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Setting The Stage In A Changing Real Estate
Market:
By: Kamil Z. Skawinski
Not Only Can You Sell A Home Faster And At A
Higher Price With Staging, But It Can Also Be A
Unique Career Choice For Those With The Right
Training, Drive And Aesthetic Sense
With the U.S. real estate market cooling, builders, real
estate agents and home sellers have had to adapt and
adopt new marketing strategies in order to attract
today's much pickier and more price-conscious home
buyers. Consequently, it's not uncommon to see price
reductions in the tens of thousands of dollars on newly
built and existing homes, with generous cash rebates and
special pricing programs also being offered on those
that have yet to be constructed.
Realtors, too, are doing what they can to help bolster
decreasing sales, with many now thinking "out of the
box" and offering once unthinkable incentives to home
shoppers. BuySide Realty, for example, now gives buyers
a 75 percent rebate on all property listings in
California, Illinois and Florida. The site's founders
believe that, thanks to the Internet, consumers are
empowered with enough information to be in a position to
find their own homes. Of the 7.1 million existing homes
purchased in 2005, in fact, 2.9 million were actually
found by buyers working on their own-and such shoppers
only turned to a real estate agent for help in making an
offer and closing the sale. "Arguably, it is one of the
agent's primary values to help the consumer find the
home they want to buy. It simply doesn't make sense for
the agent to retain the full buy-side commission for the
work that the home buyer has actually done," the website
declares.
Sellers have also had to adopt new strategies marketing
properties in areas where slow sales have created a glut
of unsold homes in every price range. Unlike in the peak
years of the real estate boom, when even the humblest of
fixer-uppers generated attention and multiple offers,
it's now become critical for a house to look its best
from the outset so that it stands out from its
competition and that it's memorable for all of the right
(and not the wrong) reasons.
What Can Staging Do For You As A Home Seller?
When a home is listed for sale, it becomes more than
just a home: it becomes a product on the market. Just
like any other consumer product, it will have to contend
with competition-in tough real estate markets, a lot of
competition-from newly built homes that have been
meticulously decorated by teams of interior designers
and professional landscapers, as well as existing
properties of similar age, style, and price range. And
the secret to selling a home faster and at a better
price will often be in the way it is "packaged."
When buyers first walk into a home that's for sale, they
immediately form an opinion about it-and if that first
impression is negative, there is little that will change
their mind, even if the home has everything they are
looking for. If, however, that impression is positive,
they will more eagerly explore the rest of the home to
see if it will work for them.
With the assistance of professional home staging,
sellers can gain that positive first-impression because
stagers have the experience to take a home and transform
it into an inviting space with broad appeal to a wide
range of buyers. For such professionals, the house is a
literal stage upon which they arrange the right
props-furniture, artwork, sounds, smells and objects to
engage the emotions-so that a potential buyer will find
it more appealing and inviting because he or she can
readily imagine living in that house and enjoying it in
the manner the stager had presented.
Barb Schwarz, author of Home Staging: The Winning Way to
Sell Your House for More Money, founder and president of
the International Association of Home Staging
Professionals (IAHSP) and CEO of StagedHomes.com, claims
that staging can not only increase curb appeal, but also
boost a home's selling price 6 percent to 20 percent in
a moderately priced neighborhood, and as much as 20
percent to 25 percent for luxury homes in a particularly
hot market. And she should know: she's staged over 5,000
homes and sold over 3,000 homes she's personally staged
as a working real estate agent and the creator of Home
Staging.
"I, in fact, created this industry back in 1972 and I've
worked on it for the past 33 years. To me, it's really
exciting to see, in my lifetime, this industry expanding
the way it has," says Schwarz, who got involved in
staging while in real estate herself and while dealing
with clients who were selling their homes but who
weren't necessarily doing everything to help make their
properties as appealing and presentable to buyers.
Unfortunately, both now and in the past, real estate
agents are reluctant to suggest making changes to a
seller's home for fear of possibly losing the listing.
Most, in fact, don't go beyond dispensing basic advice
along the lines of "neutral tones are least likely to
offend prospective buyers."
