The psychology of home:
Understanding what a home means to its owner may help you better prepare your own for sale.
Creating a home is one of the life’s most meaningful activities.
Consider the time, thought, and dedication that goes into furniture, appliances, taps, and door handles – an inexhaustible list of functional items and emotional signifiers that form a distinct constellation anointed as home.
Little wonder home is so sweet, and we ache to return there.
Our home helps us remember who we are:
Homes provide a memorialising function.
Much more than physical comfort, our home helps us to remember ourselves; they anchor our identity.
Anthropologists argue that this is why ancient civilisations built temples and crypts (homes) for their gods.
The physical architecture and attendant art stabilised the character of their gods, ensuring people would remember what they represented.
Homes are our temples:
Homeowners don’t expect to be worshipped. Their motivations are more identity-based, focusing time and effort on organising structures and objects that are congruent with the vision for their lives.
Consider a chair. Chairs serve the same function but articulate entirely different visions. For example, what does an Eames Lounge Chair convey about its owner that is different to what the owner of a Wishbone Chair believes about themselves?
The object is right when it speaks to the qualities to which we are drawn. It’s not enough to know who we are in our own minds – we need something more tangible, material, and sensuous to pin down our identities.
When it’s time to sell your home:
Imagine your ideal buyer.
How can you help them see your home as their future ‘temple’?
The best advice is to make your home a blank canvas for potential.
Make it easy for prospective buyers to imagine it as their own; to see where they can add their own personal touches and visualise the way they could express the vision for lives.
This of course requires the partial destruction of your own ‘temple’, better known as decluttering for neutrality.
This is quite tough because it asks the owner to detach emotionally; to reimagine their home as a spiritless structure.
The true value of a real estate agent is to secure the best price. But the best price is a function of an agent’s ability to understand a buyer’s self-identity and lead them to a home where it’s easy to imagine their lives.
Watch this YouTube video to better understand the psychology of home.
Selling hasn’t changed – it’s about connecting appealing properties with the right buyers. Call 0800 GOODWINS to discuss listing your property and how we reach your ideal market.
