For those interested in selling real estate, take note, staging is key for attracting buyers as empty rooms make the sell harder, experts say.
A team of four D.C. real estate agents known for some of the priciest mansion sales in the region switched broker affiliation last week.
HRLS Partners, whose agents include Robert Hryniewicki, Christopher Leary, Adam Rackliffe, and Micah Smith, moved from Washington Fine Properties to TTR Sotheby’s, less than a month after real estate giant Compass acquired WFP.
HRLS Partners sold 69 multimillion-dollar properties in the D.C. area last year at an average sale price of $3 million.
Selling 14,000-square-foot homes on estate-sized lots in McLean, Virginia, or top-to-bottom renovations of historic properties in D.C.’s Georgetown area is obviously more complicated and time consuming than selling a two-bedroom condo or four-bedroom ranch.
But, there are tips for attracting buyers that all residential sales have in common — one of them is staging.
If a seller’s home is on the market after they’ve moved to their new home, empty rooms make it a harder sell.
“Vacant rooms always appear smaller than they do with furniture. We are with buyers all day long where we walk into an empty owners’ suite and it is a substantial-sized room, and the buyer starts questioning whether their King California bed can fit in there,” Hryniewicki said.
Any home for sale is bound to attract curious tire kickers who may not necessarily be interested in actually buying. Mansions are no different. But tire kickers are unlikely to get a free tour of a multimillion-dollar estate.
“Everything of course is always by appointment. There are registration forms to verify they have the financial capability to perform on a transaction of this price. That is sent to the owner for approval to show. So, if you do have somebody who is just a ‘lookie-loo’, there are a lot of times that we send the form over, and then they disappear,” Hryniewicki said.
HRLS Partners has a lifetime sales volume of $2.42 billion in D.C.-area residential sales, and has closed on nearly 2,300 transactions.
Hryniewicki won’t name a favorite sale, but he does have one he considers the most fun. It was last year’s sale of a 2,000-acre estate with a 20,000-square-foot home in Virginia Hunt Country in Hume, Virginia, called The Cove.
“The house and the structure was phenomenal, but then to view the 2,000 acres, you had to get into an ATV-like sand buggy, and you got to cruise around the 2,000 acres through forested trails, up and down two mountains, and around a lake,” he said.
The Cove sold for $18.750 million, the most expensive sale in Virginia, Maryland or D.C. since 2022.
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