When walking through owner-occupied homes, I am often asked why there is a necessity to depersonalize the house being sold. Home staging is all about highlighting the character and architecture of the home to help the buyer visualize the potential of the house. My answer to the question about depersonalizing a house comes in two parts. First, you are selling the physical building, not your experiences that led to making that building a home. Second, you want to present a simple canvas that can help buyers see how their personalities will fit into the house. Let’s discuss each point in a bit more detail.
Acknowledging that you are selling a physical building and not your family experiences is crucial to understanding the value of depersonalizing your home. Buyers view a house with the sole purpose of seeing what sets it apart from other houses in terms of architecture and character. The buyer comes in to see if it is updated with fresh paint and modern fixtures and if the flooring needs to be replaced. A buyer who is met with pictures of your family and friends along with multiple collections of items that have been kept for sentimental reasons will likely not be looking at the home’s value but rather at your own experiences. These items will cause distractions rather than lead a buyer to purchase the house for top dollar.
The best way to help buyers envision your home as the perfect fit for their own personalities is to present a clean space. Decluttering and depersonalizing the house gives your professional home stager an open space to perform their best work. The stager can now move furniture around for better traffic flow, add neutral pillows and blankets to create an inviting atmosphere, or hang welcoming artwork that appeals to a large demographic of buyers. Each of these steps, from decluttering to depersonalizing and finally staging, combine to create the best marketing tool available to sell your home at top dollar. Depersonalizing the space allows buyers to see a neutral, appealing space that they can visualize spending the rest of their lives in.
Why depersonalize your home before selling? This helps to keep buyers interested in the features that the house has to offer. Removing personal items presents a higher perceived value to the house and highlights the key elements of architecture for your buyers. Depersonalizing allows buyers to envision their own experiences in the house as opposed to behind distracted by the current owner’s memories. Depersonalizing your home will benefit the sale of the house and allow buyers to appreciate their potential living space.
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