All the home's a stage

Excerpts From: All the home's a stage

Daily Southtown; June 14, 2002; By Jim Kharouf, Real Estate Writer

Real estate agent Linda Fogarty took on the property no one else wanted - not other Realtors and certainly not the pool of buyers. But by using a selling technique called "staging," Fogarty was able to sell an upscale property that hadn't sold for three years, in two months.

"It was a gorgeous house, 7,500 square feet on two acres," said Fogarty, an associate broker with Coldwell Banker Residential in Orland Park. "But the doctor who lived in it was so busy he never had the time to decorate it. And when you're talking about a high-end property, people walk in and want something beautiful and they want the house to 'wow' them."

Fogarty called on the services of Julea Joseph, owner of thehousestager.com (now Julea.com) in Palos Park, who helped give the property a makeover that included new paint, new landscaping and rented furniture that showed off the place's best attributes. Staging is often a hard concept for home sellers to grasp, because professionals like Joseph usually end up taking the sentimentality out of the home and replacing it with more neutral items that look like they're from Pottery Barn.

"The concept is not the beautifully decorated house," Joseph said. "It's the house that shows off the beautiful features of the house, not what's in the house. So you want people to walk out saying, 'Can you believe how beautiful that kitchen is?' or 'Can you believe how beautiful the view out of the living room window is?' It's not about people walking out and talking about how beautiful your Lladro collection is."

The idea of staging has evolved over the past several years but has taken time to catch on. It often leads to Joseph admittedly looking like "the bad guy."

"When I do a consultation and I'm walking through the house, I try to explain to [people] that this house is no longer their home," Joseph said. "This is a piece of property that is going on the market. And when we de-decorate, the way the house looks is no longer a reflection of who they are. That is the hardest thing for homeowners to understand, because people are proud of their homes."

Just the Right Touch

The idea of hiring a professional stager to come in and sell a home is still relatively new. Fogarty said stagers didn't exist five years ago. Two years ago, only about 10 percent of her clients used the technique. Today, about 50 percent of her home sellers incorporate some level of staging.

"A lot of listings I take on have been on the market for a long time," Fogarty said. "If a house gets stale and sits on the market for a long time, they keep reducing the price. That's not always the answer. If you can get them to stop reducing the price, let a stager come and make these changes. You'll either end up with multiple offers or you end up getting what you were looking for in the first place."

Occasionally, Fogarty and Joseph say home sellers actually get more than they expected. Joseph cited a home she worked on in LaGrange Park that originally was going to be listed for $289,000, but needed a fair amount of cosmetic improvements, such as painting and landscaping. After Joseph finished staging the home with new paint, decorations, landscaping and gutters, the owner priced it at $325,000. It sold four hours after listing.

What goes into a home staging depends on the condition of the home itself, Joseph said. Some require interior and exterior paint jobs and landscaping. Other homes need a swapping of furniture and pictures. For furniture and interior decorating, stagers sometimes rent furniture or supply generic art for family photos. Joseph's advice to home sellers is simple, 'neutralize, neutralize, neutralize."

The pink sponge painted rooms for the girls should be painted over in a beige color or some soft earth tone. Why? Because the prospective home buyers may have teen boys and a pink paint job automatically triggers thoughts that the room or other rooms need to be repainted.

The cost of Joseph's services range widely, from $250 for a consultation and recommendations for the homeowners to full-service jobs that can cost up to $10,000 for painters and professional landscapers. Staging can take from a day or two to two weeks. "It's hard for people to put money up front in order to sell their house," Joseph said. "But you're going to get the price you want for that house."

Real estate agents have been preaching the benefits of neutral colors for years, but redecorating a house is still catching on. For home sellers who just want to do a few small odds and ends, the littlest things can perk up a room, said Jack Wolf, a Realtor with Remax Team 2000 in Palos Heights.

"Sunflowers are amazing little tools," Wolf said. "Put a live plant in there and it changes everything. A lot of it is common sense."

Home stagings work in both sellers and buyers markets, but real estate agents say that stagings provide a bit more value in a down market. Right now, the south and southwest suburban markets are still hot.

"We're in an absolute seller's market right now so you don't have to do much to get your house sold," Wolf said. "But in a typical market, where you're competing with several other houses, you want that "wow" as they walk in. Home sellers want to offer something that feels comfortable and gives buyers the feeling that they are getting a lot more than they were expecting.Sometimes, it's just mental and has nothing to do with dollar values."

Joseph said that is exactly what home sales often come down to.

"Staging is like a beautifully wrapped package," Joseph said. "You're making the home look beautiful, exquisite and wonderful. It's like a surprise."

reinventing space