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This room is a Dining Room, living an alternate life as a Billiard Room.<\/strong><\/p>\n And when I listed this home in the West End of Hartford last summer, this room was very confusing to buyers.<\/p>\n At the open house I hosted, about 70 people came through and I would say a little less than half of them realized that this was the formal dining room for the home.<\/strong> I had to keep telling everyone that it was the dining room, even though it had the telltale built-in corner cabinet and the butler’s pantry was located directly off of it. (There was also a very large flat screen TV on the wall opposite the front windows)<\/p>\n This was my first major experience with the theory that buyers are very unimaginative. Most need to be shown the intended purpose for a room because they will not make the leap themselves.<\/strong><\/p>\n As a seller, what does this mean for you? You’ll want to strongly consider staging your rooms for their intended purpose<\/strong>, if at all possible. If you don’t, you’re giving buyers a reason to consider another home over yours because they will think your home is lacking something, which it really is not.<\/p>\n I know this sounds odd, but it’s true. I can’t tell you how many homes I’ve shown to buyers where I have to tell them what a room is supposed to be because it’s being used for something else.<\/p>\n So no more dining rooms used as office space, formal living rooms used as kids play rooms, and (full) bedrooms used as closets.<\/p>\n It might seem like a difficult change, but it will hopefully only be for a short timeframe.<\/p>\n What did we end up doing with the Billiard Room\/Dining Room? Well, we left it the way it was because of our inability to find a storage place for the pool table. But I did put a sign up on it that said “This is the Dining Room” to help frame people’s mindsets. The house ended up selling in 8 days.<\/p>\n Did the house sell because of my little sign? Of course not! But it did remove a mental barrier for buyers.<\/strong><\/p>\n Happy staging!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you had to hazard a guess at what this room is supposed to be, what would you say? It’s located to the left of the stairway in a center hall colonial… This room is a Dining Room, living an alternate life as a Billiard Room. And when I listed this home in the West End of Hartford last summer, this room was very confusing to buyers. At the open house I hosted, about 70<\/p>\n