Charisse Lombardo has a tip for homeowners who want to sell their house quickly and profitably: Hire a “stager” to help you make cosmetic changes and create vignettes that make the potential home buyer think, “I can live here.”
“Staging is the process of preparing a home for resale,” said Lombardo, an interior designer, decorator and stager in Ridgefield. “It began in California a few years ago and became even more popular with the downturn in the real estate market.” And staging can range anywhere from do-it-yourself cosmetic changes ”“ a coat of paint, ripping up dead shrubbery ”“ to major overhauls of a home that can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
“When I design or decorate a home, it”™s based on how the family is going to live,” Lombardo said. “When I”™m staging a home, the homeowners”™ opinion comes out of the equation. The only thing that”™s important is what will make the house look better to a prospective buyer.”
That means “depersonalizing” the home, she said, by doing such things as removing clutter and family photographs. “You don”™t want a prospective client coming in and saying, ”˜What a beautiful family.”™ They have to walk in and say, ”˜Oh, my family could live here.”™”
That concept of depersonalizing a home can be difficult for homeowners sometimes. “People get very married to their homes, which is why I tell real estate agents, ”˜You”™re ruining your relationship with your homeowners by telling them they need to clean up their house.”™ It”™s very difficult to tell someone ”˜Your house smells like your dog.”™ You have to have some credentials behind you to say, ”˜If you take my advice, you”™ll sell your home faster and for more money.”™”
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A-ha moment
Lombardo took one of those long trudges through a few jobs before turning her innate entrepreneurial and design skills into a career. She grew up in West Islip and Hampton Bays on Long Island, then studied accounting “because I was good at it in high school.”
“It seemed like a logical choice,” she said. “And I wanted my own apartment and wanted to make money to pay the rent.” She took accounting jobs on Wall Street, her first and second with insurance companies, her third with a property management company, spending nine years in the industry.
“But corporate life was not for me,” she said. “I was just so unhappy. I didn”™t like going to the same desk, staring at the same faces every day, staring at my computer and working numbers.” She tried being a wedding planner on weekends, but gave that up when her third bride called at 3 a.m. in a tizzy because the sequins on her dress didn”™t match the sequins on her shoes. “That was it for me. I said, ”˜I can”™t do this.”™”
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She tried makeup consultation on weekends, “but I didn”™t enjoy touching other people”™s faces,” she said. “I remember sitting with a girlfriend I worked with and saying that I know I”™m supposed to be doing something else and I didn”™t know what it was, but it was supposed to be creative. Her response was, ”˜Why don”™t you do interior decoration.”™ I looked at her like, ”˜What are you talking about?”™”
What her friend was talking about was Lombardo”™s family and her talent. “Your dad”™s a contractor, your granddad”™s an electrician, you mom does beautiful stained glass windows and your other grandfather has one of the largest carpet and tiling stores on Long Island,” she said. “And you do all your friends”™ and families”™ places.”
It”™s a hobby, Lombardo said, “just something I like to do.” And in what she described as “one of those a-ha moments,” her friend said, “Why shouldn”™t you want to get paid doing something you like to do?”
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Better than the stock market
Lombardo took a part time job at a paint and wallpaper shop, staying for a year while she attended the Parsons School of Design in Manhattan, then moved to Greenwich with her husband, where she joined “a very high-end interior designer,” remaining there for five years. Then, with the designer”™s help, “I went out on my own,” working first out of the Danbury condominium the couple had moved into ”“ “It was beautiful up here, and we got three times the townhouse for the same price as condominiums in Greenwich” ”“ and then into a Ridgefield office (www.clm-interiors.com) in April 2006.
About 75 percent of her business is interior design and decorating; 25 percent is in staging. But when she does interior design or decorating, she discovered, she”™s really doing staging as well. “The majority of my clients are also concerned about resale,” she said, “so I”™m also thinking about a prospective buyer.”
In fact, “when I first heard about staging, I said to myself, ”˜I”™ve been doing this for years,”™ making sure changes would work to the homeowners”™ benefit when they sold their house.” Many homeowners, she said, plan on living in their homes for five to 10 years, so resale is always in the forefront of their thinking.
Lombardo”™s staging comes in two packages, one is Basic Staging in which she makes a room-by-room list of DIY projects to get the house ready for market. The other is the Beyond Staging Experience, her own trademarked product that she said creates “maximum impact, maximum return” for the homeowner. And it can seem pricey.
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She recently was called in by a Stamford homeowner who had her house on the market for 10 months and had dropped the price three times from its original $750,000 asking price. “We took 30 days to do minor cosmetic construction,” she said of the $60,000 project. “We took all the paneling off the walls and put up sheetrock and molding, removed hollow luan doors and replaced them with solid panel doors, painted all the molding through the house, replaced the very old avocado green linoleum in the kitchen with hard vinyl tile, changed the countertops, painted the entire kitchen, including the cabinets, updated all the fixtures and lighting throughout the house, gutted the upstairs bathroom and partially gutted the downstairs bathroom.”
Four weeks after the makeover, she sold the house for $250,000 above the original asking price, Lombardo said. “That”™s better than the stock market.”
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