San Diego Condos, Homes and Real Estate News

Here are some tips on staging your downtown San Diego condos to sell. It doesn't take long for a prospective buyer to form an opinion about your downtown San Diego condos. Here's how you can tilt the odds in your favor by making your condo appeal to the widest clientele possible. Recently, I noticed that sellers are taking home staging more seriously. This was particularly evident in downtown San Diego condos such as Legend, The Mark, and Discovery.

You don't have much time.

Prospective home buyers form an opinion about the home you're selling in 15 seconds, by one estimate. And the clock starts ticking at the curb -- even before the home buyers get in the house. So how do you tilt the playing field in your favor? Increasingly, it's by staging your home.

Generally speaking, staging means making your home as appealing as possible, as quickly as possible, to the broadest clientele you can.

In fact, Barb Schwarz of StagedHomes.com estimates that about one in four homes nationwide are now staged. So if you're not doing it, you may be at a disadvantage.

There are techniques to pulling this off -- some of them obvious, and some not so apparent. We polled the experts to get some of their top tips.

Staging as un-decorating

Staging takes some effort and some money -- but it works. According to a study of 2,772 properties sold in eight California cities in 1999 that was done by real-estate broker Joy Valentine, staged homes remained on the market less than half the time that unstaged homes did -- about 14 days versus 31 days. The average difference in sale price over list price for staged homes was 6.3%, versus 1.6% for unstaged homes. You stand to gain $9,000 on a $200,000 house, Dana and co-author Marcia Layton Turner point out in their book, "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Staging your Home to Sell." 

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