Why De-Personalizing Your Home Sells It Faster

The most important step of staging a home for sale is de-personalizing it. This has the greatest effect on making it more appealing to home buyers.

While it’s nice to think that we can put our homes on the market as-is and assume home buyers will see past our personalized décor, family photographs, and clutter, that’s simply not the case with most home buyers, especially in the competitive real estate market of today.

To give your home its best chance at appealing to the largest number of home buyers, de-personalizing it is key.

Here are five reasons why you should de-personalize your home before putting it on the market.

Why You Should De-Personalize Your Home for the Market

It shows your home in its best light

A neutral color palette and de-personalized décor allows the architectural features of a home to stand out. Nothing is distracting from them, so buyers can fully appreciate its special features and notice more permanent fixtures rather than cosmetic details.

It also creates a clean, fresh atmosphere that makes homes feel more open, spacious, and inviting. Your home will look newer and feel more polished when it is stripped down to neutral, but welcoming décor.

It keeps buyers focused

Most home buyers get distracted by personalized décor. Not only do they get stressed over how much work they’re going to have to do to change it all and how much money it could all cost, but it can also negatively affect how they feel about the home itself. Even though décor is an easy thing to change, a lot of buyers get caught up in their feelings about how much they dislike it and can’t separate it from the bones of the home. They can miss positive features because they are so busy looking at the décor.

Personal touches like family photos can also be very distracting. For some buyers, it is an uncomfortable reminder that they are walking through a stranger’s home and makes them feel awkward through the rest of the tour. Don’t let them get distracted by your life in the home.

It helps buyers to imagine their own décor

A neutral palette is like a blank canvas to buyers. Instead of getting caught up in their opinion of another person’s taste, they are free to imagine their own décor in its place without distractions. This helps them build an attachment to the home. If you can capture their imagination, that’s half the battle.

It increases the perceived value

Studies have shown that buyers perceive de-personalized homes as being worth more than ones that are not. That’s because they appear cleaner, newer, and better maintained.

It sets your home apart from the competition

There are still plenty of sellers who have not caught on yet to the value of home staging, so you have a leg up on the competition when you stage your home for sale. A neutral, de-personalized home shows better in MLS photos and in person, instantly setting yours apart from the competition that has brightly colored walls, cluttered surfaces, and signs of the family who lives there all over it.