When you’re staging a property for sale, one thing’s for sure: first impressions count. And you only get seven seconds to make one.
Yup, that’s right, seven seconds!
Research in psychology and neuroscience shows that our brains make rapid, subconscious evaluations. These are first impressions formed in just milliseconds, and once made, they are hard to shift.This means what someone sees, hears, and feels in those initial moments of seeing a property massively influences how they perceive its value, long before they’ve looked at square footage or EPC ratings.The way you present your property can directly impact how quickly it sells and the price it achieves. Here are three common ‘staging for sale’ mistakes I regularly see, and how you can avoid them.
1. Staging Without Your Buyer in MindThe mistake: Designing the space based on your own taste. Or worse… forgetting the end buyer altogether.
I speak regularly on the property networking circuit, my favourite topic being how great design will make developers more money, faster. In every presentation I deliver, this is the thing I come back to time and time again.
Client Avatars!
In a nutshell, a client avatar is a profile of your ideal buyer, tenant, or guest. Taking the time to define this clearly is essential if you want to design and present a property that resonates with your target audience, and ultimately helps you achieve a faster sale at the best possible price.
We’ve created a handy downloadable PDF all about creating your customer avatar here:
Why it’s costly: Buyers make emotional decisions. We know this from the scientific research already mentioned. If your styling doesn’t connect with the right type of buyer for your development (families, young professionals, downsizers, etc.), they’ll struggle to picture themselves living there. And that usually means fewer offers, lower offers, or longer time on the market.
And I know what you’re thinking, “There’s more than one buyer type for my property.” Yes, that may well be true, and it is sometimes necessary to create more than one avatar. The skill is to create a scheme that appeals to both.
That doesn’t mean grey, white, or magnolia walls. And it most definitely doesn’t mean grey, white, or magnolia walls with the odd feature wall colour. You’ll have to do better than that!
The fix: Design with your target buyer in mind. At WildKind Interiors, we use both buyer profiling alongside colour psychology to style homes with purpose, so buyers feel like they belong the moment they step through the door.
2. Ignoring Empty Rooms
The mistake: Leaving rooms empty to ‘save money’.
Why it’s costly: Empty rooms feel cold and lifeless. According to a recent Rightmove survey, 9/10 buyers struggle to visualise the scale and purpose of an empty room.
It’s difficult to understand why this figure is so high. When you’ve lived and breathed your development for months, sometimes years, you know the state it was in before, and what it looks like now is amazing compared to that. Maybe you’ve extended rooms or moved bathrooms, and the layout is much more appealing.
But others do not see the same as you do.
And, I hate to say this, but they don’t care about it in the same way that you do. They’ve not invested their own time, money, love, care, and attention into the development that you have. All they care about are their own wants and needs, and that, for them, is whether or not they can imagine themselves living there. Plain and simple.
People buy with emotion, and if you’re unable to create a beautifully presented property that invokes a positive emotional connection with your target buyer, you’ve lost them at the start. And if you lose them at the start, you’ll find it hard to hold their attention.
The fix: Every space should have a strong purpose and be well-proportioned with strategically placed furniture. If you stage some rooms and not all, you may well create buyer disappointment when viewers are moving from one room to the next.
3. Skimping on Photography After You’ve Staged
The mistake: You’ve invested a significant amount in staging your property for sale, and the agent uses disappointing photography to showcase it. You explore getting your own photos taken, but then you get a price from a photographer and baulk at it. You find someone cheaper, they’re less experienced, and as a result, spend less time on-site and editing your photos. C’mon, you’ve all done it!
Why it’s costly: Your online listing is your shop window. If the photos don’t stop the scroll, no one is booking a viewing. I can’t stress enough how important decent photography is. Those wide-angle lens photos, with all the colour bleached out of the room? Awful.
Remember the fact about first impressions. This is true for photography just as much as it’s true for viewings.
The fix: Always pair staging with professional photography. It’s a small extra investment that massively boosts your property’s visibility and value perception online. Not only that, but your photography is your marketing. You can use it time and again in the future to showcase your portfolio to potential clients and lenders.
Great photography, just like great staging, is an investment that will pay dividends.
The Good News? These Are Easy Fixes You Can Apply. When you get the basics right:
Design with your buyer in mind,
Stage every space with purpose, and
Present it all professionally
You give yourself the best possible chance against the competition. At WildKind Interiors, we don’t just make properties look good, we make them feel irresistible to the people most likely to buy or rent them. That’s what gets you the highest value results in the fastest possible timeframe.
For more advice or assistance with staging your properties, contact me using the details below.
Website:Email: louise@wildkindinteriors.co.ukInstagram: @wildkindinteriorsLinkedIn: Louise Wynne
