Home staging in France : thank you TV !
Home staging, the art of prompting love at first sight when visiting a property, is common practice in the UK, the kingdom of the DIY ! Even though France is very close, home-staging is not that common there for most of the French owners will tell you that they want to make money and not spend it. They hardly understand that to make money, especially in these troubled times, you have to spend some.
In France, home-staging is still at its early stages but thanks to the media, people begin to really understand the importance of it when selling a property. Many opinion leader magazines talk about it, lots of trainings offer to train those who want to make a living out of it and most importantly, books on the subject have been published and one particular French TV broadcast offers to owners who stuggle to sell their property a home stage of their property.
This TV programme is the perfect example to make people understand how crucial it is because it is broadcasted nation wide and everybody can see the impact of home staging on the properties. Created in 2007, it is presented by a very competent yet friendly and easy-going estate agent, who goofs around all the time , making him all the more likable and the programme more popular. He is assisted with 2 professional home stagers who run their own company.
The programme is divided in 3 different parts : first, the presentor/estate agent establishes a general picture of the property by visiting it and performing a market study so as to estimate a decent selling price. Right after this, the production teams get to work and redecorate the property and add new fixtures and appliances. The last part of the programme focuses on the visits of the potential buyers. The programme often ends up with an buying offer from one of the visitors. Some properties couldn’t be sold after being on television but not a single owner said he didn’t want to sell anymore after the home stage. Before changing anything, the presentors put the emphasis on a motto : « Make it neutral rather than personal » and by the end of the home stage, they explain step by step what has changed and most importantly how much each thing cost. You will have to spend money to get your property home stage but generally, the price of the home stage is between 2 and 4% of the selling price.
Considering the French opinion, a French home staging company set up an original concept : they give the owner an estimate, do the home stage and get paid only after the sale of the property, making it the leader on the home staging market in France. Home staging allows real and significant profits because according to the statistics, the price of a home-staged property is sold between 2 and 10% more than another property. For prestige properties, it is 20% !
For now, home staging in France is a trend but maybe one day, it will be mandatory and also tax deductible… like it is already the case in Sweden !