Selling your house?
Clean up. Take those family photos off the walls. And please, make sure that parade of motley magnets is off the refrigerator.
“The truth is you live in your home, but when you”™re selling it, you are no longer selling that home, you”™re selling that house,” said Katherine Stern, owner of K+L Home Stagers, a professional home restaging company in Croton.
Stern said business has been booming lately in the face of a sagging real estate market.
When trying to sell to as broad a market as possible, houses must be tastefully decorated and void of personal memories.
“I try to find out what is unique in a structure, and what does it have that I can somehow exploit to make the attractiveness of it appeal to as many people as possible?” Stern said.
Stern”™s services can range from walking through the property while the homeowner takes notes on her recommendations, to Stern taking a picture of every aspect of the home and writing up a report, to Stern coming in and implementing all the work herself with a team of professionals, including contractors, painters, carpenters and roofers.
“Bring in a stager prior to putting your house on the market,” Stern said. “It will save you money, time and aggravation. Especially in this market, real estate agents and sellers alike are realizing they have to do everything they can to have an advantage.”
Susan Hendee, vice president of decorating at Show to Sell in Westport, Conn., said the company assists people in selling their houses in many different ways.
For $150, homeowners can purchase a one-hour consultation with a professional stager for room by room evaluation of the house.
“The first thing we tell a person to do is have their house immaculately clean,” Hendee said. “A quick coat of paint can do wonders for a property.”
Re-positioning furniture, re-hanging artwork and ripping up old wall-to-wall carpeting are popular choices for a quick clean up.
However, another aspect of Show to Sell”™s business has been booming lately.
“Frankly in this economy a lot of people don”™t want to spend any money at all, and there are a lot of empty houses on the market for sale right now that look lonely and tired,” Hendee said. “We place home managers into vacant, for-sale properties. People come to us, many of whose houses are under construction themselves, and they bring their own furniture with them to decorate the house and they live in it while the house is on the market.”
And, since the home manager pays utilities and pays an average of $1500 a month to live in the house, it cuts the carrying costs to the homeowner.
While Hendee has noticed a major increase in the home manager program, she has seen a steep decrease in staging newly constructed houses.
“Five years ago, I was staging builder”™s houses like crazy,” Hendee said. “It costs money to stage a house with the appropriate furniture, and now builders have houses that have been sitting there a year and a half, so they don”™t want to put money into staging right now.”
If a homeowner wants to save money and not bring in a professional re-stager, “there are some very strategic tips that you can do on your own,” Stern said.
Always keep the front door clean, and neat and inviting.
Then, “take the stress off and concentrate on one room at a time.”
In the kitchen, take everything off kitchen counters “except maybe the coffee machine and microwave,” and make sure to remove magnets off the refrigerator.
“This will give the perspective buyer the sense of a lot of preparation space,” Stern said. As for the closets in the house, “take out everything that is out of season” and make sure the shelves and floor space are visible.
“This will give a perspective buyer the sense that wow, there”™s a lot of storage space in your closet,” Stern said.
Next, walk around and eliminate one-third of everything around the house. This includes bookshelves, trophies and family pictures.
“That”™s the start of de-personalizing your home,” Stern said. “You are on your way to having your house ready for people to look at.”
