Staging for your target buyer starts by understanding that home buyers are fickle. Your marketing efforts need to recognize this and exploit it. Professional home stagers know this and take steps to cut off concerns and highlight amenities tailored to the type of customer they are trying to attract. Fickle means if they see a purple wall, they’re out. But if they see a tire swing hanging from the old oak tree, they’re in no matter what. Our staging tips dictate that you make your home, their home.
What Does Your Target Audience Want to See in a Staged Home? What Will Your Target Audience Demand?
When preparing to sell your home, understanding your target buyer is key to a successful sale. This article, tailored for homeowners, delves into target market analysis for home staging. It focuses on identifying potential buyers, their preferences, and how to stage your home to appeal to them.
Understanding Buyer Demographics: The Key to Effective Home Staging
Identifying the demographic of your likely buyer is crucial. Demographics include age, income, family size, and lifestyle. This knowledge helps you tailor your home staging to appeal directly to their preferences and needs
Staging for First-Time Homebuyers or Millennials: Attracting a Modern Buyer
Millennials, often first-time homebuyers, look for move-in ready homes with modern amenities. Staging for this demographic might include:
- Modern Design: Incorporate contemporary furniture and minimal decor.
- Tech-Friendly Spaces: Showcase areas where technology can be easily used, like a home office.
- Elaborate Dining Rooms and Porcelain Tchotchkes: Out.
- Pamphlets Describing Local Internet Options: In. You might consider a list of great local restaurants or shopping options. Local hospitals, doctors, and dentist recommendations would fly as well. Thoughtful information targeted at millennial interests is a big and cheap win.
- Ease of Maintenance: Is a big draw. Is the lawn hardscaped? Should it be? Grandma loves to garden. Busy, professional young moms, do not. Will a robot vacuum work on the floors? Mention it, if it will. Change the light bulbs to LEDs.
- New Appliances: Highlight newer appliances. If it is worth it, consider replacing ancient appliances with modern numbers.
Staging for Families: Creating a Welcoming Space
Families usually seek space, comfort, and safety. Staging for your target buyer when your target buyers are families:
- Showcase Family Areas: Highlight the living room, backyard, and kitchen as family-friendly spaces.
- Safety Features: Ensure the home is childproofed, showcasing any safety amenities it may have.
- Short on Bedrooms? Throw in a bunkbed and highlight the den currently used as an office as a third or fourth bedroom option.
- Outdoor Space: Big with families, swingsets, basketball nets, tree houses, pools, decks, whatever gets kids outside is big with parents.
Appealing to Empty Nesters: Comfort and Convenience
Empty nesters typically look for smaller, easy-to-maintain spaces. When staging for this demographic:
- Low-Maintenance Features: Highlight any aspects of the home that are easy to maintain.
- Comfortable Living Spaces: Focus on creating cozy living areas and a practical kitchen. Staging for your target buyer means redecorating, re-imagineering, removing for their tastes and needs, not yours.
- Buyers of a Certain Age Love Space for Their Hobbies: Gardening, Woodworking, Reading, etc. If one or more of your rooms or outbuildings could double as a knitting nook or host a lathe for woodcarving, highlight it.
Working with a Realtor: Leveraging Professional Insight
A real estate agent can provide valuable insights into the local real estate market. They can help identify the specific target buyer for your home based on location, home features, and current market trends. Then they can help you with staging for your target buyer.
Market Research: Aligning Your Staging with Actual Real Estate Demand
Market research is critical. Review real estate websites and the MLS to understand what appeals to buyers in your area. This helps ensure your home staging resonates with actual market demand.
If you are big-time, do some research on the demographic makeup of your area using Census data. The Canadian national census happens every 5 years. The latest was in 2021 with 2016 and 2011 immediately prior to that one. Using data comparisons you might find that over the past 15 years, your town’s senior population is growing dramatically as a percentage of total population. Or you might see a huge population of families. Use the data to fine tune your decorating approach.
Check local real estate-related posts on social media. Who is replying to real estate posts about properties like yours? Check their profiles. What are they saying? What are they posting about?
If you really want to get to know your buyer, check online activity for local neighbourhoods. Do you see patterns? Can you gather intel on the household makeup of your area? Are the posts all about finding the best daycare or organizing play dates? Are you in a downtown condo seeing young professionals on the elevator all day long?
If you want to get tactical, get a feel for your target audience by attending an open house or two for like properties in your area and take notes. You are now a spy.
Home Features: Highlighting What Matters to Your Buyer
Each type of buyer has different needs. For example, young families might value a spacious kitchen and a secure backyard, while empty nesters might appreciate a comfortable master suite and a guest bedroom. Maybe the home is located near golf courses. Who says you can’t put the brochures on the kitchen table? Attract buyers not only with your home but the amenities near your home.
Effective Marketing Strategies: Tailoring Your Efforts
Tailor your marketing strategies to highlight the features that appeal to your target audience. Use marketing materials that resonate with them, whether it’s showcasing a family home or a low-maintenance property for those looking to downsize.
The Emotional Connection: Making Buyers Envision Themselves Living in Your Home
Effective staging creates an emotional connection. It allows buyers to envision themselves living in your home. This might mean adding pops of color for a young family or a serene color palette for a more mature audience. There’s scientific debate about how rooted and how effective color is at impacting mood, but we can all agree that certain color palettes in certain rooms impact our comfort. Who doesn’t get a certain feeling when entering a classically designed all white bathroom? Who wouldn’t feel comfortable sliding into a low slung brown leather club chair in a den decorated in warm shades of browns and woods?
So make sure to dump the rose pink carpet in the bathroom and black accent wall in the bathroom shifting them both to colors and moods that gel with your demographic’s desires.
Ready to Sell: Ensuring Your Home Appeals to the Widest Range of Buyers
While it’s important to focus on a specific demographic, also ensure your home has a broad appeal. This approach from sales to value reduces the noise and empowers you to connect with a range of buyers. Staging for one or more demographics sounds expensive, but there are lots of things you can do for nothing or next to it.
Paint. Remove. Borrow. Clean. Trim. Organize. All of these are inexpensive. Do it in a way that appeals to your target buyer. If you are selling a condo in a building that has somehow become appealing to retired folks, then ask your parents to borrow their living room furniture for a few weeks. Their tchotchkes will make a big impression on buyers.
Conclusion: A Strategic Approach to Home Staging
Understanding your target buyer and staging your home accordingly can significantly impact the perceived value and appeal of your property. With the right target market analysis, you can attract the right buyers and achieve a successful sale. Remember, a home that appeals to its target audience is more likely to sell quickly and at a better price.