What do I do with that? Helping buyers understand your home.

I love my home staging career. Every home is unique, so every day is different. I get to adapt and determine how to best showcase features and benefits, while minimizing negatives. What happens when you can’t decide if an architectural element is a feature or a flaw though?

When buyers wonder what the heck you should do with that space…

It is hard to make a real estate sale when buyers just can’t determine what do to with major focal points of a home.

When viewing this San Marco home online, prior to our actual planning visit, I got really excited. I knew that I would have to really think outside of the box and come up with a plan that would not only make sense to a potential buyer, but also take a potentially negative aspect and turn it into a great feature.

I’m pretty sure this four bedroom, two bath home started off life as a two bedroom, one bath bungalow. The photo in this first shot (above) is when you immediately walk into the home. This long corridor is a major point of the layout and architecture. Because it was formerly the exterior of the home, nearly all of the walls are either brick or cinder block. The primary living spaces, including the family room, dining room, and master suite are at the end of this walk.

THIS. This is the main entertaining and living space of the home. For most people, in the current form, this area is awkward and hard to look beyond. I mean, what do you do with it?

The home doesn’t feel easily understood. Thus far buyers haven’t had that instant, “Gotta have it!” instinct.

When buyers don’t know how it works, they don’t buy it.

Home staging is at its most fun in these moments, at least for me. This is not a generic beige box. This is not a luxury home that is already beautiful where we are just creating lifestyle and flow. This is actually turning an off-putting quirk into a fun retro vibe. Since this home is located in an artistic part of town, I expect it to pay off big-time.

 The first step, to making sense of this massively reconstructed home, had to be turning this long corridor into something more interesting than simply a hallway. By adding an entry table, large furniture storage, bench seating, a bar, and more, we created opportunities to break up the walkway into smaller, more typical, functional spaces.

Each area was carefully crafted to become casual, modern options for every day living. The stage was down-played while completely up-styled. Warmth was brought into the contemporary room, making it feel more like a living room and less like an over sized sunroom.

Rooms that previously may have left potential home buyers scratching their heads wondering how they would live in the home, now can imagine an entertaining or family-oriented lifestyle. Crazy additions of seemingly unusable connecting spaces are now perfect for injecting a sense of personality and artistic style.

Want to see more of this home? Visit our Facebook business page.

{embed FB}