"Agents, even the most well-meaning and motivated,
simply had and have a very limited time to do all those
extra things...because they're engaged in the process of
marketing and showing more than one home. They simply
don't have the time to deal with the details of helping
one home seller make their home as attractive as
possible. Plus, there's that very thorny issue that it
just isn't easy to tell a client that they really need
to make major changes to a home in which they are still
living-that they have to clean it up, de-clutter,
de-personalize it, and so on. An agent simply isn't best
suited to that role, and so I recognized that someone
should play it and be there to both help the agent and
home owner by assisting both in making the home as
presentable and desirable as it could be."
Schwarz, thus, started educating her own agents on how
to communicate such critical things to home sellers so
that they, in turn, would then be open to staging their
homes in order to get top dollar for their properties.
She was, in fact, the first to coin the phrase, "Staging
the home for sale."
In the 1970s, though, this was a novel term and concept
in the real estate industry and Schwarz had to explain
its meaning to both agents and sellers. As a result of
her own work in staging and after teaching over 700,000
agents and decorators from across America about staging
from 1985 to the present, however, the term has become
universally accepted and understood.
Today, things have changed to the point that it's now
not uncommon for a home seller to first contact a home
stager before they contact a real estate agent, says
Schwarz. People have come to understand that this is an
important step in the process of getting the home ready
for sale so that it attracts positive attention from
both agents and home buyers. And staging is not only
changing the real estate industry, it's also impacting
upon the local economy.
"If we can sell a house for $104,000 more than the
neighbor who didn't use staging-a house with the same
floor-plan, with the same amenities, the same-size lot
and in the same neighborhood-we're positively affecting
the pricing of that neighborhood and positively
impacting upon the economy, because the seller won, the
buyer won...the agent won, the neighborhood won, the
mortgage banker won. Our impact is far-reaching: it has
a ripple-effect beyond just one home."
Staging is also increasingly becoming an important
consideration for real estate brokerages to bear in mind
as a critical component of the home-selling process,
because sellers, who've later learned that similar
properties to theirs had sold for considerably more
money thanks to staging, have filed and won court cases
against agents who failed to take advantage of staging's
benefits. These disgruntled clients won their cases
because they were able to prove that their agents had
failed to live up to their fiduciary responsibility and
hadn't contractually done everything they could do to
sell the home for the most money possible.
And Schwarz sees staging eventually altering the
landscape of the real estate commissions.
"What I'm predicting, over time, is that we'll see a
shift-and I've even said so in my book-that sellers will
increasingly wake up and ask their realtors, 'Hey, wait
a minute. I'm paying you to sell my house, and yet I
paid a stager $2,500, and it sold the next morning
because they staged it? You should be paying for this.
Why should I be paying for it? It should be part of your
marketing budget.'"
What Staging Entails
Although staging has elements of home decorating as part
of its process, Schwarz is quick to point out that
staging doesn't involve replacing all of the furniture
and existing design elements within the home. Rather,
staging is a multi-step process that involves cleaning,
de-cluttering, de-personalizing and aesthetically
harmonizing, rearranging, and freshening the home's
interior and exterior elements so that everything is
made more inviting, more open, and set up so that a
potential buyer can more readily see himself/herself
actually living in that space.
"We go into a home and we try to use what the homeowner
already has," Schwarz emphasizes, "and we try to add a
touch of creativity using the things that are already
there, perhaps adding one or two new elements so that
the rooms don't look like a disjointed collection of
items at a furniture store."
Most homes in America, alas, have too much stuff, too
much chaos, too much clutter-and clutter is what eats
into the home's equity.
"If a house is difficult to walk through, if the beds
are unmade, if there's laundry or clothing all over the
place, if there's an obviously un-emptied litter-box in
the bathroom, if the kitchen cabinets are over-stuffed
and counters overloaded...well, it's like trying to get
a good price for a car you're selling but hadn't cleaned
up," says Schwarz. However, when the rationale behind
staging is explained to people in a supportive and
non-threatening way, they quickly get it.
