Home staging is a trend from the United States that is now becoming more and more widespread. It involves decorating properties for sale to make them look more appealing. Individual rooms are staged, meaning they are furnished in a homely manner. Hence, it is possible in many cases to sell the house quickly and at a high price. However, the question arises whether such techniques are necessary when demand clearly exceeds supply. In this article, we explain why home staging is useful and what needs to be considered. Why is home staging advantageous? In most cases, the previous owners leave the house completely cleared out and empty. As a result, many brokers face a problem with the sale. According to experts, most potential buyers lack the necessary imagination to see their fully furnished and comfortable home in front of them instead of a bare room. Furthermore, potential buyers often have difficulties imagining whether their own furniture will fit in the rooms. CNN.com has an article on what to expect when you buy a home in 2022. Another problem is that apartments often look very dilapidated, for instance, due to a yellowed ceiling or wallpaper in disrepair. Hardly anyone can imagine such properties as an ideal new home. For this reason, home staging is mainly used for older, smaller properties or properties in need of renovation. With the help of the furnished and handcrafted rooms, it can be seen whether a large bed, sofa, or wardrobe would fit in the room and what a potential layout of the room would look like. Moreover, colorful wallpapers, pictures, cozy blankets, and a few plants create a feel-good atmosphere that makes visitors immediately want to curl up on the couch in order to watch a good movie or play games on a console. Those who don’t want an Xbox or PlayStation in their setup can also switch to online games, which can now be conveniently played on a smartphone, such as casino games. There are comparison portals that help players find reputable casinos and discover the best bonus offers. There are lots of European providers, but there are also South African casinos. If you have some South African rand (ZAR), there are operators that accept them, and the best of them can be found on Casinos.co.za. There’s an overview of each operator and their most important features in brief. This way, users can make a solid choice and get to the selected provider with one click. The comparison platform is free of charge. And who knows – maybe you’ll win something that will make the new apartment much more affordable. Even though real estate prices are currently very high and apartments are usually sold quickly, home staging is still a useful method. It speeds up the buying process, as sellers decide more quickly to buy an apartment or house in which they feel comfortable and in which they can better imagine a cozy interior. The fast sales process saves costs for the real estate agent. Additionally, older buildings with a few flaws can hardly be sold any other way. What are the costs of home staging and how do experts work? Home staging increases the attractiveness of the property, which also means a higher purchase price. That’s why more and more real estate agents worldwide are turning to professional decorators to stage the property and create the ideal home with the help of homely elements such as pictures, comfortable sofas, and pleasant lighting. In order to achieve this, agents are also willing to spend some money. For staging an apartment with 1000 square feet, 2500 to 3000 pounds are estimated, plus the cost of renovation work by craftsmen. Home stagers are most often hired by real estate agents prior to a showing in order to make a quicker sale for their clients. But more and more private sellers are also turning to home stagers and hiring experts to remodel living spaces to promote sales. Depending on the clientele and the property, they adapt the kitchen, bathroom, and other living spaces in consultation with the client. The optimal staging of the property follows the design and aesthetic rules. Home stagers work specifically with laws of perception and spatial illusions to fully use the potential of the property. Particular attention must be paid to the cut of the room as well as light and color effects. According to the effort, a home stager needs about three to five days for a job. Since the concept is very promising and the purchase price rises by the decoration, such investments are made by the brokers ever more frequently.

A New York-style skyscraper has been planned to replace the Grand Casino in Southport after renovation plans have been put forward by the Mikhail Hotel and Leisure Group. The plan is to transform the Grade II listed building into a 48 storey skyscraper called the Tower of Hope, making it one of the tallest buildings in the north of the country. The building will house 140 apartments, ranging from one-bedroom to three-bedrooms, 109 five-star hotel rooms, a restaurant, a wedding venue, and a car park for visitors.  The project will also boast a health and wellbeing centre, a gym, a spa, and a green space for the surrounding community to use. The hotel group is keen to ensure that the community is behind their project, and has confirmed that all profits from the sale of the building’s apartments will go to charity. The Grand Casino has been unoccupied since 2007 and has housed a variety of different businesses over the years. Starting out as a car showroom in 1923 before being converted into the Grand Cinema in 1938, it remained a luxury cinema for several decades before being converted once again to a bingo hall in 1966. Just before the turn of the millennium, it was closed again and re-opened as the Grand Casino. It’s no surprise that the casino lasted only a few short years before being closed down, as this was the same time that online gambling was taking off in a big way. For the first time, people could gamble from their own homes and not have to worry about getting their winnings home safely from the casino. Since then, hundreds of online casinos have sprung up, all with a large variety of different games on offer. There are trusted review sites that have compiled a comprehensive list of the best real-money slots available, with hundreds of slots to offer. The site also has a page for free slots if you miss playing but don’t want to gamble. Furthermore, they have all the information you need to get started, along with security information, customer service, bonus offers, and how to claim them. This transformation killed a great number of brick-and-mortar casinos, though it’s particularly sad to see a building as beautiful as the Grand Casino sit empty for so long. The beauty of the original building was a big influence in the hotel group choosing it for its latest project. Andrew Mikhail, chairman of the leisure group, said of the project “Bringing fabulous buildings back to life is such a rewarding feeling, and a building as stunning as The Grand Casino deserves to be enjoyed by the people of Southport and beyond”. He also spoke of the need to “cherish the past and build the future”, which perfectly encapsulates the mixture of old and new he is aiming to achieve with this building. The collective has already invested millions of pounds into the surrounding area, with ownership in The Bold Hotel, Lord Street Hotel, Lord Street Sports Bar, and a variety of other businesses in Southport’s Northern Quarter. This slew of recent investments represents an upturn in the fortunes for the Southport area, and can in part be attributed to the Town Regeneration Fund Schemes introduced by the government for struggling towns. Sefton Council is estimating nearly £400m of private investment could be on its way to the seaside town, with The Tower of Hope being a major part of that. The council also anticipates this will have a positive impact on the surrounding community. The tower will bring in a large tourist trade, giving a huge boost to small businesses around the area and the local economy as a whole. Not only that, personal and commercial property prices are expected to increase due to the increase in demand for the area. Building work on the new tower has already begun, creating close to 100 new jobs in the area, with more anticipated upon the completion of the building. It is hoped that landmark investment such as this will draw in other private investors and create a bustling metropolitan area to rival that of its close neighbour, Manchester. This 48-storey behemoth isn’t likely to be a one-off, with the investment group already floating ideas for a sky bar to join this grand hotel. The Tower of Hope isn’t an arbitrary name, chairman Andrew Mikhail has been quoted as saying “I hope that people will look up, see the Tower of Hope and realise, that anything is possible”. If the tower is able to live up to the grand expectations that Andrew has laid out for Sefton Council and the people of Stockport, it will surely achieve its aim.