Sellers stage homes for better results

Maria Love's Southern California home needed a face-lift. On and off the market for two years, the stucco, five-bedroom house had suffered through three broken deals and steep price cuts. To better appeal to potential buyers, Love's broker suggested she hire professionals "to stage" the home.

"I had to sleep on it," Love said. "I thought I was a decent decorator. I got a little emotional turning the creative control over to someone else. But I realized I'm not selling myself; I'm selling a house."

In one day, home stager Tawni Oppenheim and her crew transformed Love's home, using most of her furnishings, into a buyer-friendly house. They rearranged furniture to highlight the home's best features, added furniture to empty rooms and decluttered hallways and bathrooms. Love was delighted when she saw the results.

"It was like when you're a kid and it's Christmas morning," Love said.

Home staging is the process of cleaning, decluttering and neutralizing a home to help buyers see a home's full potential. As home sales decline and a record number of for-sale houses cram the market, more sellers are turning to home staging to make their properties stand out.

"You're merchandizing the product, which is your home," said Barb Schwarz, president of trade group International Association of Home Staging Professionals and author of "Home Staging: The winning way to sell your house for more money."

"Staging is investing time and energy and depersonalizing. It's not decorating," she said.

But the service isn't cheap. Consultations with a professional home stager can run up to $500, while the staging itself can cost up to $6,000 depending on the number of rooms that are staged and how many temporary furnishings the stager adds.

There are, of course, many parts of home staging sellers can do themselves.

The process starts on the outside: clean gutters, hedge lawns, groom shrubbery, add a new coat of paint if it's in the budget. Remove children's toys, yard art like gnomes and wind chimes and boats and RVs from the driveway. Tuck the garbage cans in the garage.
"People who drive past and see a house that looks bad from the outside won't even stop to look inside," said Shell Brodnax, president and chief executive of the Real Estate Staging Association, another trade group.

On the inside, start with a good scrub-down of the entire house. Hire a professional cleaning service if it's in your budget. Leave no surface untouched, which includes wiping fingerprints off windows and doors, removing black scuff marks from the walls, and tackling unwanted odors.

Relegate pets to the outdoors and, during an open house, send them to the puppy hotel.
Kitchens and baths must be "Q-tip clean," Schwarz says. Tile grout should be bleached, cracks caulked and any mold or stains removed. Replace old hand soap with bottled liquid soap and swap out frayed towels with new ones. Paint over bold colors with inoffensive, neutral ones.

Once the house can pass the white-glove test, homeowners should pack up a third to two-thirds of their belongings, interior designer and home stager Lindsey Apple recommends. Not only will this declutter a room, it will also help during the moving process.

The first things to go: framed photographs, knickknack collections, extra throw blankets and pillows, and stacks of magazines and books. Hide those umpteen remotes in a handsome basket. In the kitchen, store toasters, coffee makers and other small appliances in the cabinets to showcase the countertops.

"It's great time to purge before you move," Brodnax said. "If it's something you don't want, garage sale it or donate it."

After attacking the clutter, take a step back and survey each room from the doorway. Identify any focal points like hardwood floors, fireplaces and picture windows, and arrange the furniture to highlight them.

However, less is always more in staging. Too much furniture and too many rugs can shrink a space and hinder traffic flow. The goal is to get potential buyers to feel comfortable fully stepping into a room.

Redecorate the spaces with a light touch. Add greenery and flowers to tabletops, but make sure to replace them before they wilt. Use a brightly colored throw blanket or one or two pillows to infuse color in the room. Make sure all lightbulbs work and light up shadowy areas.

"You want create an emotional appeal to it so buyers can envision themselves living in the home," Brodnax said.

Outside, arrange potted plants on each side of the front door to draw the buyer in. Match the pots to the trim of the house to coordinate colors. If there's no trim, a quick fix: add shutters to windows to spice up the facade.

The drawback to staging is that it forces those still living there to alter their habits. Apple photographs each room for her clients, so they can arrange the rooms before an open house instead of constantly living in a staged house.

But many real estate agents are convinced that staging is worth the hassle.

"I recommend staging to almost all of my clients," said Re/Max broker John Puhek, who is Love's listing agent. "The concept is that you don't have a second chance to make first impression."

The day after Love had her home staged she had an open house.

"All I could hear (at the open house) was, ‘Wow, this is beautiful,"' she recalled. "The kinds of things I was hearing made me know for sure, without a doubt, that this was absolutely the right decision."

It was also the right decision to simultaneously cut the asking price this summer from just over $800,000 to $785,000. In about a month, the property sold for $775,000.