From Homescape

I often receive inquires about home staging from sellers all over the country, asking: “Can you give me the scoop on how staging works and the costs behind it?” I thought it would be helpful to provide inquiring minds with the basic A-B-C’s of home staging.

A is for ABOUT home staging in general. Actually, if you are going to stage your property, you need to know that it’s ABOUT a two-step process. The first step is prepping the home, which involves cleaning and updating. The second step is ABOUT the “pretty visuals” that people think of when they think of home staging. This step has to do with the physical setting and arranging of the furnishings and accessories within a house. The combined goal of the two steps is to create a house that shows off its best assets and ultimately will draw the interest of the widest buying demographic possible.

B is for BASIC types of staging services. While there are six basic types of staging services, it’s important to note that not all stagers offer all of them. The more services a stager offers the better it is for you. Since you actually won’t know what you will need until the stager visits for the first time, a stager with multiple expertise is better equipped to guide you based on your needs and won’t be limited by the home’s staging possibilities.

The six basic staging services:

1. Consult staging: This type of staging solely taps into a stager’s knowledge. First focusing on the condition of a home, a stager visits a property to meticulously instruct on all that must be done to best prep and then set the property for the market.

2. Rearrange staging: This type of services relies on both the stager’s knowledge and their physical labor. Once a home’s conditional needs are met, a stager arranges the property by physically setting it using only the seller’s existing furniture and decorative accessories.

3. Enhance staging: Again, once conditional issues are addressed, the stager will then set the interior space. But not only are the existing furniture and accessories used, but the stager will bring and blend in decorative accessories and or furniture from their own inventory. These props can either be loaned or rented to the seller while the home is for sale.

4. Reseller vacant staging: When a preowned home is vacant, the property can be pretty bare bones. So while it is important that basic repairs need to be addressed, a stager should be hired to maximize the home’s visual appeal by fully setting it with the appropriate furnishings and accessories.

5. Rehab Vacant staging: Similar to a reseller vacant home, after the problem spots of an older property are repaired and updated, a stager should be hired to maximize the home’s visual appeal by fully setting it with the appropriate furnishings and accessories.

6. Model vacant staging: While conditional problems in a new construction building typically are not an issue, “life-styling” is. Models typically rely more on projecting a life-styled visual appeal. A good stager understands and designs within a specific lifestyle marketing concept when furnishing, accessorizing and setting a vacant model property.

C is for COST to hire a home stager. What hiring costs actually are depends on how much talent (knowledge), time (physical labor) and props a stager provides. If a seller has a limited amount to spend, then the best value a stager can provide is by consulting. For as little as $100 (in some markets), a stager can be hired to review a property and provide professional staging advice and guidance. From there, it’s realistic to expect to pay anywhere from $35 to $75 per hour for a stager’s services. As for props, the fees for renting these items will vary based on just what is being rented and the length of time the items are being rented for.

Sellers are not only realizing the cost of staging will pay off, but they actually ARE benefiting from making the investment. Let’s face it, if “time is money” then reduced market time is a great return on investment. So regardless of staging solution proposed, a good stager will do all they can to maximize the return on a seller’s staging budget so that the house sells as easy as 1, 2, 3.

Staging It Forward... Craig Schiller, founder of Real Estaging

In the past four years that I’ve been staging, I’ve noticed a new trend taking place. Today, more homeowners are reaching out to stagers to help prepare their home for a sell, even before they hire a Realtor. But the odd thing is, while staging practices have been utilized in the housing market for years, it still amazes me how many agents in the Realtor community continue to snub, ignore and misunderstand the staging process. For whatever reason, many agents seem to have completely shut down any possibility to understand the opportunity staging offers their clients. Just scroll through some pictures of listed homes for sale on the Internet for proof.

Why aren’t Realtors getting it?
I have a feeling that what many Realtors think staging is, is actually not staging at all. If a seller goes to a Web site and finds a list of “10 Things You Can Do To Ready Your Home for Selling,” they’ve begun the staging process. If a seller’s agent then comes to look at the home and instructs them to do 10 more things to better prepare their property, they are essentially directing them to stage the home. If a stager is hired and they find an additional 10 MORE things for the seller to attend to, they’re in full staging mode.

Just as selling a house does NOT always require a Realtor, staging a house does NOT always require a stager. However, owners who have worked with a good and reputable stager have learned that a trained eye can see the issues that work against a home and he can offer creative solutions to ready, package and market a home for selling in ways they’ve never considered.

