Selling an empty house is a bad idea

Selling an empty house, or one with lots of empty rooms is almost always a bad idea— especially if you want to get the highest selling price possible!

If you're a home stager or house fluffer you probably already know that empty rooms turn buyers off. The challenge is educating your potential clients and helping them realize that investing in your services can really pay off for them.

Let's say you have potential clients who fall into one of these categories:

• they've already moved to a new home and their old house is empty
• they bought a home to renovate and flip (so there's no one living there)
• they live in their home but there are key rooms that have no furniture
• builders trying to sell a new or just renovated vacant home

In any of these categories, you're likely to find an entirely empty home or one that has many rooms without furniture.

These houses need to be staged if the vendor is going to get the highest selling price possible.

It's relatively inexpensive to rent anything needed, and these finishing touches help ensure the vendor maximizes his return on investment (ROI) for all those costly renovations.

Home staging is about packaging a home to show off its best features and downplay the flaws. Home staging is about romancing the buyer, putting them in the mood to make an emotional connection with a house!

These are also great projects for you as a home stager (house stager, real estate stager or house fluffer).

Imagine having a virtual clean slate in which to create! I love these kinds of projects because I can really take creative control. I don't need to work with existing furnishings so I'm free to bring in what I think will best suit that particular property and the likely buyer profile.

These are also great projects because they come with higher home staging fees than a simple consultation.

To help you convince your prospective buyer that it is in their interest not to leave their rooms empty, I've prepared this list of the...

5 REASONS WHY IT'S A BAD IDEA TO LEAVE ROOMS EMPTY:

1. People don't buy houses, they buy homes.

2. It's hard to understand how large a room is when there's nothing in it as a reference point.

3. People can't visualize how furniture will fit in an empty space and if they're unsure, they don't buy.

4. When a room is empty prospective buyers focus on negative details instead of falling in love with the overall space. Instead of looking at the flow of one room to another, they get bogged down in questions like: Is the drywall smooth? Will those bumps in the carpet come out? How come the closet doesn't have a hanging bar yet? Why doesn't that molding fit perfectly? How come the light switch is in the middle of the wall?

5. When a house or even a few rooms are empty prospective buyers can get distracted from looking at the house. Instead of focusing on whether this is the home for them, they may be busy wondering: Is this a divorce? Have they left town? Are they selling because they have money problems? This train of thought will take them where the vendor, won't want them to go! They'll start thinking, "maybe I can put in a low ball offer since the seller might be desperate."

You can read more about this and other home staging topics at www.sixelements.com, my official home staging house fluffing website!