Many of our clients have experienced first hand, the benefits of having their home professionally staged. You have to do everything you can to stand out from the crowd, and staging is a proven way to do that.

Staging your home is the process of making your home appealing to the broadest spectrum of buyers possible. It typically involves de-cluttering, rearranging spaces and furniture, removing items that may turn buyers off, changing paint colours, and more extensive staging could include renting furniture and accessories.

Recently Sheldon was at a client’s home, signing the final listing documentation when he discovered a wine rack that the sellers did not want to include in the sale of their home. The rack was securely attached – anything securely attached to the home is typically included (such as plumbing and light fixtures). Sheldon suggested that they should take down the rack, before pictures and showings. They responded: “but your stager said it should stay!”

So who is right?

Well, both are right, it just depends what you want to have happen to the wine rack. The rack looked great where it was, and for staging purposes it should stay right where it was. However, when a buyer sees something nice attached to the home, they always want it. It’s amazing that a sale worth hundreds of thousands of dollars can become derailed by a wine rack, but it happens all the time. We once almost lost a deal because of a macramé plant holder!

In this case the best thing the home owner could do would be to replace the rack with a similar, less expensive or less sentimental wine rack. Then everyone is happy (the owners, the buyer, the stager and the real estate agent!). Alternately they could take down the rack and repair the wall. If they leave the rack up for showings, they have to be prepared to let the rack go with the home, or loose out on some other part of the negotiations (price, dates, deposits, conditions etc.).

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