Expert advice
Stagers guide, direct and counsel home sellers as to what they can do to BEST prepare their property. We can also coach them on how to quickly, easily and inexpensively make their home more appealing. Consulting services for good stagers can cost as little as $100 (depending on the housing market). If needed, stagers can come in and help prepare for an open house and set the interior space.

The more you and your Realtor know and understand what home staging does and does NOT do, and when to use our services, the more empowered you’ll become.

Staging a home for selling is not a new phenomenon. All that has really changed is that there is an entire INDUSTRY now committed to understanding the intricacies of how a home can be best merchandised and marketed as a product so that it entices them to buy.

Staging It Forward...

Craig Schiller, founder of Real Estaging

Are you having a hard time determining where to start your own home staging? Well, I feel your pain. When I Google the phrase “home staging tips,” I came up with 29,300 results. Going through that result list is a daunting task and would be overwhelming for any home seller.

To help home sellers narrow down their options, I did my own research on the Web and found a great list of basic tips on HGTV.com. The recommendations I found can be applied to both dwelling and selling. While there’s plenty being written when it comes to home staging, this list of tips is a great starting place for advice that will help any home seller begin their own project. Here are my top 10 favorite tips:

WORK ON YOUR ENTRANCE

Whether you are on a job interview, going on a first date or selling your home, first impressions matter. What buyers see on the outside starts to inform them on what to expect on the inside. So clean it up, touch up the paint, add plants and flowers, and in general, make the buyer feel welcomed.

CLEAR OUT CLUTTER
We think countertops, cabinets, closets, garages, basements and attics as storage spaces, but often they become clutter keepers. Purging out the old is not only therapeutic but allows a path for the new. Remember, too much clutter distracts and obstructs buyers from seeing what you are selling. So clear it out.

LESS FURNITURE, MORE HOUSE
A room full of furniture can feel as cluttered as an accountant’s desktop during tax season. Removing all but what is necessary in a room will make it look and feel bigger. Extra furniture can always be used in another room.

FLOAT YOUR FURNITURE

When you float furniture, remember to bring it off the walls into the center of the room. The rooms will begin to feel more open, interesting and visually appealing. Experiment with angles and corners when moving furniture.

CROSS-POLLINATE
After living in a home for a long time, sellers have a tendency of seeing their furnishings, art and accessories used only one way. But moving pieces that have always been used in one room into another can give new meaning to any old space. And don’t stop with furniture. Color, texture and style elements that dominate one room can be moved into another to help create flow and continuity from one area to the next.

GIVE OLD ROOMS NEW PURPOSE
As time moves on, the way people live and use their homes often change. Extra bedrooms become television dens, which then become home offices. Basements go from being storage areas to recreation or media rooms. Setting up an old room with a new purpose will help buyers see the potential and possibilities of how the room can be utilized.

LAMP AND LIGHT DONE RIGHT
Lighting in a home that is too dim, too harsh or too cold can work against the sale of it. Warm and balanced lighting is what it’s all about. Using a combination of different lighting types — such as overhead, accent or task lamps — in each room will give a home the overall appealing glow buyers like. Oh, and don’t forget to light up the exterior, especially near the entrance. Utilizing natural sunlight by opening up drapes will also help buyers see the home’s distinct features.

COLOR WITHIN THE LINES
Wallpaper is out and color paints are a must, especially when selling a home. Wallpaper is typically a very personal design expression that looks dated overtime. While the popularity of color does trend, updating with paint is an easy and inexpensive way to freshen up a home that is for sale. Don’t limit yourself to white as the only neutral color. Some shades of white can be the worst color for neutralizing a room. There is a wide variety of beiges, tans, taupes, soft gold and greens that are not only trendy in a buyer’s eyes, but will also work well with your furnishings while you are selling.

HANG ART ARTFULLY
Considering the average person in this country is between 5-foot-6- and 5-foot-8-inches tall, you should always try to hang art at the eye level. As a rule of thumb, the viewer should always be looking slightly above center of the piece. Placement is also important. Sellers should envision how a homebuyer will walk through the home and which walls they will actually look at. That will help determine where the art should be hung and where it’s not needed.

OUTDOORS COMES IN
Bringing in flowers and plants can help breath life back into a home. Adding foliage will help to soften a room, especially if it’s in an area that’s darker and more rustic. While bringing the outdoors inside is a great tip, sometimes live plants are not available or practical. Don’t be afraid to invest in QUALITY silk plants and dried flowers, but remember a dusty silk or old faded dried arrangement can look as dead as any living plant that died. Finally, avoid seasonal plants and flowers and go for the green basics.

