This Long Island Realtor brings up some great points about home staging that I’d like to share with you! Lori Cain
So to recap, you’ve made the decision to sell your home on Long Island and you’ve chosen an agent to represent you. The paperwork has been signed and she or he is eager to begin the process of getting your home sold. Now what’s next? Before the first marketing piece is designed and before the first agent from the MLS tours your home, you have to walk through it room by room with your REALTOR®.
I often suggest to my homeowners that we take photos of each room so they can look at their house through the eyes of a buyer. When you live with anything long enough, you tend not to see it anymore. Even if you fall in love with a piece when you buy it, over time it simply becomes part of the backdrop and it rarely engenders the same feeling it did when it first took your breath away.
Aside from pricing your home right for the market you find yourself in, the second singular reason homes sell faster at any time, but especially in a downturn, is creating an ambiance in a way that only stagers can do. Builders understood this years ago and hired decorators to design model homes to appeal to a broad range of consumers. It worked so well that they’ve continued the process for decades. The resale market took some time to play catch up, but once it did, designing homes to sell became a phenomenon all over the country. Long Island, always a little late to the real estate party, now offers staging services to all savvy sellers, helping homes to sell faster than the competition and for more money.
A recent homeowner of mine clearly understood the value of investing some dollars to make his home stand out in a stagnant market in Long Island’s Nassau County. In the worst economic downturn we’ve experienced in fifty years, his home (priced at the high end of the market), garnered eight offers in a few short weeks, putting him in the enviable position of choosing the most viable candidate, his property’s next residents. An investment of a few thousand dollars can bring a return of five to ten times as much, and possibly more importantly, an absence of stress as you attempt to move on to the next step in your life’s journey.
Even if you don’t see how worthwhile preparing your home for sale by decluttering and depersonalizing would be, let your broker do the job you hired him/her to do. If you went to a doctor to cure an ailment you wouldn’t likely prescribe your own course of treatment. Trust the person you chose to work with, it will pay you back in spades.
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About the author:
Geri Sonkin is a Licensed Broker Associate serving Long Island sellers and buyers for over 22 years. Areas of expertise include Nassau County, Suffolk County, Queens and Brooklyn. Specializing in resales, new construction, co-ops/condos, waterfront homes, estates, short sales and rentals. For more information: www.LongIslandsBestHomes.com For new construction: http://175Sherman.GreatCustomHome.com or http://2274Woodbine.GreatCustomHome.com 516-425-6098
All text and graphics contained herein Copyright © 2009 Geri Sonkin & its licensors. All rights reserved.
So to recap, you’ve made the decision to sell your home on Long Island and you’ve chosen an agent to represent you. The paperwork has been signed and she or he is eager to begin the process of getting your home sold. Now what’s next? Before the first marketing piece is designed and before the first agent from the MLS tours your home, you have to walk through it room by room with your REALTOR®. 
