Property staging – What You Should Consider

In this technology-driven age, media is everywhere! Images, videos, virtual tours – the humble written description is often overlooked until much later in the buyer’s exploration of your property in West Cornwall! If you think about your own behaviour when looking online for something, your eyes do the buying, and your attention is immediately diverted to photos or images – and often you make a decision based on those images regardless of the written description!

With this in mind, it is imperative that your property is presented at its very best to all prospective purchasers – but should your house or flat be purposely “dressed” for photographs and for viewings?

What is “Dressing”?

Dressing or staging a property for photographs is something that has happened for years and is not reserved to estate agencies – look at any holiday accommodation marketing and you will see sun hats dropped on sun chairs, a casual glass of wine on the kitchen table next to a novel or perhaps a pair of wellies by a front door. The staging of these activities are purposeful and aimed to sell a lifestyle; to cause the viewer to imagine that is what life in that place would be like. Of course, in reality, you are hopefully not going to arrive to find someone else’s wellies at your door, so dressing should be kept to a realistic minimum.

Presentation over Staging

In the main, for both photographs and for viewings, your estate agent will advise you to clean your home and wherever possible to leave it as tidy as possible; respecting the fact that you live there of course and you can’t pack absolutely everything away! It is true that for photos, if you can minimise the number of things (especially small accessories) dotted around a room, the photos are clearer and more alluring to your audience. Clutter can translate in many people’s heads to a perceived lack of storage – which is obviously negative. If you can get the balance between “homely” and simply tidy, this will boost your property’s performance and this is something that your estate agent will be able to advise you on if you are in any doubt.

Stay Focused!

The key with producing your property’s marketing material for sale, is highlighting the many selling points of your property and its location in West Cornwall. These points should be detailed in high quality photography, backed up by detailed written descriptions. For this reason, over ‘dressing’ your property can actually be detrimental as it creates distraction from the real selling points and the facts. You do not want your inglenook fireplace being overlooked because someone has dropped a large vase of brightly coloured flowers in the foreground, so always keep dressing and staging to a minimum and be aware of the downsides that can occur!