Ironic as it sounds, many people simply don't think
about doing any such work when selling their homes,
their most expensive and appreciating asset-yet they'll
spend top-dollar to detail a car, a depreciating asset,
before selling it or trading it in. Staging, therefore,
can be thought of as partly home-detailing on steroids.
But staging also has other advantages beyond boosting a
home's value. The average sale time for a staged home is
six days, says Schwarz. Homes which are not staged, in
contrast, remain unsold for an average of 45 days
nationally. And that's an impressive statistic, indeed.
Staging a home can run between $500 and $5,000
(depending on size and the amount of work needed), with
$1,800 being the average. Frugal do-it-yourselfers, of
course, can make use of the available books and how-to
videos about staging to try to make their homes more
presentable and attractive to buyers. But if time and
convenience are issues, Schwarz recommends that sellers
seek the advice and assistance of a qualified accredited
professional, underscoring that it's important to work
only with those with the right training. "Sellers should
interview two to three staging professionals before
making a final choice, remembering, too, to ask for
credentials along with samples of their work."
How You Can Get Involved
You can't just enter this business by waking up one
morning and saying, "Gee, I think I'll become a stager
today," says Schwarz.
"As a teacher, I know how important training and
education are and, as a broker, I also know what buyer's
say and mean. Consequently, stagers must be in a
position to stage for the buyer for the particular
property, and this involves many aspects, many things
decorators, for example, just don't know about or don't
consider. And that's why I teach staging-that's why I've
come up with the designation and training program for
ASPs [Accredited Staging Professional]-and that's also
why I've come up with the association [International
Association of Home Staging Professionals (IAHSP)]. I've
done all of this so that we keep the bar high in the
industry I'd created, because we have to self-patrol:
the association has standards, it has integrity
guidelines, ethical standards, and we hold stagers
accountable."
But if you've ever had the urge to try something new and
different, and you have a sense of aesthetics and an
inclination for working in the area of interior and
exterior design, you might very well have what it takes
to become a successful stager and should consider
training to become an Accredited Staging Professional or
ASP (this designation is required to become a member of
the IAHSP).
ASPs attend an extensive three-day program developed by
Schwarz, and they must pass an examination to verify and
demonstrate their competence in staging homes. The basic
course is very detailed, enlightening, motivational, and
fun and it includes a hands-on experience in staging.
Graduates of this three-day course are immediately
qualified to attend the six-day Accredited Staging
Professional Master (ASPM) course, an advanced
instructional session focusing upon the latest in
business building ideas, marketing concepts, home
staging techniques and ideas, as well as a staging
"shopping trip" with Schwarz that helps future stagers
develop an inventory of appropriate props and
furnishings to give a home the proper scene.
"I have a team of 16 trainers and we teach in all 50
states. The basic ASP course runs $2,250 and the six-day
ASPM course costs $4,250. I teach all of my graduates
everything they need to know about the business so that
they can both do the actual work as well as have a
proper paper-trail for everything-legal forms,
consultation guides, you name it-and so that they know
how to make the most of this home marketing tool," says
Schwarz. "We also help our students to determine the
pricing structures they should adopt for the services
they perform in their area-things like putting in a bid,
charging for a consultation, and so on. When they leave,
they have everything necessary to get started."
Unsurprisingly, based on her experience, Schwarz sees
staging becoming a growing business opportunity for
motivated individuals seeking a new and different
career. Many of her staging students come from all walks
of life.
"What's not important is past experience with
decorating, but rather an open mind, the ability to tap
into your own creativity, and the willingness to help
people. What we try to do here is have them look at a
home and see what they would do to make it the most
attractive and livable for the least amount of money. A
good stager will do what is needed to prepare the home
for sale according to the home owner's timeframe and
budget-and that's what we try to teach. We don't
decorate, we simplify-and above all we teach our people
how to communicate effectively so that they best serve
their clients," concludes Schwarz.
© 2006 by Kamil Skawinski (E-mail: skawinski@hotmail.com
)
All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without prior
written consent.
Writer Information
Written by
Kamil Z. Skawinski, Science and Technology
Editor
Kamil Z. Skawinski is a freelance writer
specializing in technology issues who lives
in Milwaukee.
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