, fingerprints, or cobwebs.
- Scheduling a showing is easy. There's no last minute checklist to go over, no pets to ferry around the neighborhood in the family car, no fluffing pillows, polishing faucets, and stashing the toiletries.
- Staging can be done with an eye towards maximizing aesthetics. Since the model home look isn't the way most people actually live, you're free to concentrate on pretty first and practical second. Within reason.
The Disadvantages of Unoccupied Property
- You'll need to find ways to furnish the home and still stay within budget. Renting furniture can get expensive, and buying furniture is impractical as well.
- Break-ins and vandalism can be problems.
- The home can have a sterile and empty feeling, an extra challenge to your staging skills.
- You're never sure if the property is show-ready. The last home tour may have left pillows scrunched, toilet seats up, dirty footprints through the living room, rugs wrinkled, glass doors smeared with hand prints, bulbs burned out, and cabinet doors open wide. You can't expect a realtor to be your tidy-up person.
- Landscaping can get messy if you don't have a routine system -- either yourself or a lawn service -- to take care of the home's exterior.
- Utilities need to be kept up, which adds to the ongoing costs of maintaining the property until it sells. Electricity is a must for showing a home. Running water and some degree of heating and cooling are usually a necessity as well.
 |
| Does your front door look inviting? Does it look like someone lives there, even if no one does? |
Flipping a home isn't always profitable. When we first considered buying the property, we had to determine what we could do and what we would pay others to do. Then, we did our homework to calculate if our time and efforts would be well spent. Like any business, there are risks, and your job is to minimize them.
I hope these links to previous posts can help you when you are flipping a house. For more advice on putting a home on the market, download my eBook, DIY Home Staging Tips to Sell Your Home Fast and For Top Dollar. You'll be able to minimize those risks.
4 comments:
Great info here. I'm a Home Stager and see this all the time! When I first started out, I was surprised to find that a house with furniture 'shows' better than an empty house! We use blow up mattresses/beds and all kinds of tricks to make it look lived in (but not TOO lived in!)
Thanks for this!
Carol-Anne, thanks for your comment. Care to share your method for elevating a blow-up mattress? I've used cardboard boxes and also milk crates. Of course, the bedding covers these.
But I always worry that a rambunctious child will take a flying leap onto it, collapsing it!
I like to avoid lugging in sheets of plywood if I can. What do you use to raise and stabilize?
I had a friend who was trying to sell a vacant home in Palm Springs about five years ago. Lucky for her, she had a wealthy friend who loaned her a few key pieces of high-end "mid-century modern" furniture.
Then she bought a few things--rugs, vases, lamps, and artwork--from Ikea. I think she said she spent about $1000.00 in all.
That sounded like a lot to me. But, what do you think? Is that a typical budget for staging a vacant home?
I'd like to hear back from Pink Overall and Carol-Anne, too, if possible. THANKS!
Meercat, your friend was actually under budget if her home sold for the median price in Palm Springs five years ago ($350,000. I checked on Trulia.com).
The statistic I hear most often is that 1 to 3% of the asking price is recommended for professional home staging. That would include the stager's fee.
So, $1,000 was not out of line, especially since the house was vacant. She could have spent between $3,500 and $10,500!
If this sounds outrageous, remember that the costs for staging almost always return themselves at the sale. ROI estimates range from over 550% (for decluttering) to about 100% (for bath remnodels).
Here is a link that breaks down these ROI categories.
http://blog.homegain.com/home-improvement/on-the-home-sellers-radar-home-staging/
Since staged properties sell faster than unstaged ones, you can also calculate that staging will save you from lowering your price after a few months on the market, which is not only typical, but expected.
Post a Comment