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First Impressions are more important than you think.
Speed Dating is a lot like Home Staging
You only have a short time to make a first impression. Speed dating is usually held in a club setting. Single (hopefully, LOL) people get paired with, perhaps, 10 different members of the opposite sex for 5 minutes “dates.” The reasoning: you know almost immediately if there is chemistry. If there is interest, an actual date is arranged. Why not!! You have a 5 minute opportunity to wow someone.
In real estate, you have 5 seconds. That’s how long it takes to form a positive or negative bias toward the house. Like we mentioned in our last month’s blog post, we have 2 subconscious columns in our brain. One is a Yes and one is a No .
Once we have formed a Confirmation Bias, the rest of the rooms lean toward confirming our bias. Yes or No. You have 5 seconds to wow a potential buyer .
Obviously, George Clooney is a great example of a good first impression in speed dating. I would buy that house. LOL
This beautiful, staged living room is also a grest example of a good first impression.
Years ago, when my best friend was in graduate school, she didn't have time to date "losers." She had high standards if someone asked her out... Grad student or good job, high profile car, certain style in clothing, etc. Imagine our surprise when we saw her at a Christmas party with a cowboy in a Garth Brooks style hat and driving a truck. She had met him at professional event. She almost immediately fell in love with his gorgeous blue eyes, dark hair and Sam Shephard deep voice. So, again, confirmation bias won out over her dating priority list.
This works in real estate also. If the right-brain factors (emotions) are engaged first, the priority list is not as critical. The flaws are minimized because... they are already in love.
When we moved to Jacksonville years ago and we were house hunting. we drove by a cute place that was so pretty outside. We asked our realtor to see it inside. Our realtor said it was way over our price limit and it had a pool, which we did not want. AND... it was not in the geographical location that we wanted. Guess what!! We bought that house! It was an emotional purchase and we were very happy in that house. So there!!
