Home Staging is an anglo-saxon concept used to define a bunch of actions leading toward preparing the house for selling. This technique combines a set of strategies, that permit highlight the house and give it a more attractive aspect to the potential buyers.

In the current market situation, with the huge stock of existing houses, the Real Estate professionals are forced to use this kind of techniques, with the purpose of publishing houses as more eye-catching as possible, and in this way differentiate them from the rest of existing properties.

All this work, must be previously done making both the photo shoot and video recording, blueprints, etc; as I have already said, it should present the house in its maximum splendour and in the way that is should be more attractive for the interested people.

According to our collaborator and interior designer Victor P. Lopez de no.9 estudio: “what we really look for is a house as less personalized as possible in a commercial sense, but not for that, it loses the quality of life, welfare and other elements, although its goal is renting or selling the house in the best timing and at best price”.

Victor uses the term of “Humanism 3.0”, referring to the vision of transmitting his projects always are based on people and their needs, as a core and origin of everything; looking that in the end their lifestyle are reflected in the house and this generates the perfect marriage between their needs and the benefits that it gives to their new home.

According to Victor, in a Home Staging project, we should achieve 4 main points:

  • The Redesign Project must be based on the needs of the potential public, showing their “ideal space”, and getting their attention thanks to that value addition.

 

  • Searching for neutral spaces that the public likes, deleting those decorative elements that personalize the rooms, because they could limit the interested people.

 

  • Taking advantage of the pre-existing elements, with the objective of optimizing the necessary investment and to avoid moving any furniture to other rooms or even different places.

 

  • Having in mind that what we are selling is the house and not the furniture, because of that using the minimum number of decorative elements and not stealing protagonism in the spaces on itself.

 

Below, it is shown an example of a project developed by no.9 estudio for VIVEenGRANADA, and thanks to which, a house that apparently did not see too much attractive, we ended up selling it in almost a week, at the first visit.

 

 

There are other techniques like staging or virtual decoration of the house, through which is possible to use pictures of different rooms of the house, changing designed elements; or through virtual presentations either for changing the space and their use, or for properties that are empty. In this way, we help the potential buyers to imagine how they could look if they were furnished.

This is especially useful in new homes or in those that have never been inhabited and so they are empty, because the buyer finds it difficult to see himself connected with the house or matching his lifestyle in those rooms.

Hereunder we show another work developed, in which a buyer wanted to transform this property into an office, and he found it difficult to imagine a different use of that space, because it was an old house and very personalized.

 

 

What it is important, with the purpose that the buyers do not feel manipulated, that is showing the two versions of the pictures, meaning, on the one hand the different rooms just like they have been photographed originally; and on the other, the same spaces once they have been staged, for not confusing or creating a misunderstanding, showing the maximum transparency to the clients.

Also, and as we have done with the examples used for this article, using the watermark and/or the written clarification of “before and after”, “montage”, “visualization”, etc. So, the clients see the reality of the property in every moment, and also the potential and possibilities the design can have, not limiting their options.

Also there are other techniques like the use of 3D pictures and the Virtual Reality as complementary resources that helps to show the house virtually, and saves a lot of clients time. But I am not going to detail them here, because they are important enough and they will be the material for another article.

 

Finally, as we have seen along this work, the use of Home Staging does not have to be an expensive technique, not only limiting its use in a professional field. Each property has its own characteristics and potential, and the point is giving them a “personality”, in which people can reflect their desires and dreams, making worth that concept of “Humanism 3.0”, to which our collaborator Victor Lopez made a reference.

 

WRITTEN IN COLABORATION WITH: Victor P. López Bautista de no.9 estudio