Market It Forward…

Craig Schiller, founder of Real Estaging

Earlier this week I received a phone call from a desperate a homeowner looking to home staging as a marketing solution to help sell his $499,000 townhouse. The property had been on the market for over a year. Right from the start, the caller was frank and wanted to make sure I knew that when compared to similar-sized units for sale in his development, his townhouse was the most expensive. He also wanted to make sure I understood the price difference was due to the fact that his property had been totally gutted and extensively remodeled, including the kitchen and baths. So while the properties were all the same size on the inside and looked the same on the outside, he’d added some fancy upgrades during his occupancy.

Needle in a haystack
Intrigued to know what I’d be working with, I wanted to take a little sneak peek and pop over to the listing Realtor’s Web site. I asked the seller for the name of his Realtor and the name of the firm he sold for. I never heard of the company he was working with. So I did a quick Google search to find the Realtor’s site. To my surprise, NOTHING came up.

Neither the real estate company nor the Realtor had a Web site to market themselves or their listings. While it is a bit odd, it was a small real estate company, and after all, there are other online-marketing options available to Realtors for their listings.

Luckily, the seller happened to know his property’s MLS number. With no other place to go to view the property online, I did what I’ve done before, and I went to an online listing site to search for the property. At the site, I punched in the MLS number and VOILA!, the listing popped up with an exterior shot of the caller’s property!

One-hit wonder
But to my surprise and dismay, there was only a single photo available online for perspective buyers to view. The Realtor was relying on just ONE picture to sell all the wonderful offerings of an updated and rehabbed property. Why wasn’t the remodeled interior of this townhome being marketed? If you ask me, there is no excuse for this level of service — and it’s nothing less than a marketing crime. It’s estimated that 80 to 85 percent of buyers begin their home search via the Internet. That’s a whole lot of potential buyers to attract. But the story gets worse.

After we hung up, I was now even more curious. Something told me to take a look at this seller’s competition. I dug a bit deeper on a home-listing site and found two comparable properties within the exact same development. One property listed for $84,000 less then the property the caller owned, and the other listed for $89,000 less. Now I know there could be a lot of pro and con discussion about the effect a listing price has on sales probability, but this is not the point of this blog post.

The point I’m making has to do with marketing. The Realtors of the two cheaper properties invested the time and money to tap into one of the most basic yet most effective marketing tools available today. The agents used multiple photos and then posted them on an easily accessible online-listing site to help build and reinforce a potential buyer’s interest.

A must do
The seller who had contacted me had a property that costs more, and his home offered more bells and whistles than those of his neighboring competitors. It would have been helpful to capture and display those upgrades to potential buyers.

Most likely, it’s not JUST the lack of pictures that are keeping this property from selling. But Realtors in today’s industry must realize that digital photography, which is cheap and easy, coupled with online-listing sites, give buyers the power to preview and prescreen properties ahead of time. Any Realtor who chooses to ignore this basic yet very important fact is committing a crime that ultimately can force his clients to bide their time while they wait for their homes to sell.

Market It Forward…

Craig Schiller, founder of Real Estaging

Even though America is a consumer society, it’s an odd fact that the typical home seller does not view their property as a product for sale in a marketplace. Because this is so, many home sales end up languishing. But this doesn’t have to be the case.

Dressing it up
Basic, old-fashioned marketing principals teaches that how a product is perceived and received within the market can be positively altered and impacted. This is where home staging can help. More than just being decorators or designers, good home stagers are focused in applying a full array of strategic property-marketing principles and practices which positively influence the consumer about a product (your home) in a market.

So, although a staged home might look attractive, it is important to note that staging is NOT solely about making a home just look “pretty.” In fact, there are homes that CAN look visually attractive and STILL not be staged.

Any Realtor, home seller or builder who thinks that staging is simply making a home look “pretty” is grossly ignorant about the benefits of proper staging. The “why” and “how” a home is prepped for its showing and ultimate selling is what a staged home is all about.

What we do is much like what happens every day at Macy’s, Best Buy, Safeway, Walgreens, and other retail stores across America. Real estate staging is more about strategically setting up — or merchandising — a property in a manner that makes it not only easy for buyers to tour, but also allows their hearts to connect to it with a powerful first impression that stays with them.

Today, I am not surprised to find there are many pretty homes that still are not selling. But a staged home that is priced right will sell quickly, even during ugly markets.

Stage It Forward...

Craig Schiller founder of Real Estaging