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Staging and Redesign
Home Staging and Design |
Dressing a House for Success - STAGING A HOME
Home staging is about illusions. It's how David Copperfield would sell a house. It's beyond decorating and cleaning. It's about perfecting the art of creating moods. Staging makes your house look bigger, brighter, cleaner, warmer, more loving and, best of all, it makes home buyers want to buy it.
Contrary to what you might think, it's about more than preparing the house for sale. Staging is what you do after you've cleaned, decluttered, painted, made minor repairs; it's all about dressing the house for sale.
It's about adding the small details: the lipstick, mascara and, for simplicity, a stunning, single strand of Tahitian pearls.
What is a Professional Home Stager?
Professional stagers are highly skilled artists. They can take a blank canvas and paint a sensuous portrait without ever lifting a paint brush. Stagers possess the skills of a top-level designer and they create dramatic scenery that appeals to all five senses. Here are some of their secrets:
- Arrange sparse pieces of furniture in an appealing grouping known as a vignette
- Showcase a generous usage of soft fabrics such as silk, lambswool, satin
- Display unusual knickknacks in units of 1, 3 or 5
- Drape window coverings with simple lines
- Add unique elements to shelving, bookcases and fireplace mantels, which draw attention to predetermined areas
What Accessories Does a Stager Use?
Stagers bring in a vast array of items to spruce up the house. Here is a small sampling of items professional stagers often use to dress each room. How they are utilized is limited only by the creativity and vision of the stager.
- Mirrors
- Plants
- Silk Flowers
- Floor & Table Lamps,
- Area and Throw Rugs
- Small Love Seats
- Ottomans
- Afghans
- Pillows
- Inflatable Queen-Size Beds
- Baskets
- Plastic Tables & Chairs
Professional Staging Tricks & Tips
An artist for 35 years, Dawna Johnson, is an Accredited Staging Professional Master (ASP) and owner of Sacramento Staging Solutions. She says the idea behind staging is to allow rooms to show themselves. "If your home is vacant, it's soulless," Dawna warns. "Without staging, it will probably remain on the market for many months." She calls the kitchen the "heart of the home," and offers this practical advice for making that space sparkle:
- Apply orange oil to cabinets that appear dry, which will renew their original luster
- Put out large bowls of fruit such as polished apples, bright oranges, luscious grapes
- Arrange colorful and fun cookbooks on the counters
Dawna believes in bringing the outdoors inside through the use of greenery and plants; in creating clean, crisp spaces and arranging furniture with plenty of room to walk around. She says bathrooms are essential to dress well. "Bathrooms should look open, airy and delightful," says Dawna. One of her favorite tricks is to add baskets filled with spa treatments such as:
- Towels, tied with ribbons
- Scented soaps
- Creamy lotions
- Moisturizing & Facial jars
The back yard needs staging, too. For patios and decks, Dawna brings in plants and potted flowers, and adds additional color by setting the picnic table with bright, plastic dinner plates.
How Much Does it Cost?
Prices vary depending on where you live and the local demand for professional home staging. Coastal areas and large metropolitan cities where home staging has been prevalent for years command higher prices. Some real estate agents help sellers Stage® the home themselves. Most listing agents agree, however, that vacant homes show better with staging and will encourage sellers to hire a professional stager. Fees range from $500 to $5,000 or more, depending on square footage and the number of rooms staged.
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Reduce Reuse & Redesign |
Before and After Photos:
Pricing and Home Staging
The biggest incentive packages are being offered by builders, Brown stresses. While many of those can add up to tens of thousands of dollars in the form of price breaks, throw-ins, credits and add-ons, buyers should be wary that the biggest home-value drops are also occurring in areas where there has been an abundance of new construction. Incentives offered by owners in more established, mature markets carry more relative weight, he notes.
There's a Catch-22 aspect to this, however. Too many concessions and incentives have a tendency to make buyers suspicious, says veteran Realtor Barb Schwarz, author of "How To List and Sell Residential Real Estate Successfully" and "Home Staging: The Winning Way to Sell Your House for More Money." "Buyers think: If they're going to do that, then they must really be desperate," she says. "And then they think, 'What's wrong with this house?'" When it all boils down, two things really sell a house, she says. "One is pricing and the other is staging."
Schwarz, who has sold more than 5,000 homes in her career and is considered a pioneer in the home-staging movement, says many homes languish on the market because they are cluttered, dirty and poorly presented and have been branded as tough sells by agents. "The agent doesn't want to show these because they are embarrassing and feel they are wasting people's time," she says.
The average investment in home staging -- about $2,200 -- costs far less than a price reduction on the average home, she says. Staging focuses on relatively simple touches that Schwarz calls the "three C's": cleaning, clutter removal and colors, the latter "C" calling for mostly neutral colors with splashes of bright accents thrown in for balance, she says. "Staging doesn't conceal, it reveals," she says. "No one will purchase your home unless they can imagine themselves living there."
A 2007 survey by HomeGains.com of 2,000 real estate agents in all regions of the U.S. indicates that staging a for-sale home nets a 343 percent return on investment. A survey of 400 homes in the U.S and Canada by Schwarz's own firm, Stagedhomes.com, says that homes prepped for sale by an accredited staging professional sold in an average 31.8 days compared with 161 days for nonstaged homes.
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