SINGAPORE: A property listing is no longer limited to just welcoming prospective buyers to view a home in its current state online or in person.
Increasingly, it is also an opportunity for an enterprising property agent to pull out all the stops to make the unit stand out to speed up the sale or fetch a higher price.
From decluttering the property to giving it a fresh coat of paint to filling the space with upmarket furniture and plants, home staging – a common practice in the United States – is becoming popular in Singapore, noted market observers.
Stuart Chng, 39, managing partner of Navis, a network of 1,300 real estate agents in Huttons Asia, said: “Home staging has caught on in recent years as video home tours became mainstream in our industry’s marketing approach.
“Buying a home is as much an emotional process as it is a logical one, and thus, stepping into a well-staged home helps bring out heightened interest and the likelihood of better offers.”
Property agents who offer home-staging services said they are worth the effort and money put in because the process very often results in a quicker sale and a higher price.
Diana Teow, 38, a property agent with Huttons, said it tends to take longer to market properties without staging.
As some buyers are unable to visualise the liveable space of an empty property, filling it with furniture and giving the place a makeover provide suggestions.
She once had a three-bedroom freehold unit at Eng Hoon Mansions in Tiong Bahru listed for three months in 2019.
She subsequently advised the owner to demolish the partitions, repaint the walls and fill the property with furnishings.
Within three weeks, the 1,593-sq-ft apartment was sold at US$1.7mil (RM7.58mil), or US$1,070 (RM4,772) per sq ft.
Teow said: “The buyer had viewed the unit before it was staged. When he saw the listing of the staged property, he thought it was a different property.
“He found out it was the same property only when he arrived at the venue. He liked the place so much that he made an offer on the same day.”
Judy Koh, a chef and former owner of the unit, recalled that her property was in “very bad condition” when it was returned to her as her tenant had sublet it to others.
“Home staging certainly helped to make the house look more welcoming, homely and inviting to potential buyers,” she said.
Teow adopted the same strategy for a four-room Housing Board flat at SkyTerrace@Dawson. At the time, the development had reached the end of the mandatory five-year minimum occupation period and there were many sale listings.
The unit was sold in three weeks in January 2021 for US$835,000 (RM3.7mil).
Teow, who joined the real estate industry in 2010, started staging homes in 2014 after seeing how popular the practice was in the United States.
“I felt that some homes here needed a bit of help to beautify them. I started buying vases, artificial flowers, candles, paintings, lamps, plants to spruce up these homes,” she said.
After getting good response from buyers and seeing how more property agents had also started decorating their properties, Teow decided to take things further by changing the furnishings to accentuate the features of some homes.
She charges a commission of between 2% and 2.5% of the sale price. In most cases, unless the home needs a major overhaul, she will foot the home-staging costs.
An online search by The Straits Times found more than 10 companies providing home-staging services.
One of the pioneers, Kelvin Yeo, co-founder and general manager of Singapore Furniture Rental, said demand picked up when more property agents started going big on social media around 2018.
“They started shooting videos of properties and many came to us to stage and style the homes for their videos,” said Yeo, 38. He started his home-staging service in 2014, one year after he launched his furniture rental business.Home staging has since become a core business, said Yeo, who can be involved with sprucing up as many as 80 homes in a good month. For services including rental of furniture, his company charges US$500 (RM2,230) to US$2,000 (RM8,920) a month for non-landed properties. His biggest project is a good class bungalow for more than US$5,000 (RM22,300) a month.
Nicole Pang, 50, co-founder and managing director of HyggeHomey, said she and her co-founders, who were working in the advertising industry, started the business in 2017 after seeing home staging becoming a niche in the real estate industry.
“Even during the Covid-19 pandemic, business was still coming in,” she said.
“Some property agents came to us to stage their properties so that they could conduct the viewings via Zoom.”
Pang noted that the market has become more competitive, with property agents providing staging services instead of engaging professionals like her to do the job.
Yeo is aware that some agents have their own warehouses stocked with furniture for staging purposes.
“Some interior design firms and furniture retailers have also started providing home-staging services,” he noted.
He said the demand for home staging is not affected by the property market’s ups and downs, noting that homeowners and property agents tap the process to sell the property faster and at a higher price.
He added that there were many occasions when he staged a home on a Thursday or Friday and the property was sold at the weekend.“Home staging is not a need; it’s a want. Nice properties do not require staging. You just need to add some decorations to make them look even nicer and hopefully fetch a higher price,” he said.
“It is homes that are harder to sell that will need staging, as staged homes tend to have a positive impact on buyers.” — The Straits Times/ANN
