What house sellers must do to get home buyers to Fall in Love with the Home
Buying a house is an emotional decision and with good reason. A home is intimate, a space of your own where you eat, sleep, and spend time every day and night. It’s where memories are made and where new buyers envision their families enjoying life.
That means that one of the more surefire ways to sell a home quickly and for top dollar is to capitalize on that emotion. Often, house sellers who can get buyers to fall in love with their property find themselves in a great position. Once buyers are in love with a house, they are typically more willing to do what it takes to get it.
So how do house sellers get buyers to fall in love with your home? Here are a few tricks of the trade:
Go beyond staging
Professional home stagers have the job of putting a home’s best foot forward. Furniture is arranged to maximize space. Lighting is tweaked to make rooms seem brighter or cozier, and décor is manipulated to highlight specific features.
But for house sellers to get buyers to fall in love, they might want to take it a step further and set scenes rather than just a stage. Let buyers envision themselves in the home. That means removing personalization and even turning the focus away from things (such as furniture) that aren’t staying. You can set scenes with a seasonal dining room, a patio or pool area set up for a party or game or movie night in the family room. Light a fire in the fireplace, pop some popcorn.
A trick for getting buyers to fall in love with a home is getting them to walk into scenes that give them the idea those experiences come with the house.
Court the ladies
This statement isn’t meant to be sexist. According to the National Association of Realtors, single women represent the fastest-growing segment of buyers in the market. Not only that, but survey data also show that the women in home-buying couples have a much more significant influence on the purchase of a home than do the men.
With ladies calling the shots, it might mean that the frat-house or bachelor-pad look isn’t going to cut it. Despite what one television beer commercial portrays, that man cave isn’t likely the tipping point in a sale. The guys might love those things, but it’s not the guy you’re trying to get to fall in love.
And even as gender roles have evolved over the years, a Coldwell Banker survey recently revealed that 68 percent of women call themselves the “primary chef” of the household. And 54 percent of women identify themselves as the lead in all household decorating decisions. So keep those things in mind when setting your scenes.
Start up front
When it comes to love, first impressions are what get the ball rolling. That means for all the hype you hear about curb appeal; it indeed is essential to make an excellent first impression. So the exterior front of your home has to be exceptional.
That doesn’t mean that a home with stunning curb appeal but a lackluster interior isn’t love-worthy; what’s inside counts, too. But the chances of a buyer who’s turned off by a home’s outward appearance falling in love based only on the inside are not high. These are homes, not fictional characters in romantic comedies.
That means evoking emotion from the time buyers pull up to the curb. Dramatic landscaping, water features that create pleasant sounds, grand entryways, and flowering foliage are all things that pull at buyers’ heartstrings and make falling in love a bit more likely (even if it seems a bit shallow).
People tend to do things they can’t explain when they’re in love, and it’s no different with houses. Buyers in love with a home sometimes do things like pay more, move somewhere they weren’t even considering or make seller-friendly concessions in negotiations. So it helps house sellers to get buyers to fall in love.
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