Excerpts From: The Art of the Deal - Real Estate Stagers Conjur Up Appealing Interiors. - An article featuring Julea Joseph
When Suzanne Luchs was selling her Wheaton home three years ago, her realtor brought in a real estate stager to ready the home for sale.
Luchs liked what the stager did to her home so much, she and her family decided not to sell.
"It looked so nice I just didn't want to move," Luchs said. "What really did the trick was that despite the size of my house [1465 square feet], when it finally looked nice and was pulled together, it was fine. What she did helped me see the house in a whole different light."
Faced with having to move again, this time due to her husband's job relocation to Connecticut, Luchs said she didn't think twice about hiring the same real estate stager again.
Real estate staging is an extension of the real estate maxim that you should prep your home for sale. But it goes beyond cleaning the clutter, painting the walls and washing the windows.
"Real estate staging is the process of arranging a home to create an environment that is inviting and encourages the buyer to linger and to focus on the home and not its contents," said Julea Joseph, a real estate stager based in Palos Park and owner of www.thehousestager.com (now Julea.com)
Staging usually involves "neutralizing" a home's interior by removing personal items such as family pictures, religious objects and collections, clearing away clutter and putting the home in its best light by arranging interior furnishings to spotlight the home's assets and downplay its drawbacks.
"The worst thing you'd want to do is have the house so decorated that people can't see themselves in it, they just see the decorations." said Joseph, who is also a board member of the Interior Arrangement and Design Association, a national organization that offers the only certification program for real estate staging. "You want it as neutral as possible. It's almost the exact opposite of decorating."
Real estate stager Carole Bartell, who worked on Luchs' home likened staging to detailing a car prior to sale.
"When you're trying to sell a home, you really have to put your best foot forward," said Bartell, who owns Another Beautiful Creation by Carole in the northwest suburbs.
"I look to use what they have and make it look the best I can," Bartell said. "A lot of times they have really neat things, just not in the right place."
While real estate staging is all the rage in California and also popular in Texas and on the East Coast, it is relatively uncharted territory in the Midwest and the Chicago area. But some local Realtors are catching on to the trend and finding it's an excellent tool to use when trying to sell a home.
Realtor Sheryl Duncan, an agent at Realty Executive in Wheaton, has been working with Bartell for 10 years because it helps to bring in an objective third party to recommend improvements to a home.
"It's a real advantage for [Duncan] because it's hard for the broker to say, 'This house is outdated.' People don't want to hear that from their agent. They want her to be on their side," Bartell said.
Wendy Dilda, a real estate stager in San Antonio and vice president for the Interior Arrangement and Design Association, agreed.
"Some Realtors are hesitant to make too many suggestions because they'll alienate their client," Dilda said.
Stagers help their clients see their home as a product, rather than as a place filled with memories.
"How you live in a house is not how you sell it," Duncan said.
Duncan, who was the listing agent on Luchs' home, said staging helps her sell homes faster and helps sellers get their asking price or close to it.
In Luchs' case, her home sold in two days for close to the asking price.
Bartell tells of a town home that had been on the market for eight months without selling. The sellers brought in a new real estate agent, Duncan, who in turn brought in Bartell. Bartell did her thing and the town home sold in four days.
Joseph, who also is the owner of Reinventing Space interior design company, likes to tell the story of a friend who sold her California bungalow for $141,000 more that the listing price after real estate stagers came in and revamped the house.
The stagers made Joseph's friend move out of the home and into a hotel for two days while they chose which furniture stayed and the clients removed the rest. They organized closets - "they made the linen closet look huge" - and rearranged furniture to put the home in its best light.
"More than 500 people went through the home on the first day. The home listed for $959,000 and sold for $1.1 million, Joseph said.
Dilda said staging works well in both buyer's and seller's markets. In a seller's market, staging helps the seller get more for his or her home; in a buyer's market, it helps your house stand out compared to similar ones in the neighborhood.
Staging can run the gamut from rearranging a few things and adding a few accents to full-blown staging in which stagers bring in new furniture.
Real estate agent Linda Fogarty of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Orland Park recently brought in Joseph to do a full-blown staging on a million-dollar home in Orland Park that has been on the market for six months. Faced with the prospect of lowering the asking price on the home again, Fogarty persuaded the sellers to try staging instead.
The traditional colonial home, which belonged to a busy doctor who was rarely home, was minimally furnished in contemporary styles, Joseph said. "We were trying to join the two tastes together," said Joseph, who arranged for the seller to rent some furniture for the staging. Fogarty got a call from an interested buyer the same day that Joseph was finishing up her work.
Kris Augsburger, district manager for Brook Furniture Rental's showroom in Downers Grove, said staging is about 20 percent of the company's business in the Chicago market, compared to about 80 percent of its business in northern and southern California, where the practice is much more popular.
Staging can range from $200 for an evaluation to in excess of $1,000 to adjust things in every room of the house.
Joseph put the average cost at $1,500 to $3,000 but said it could go as high as $10,000 or more.
Staging is usually paid for by the seller, but in some cases, the cost is split between the seller and Realtor. However, Duncan said she pays for staging for her clients as a service.
"I think it's for everybody. I probably use it more for low-end homes than high-end homes. I say, 'give me your house for a week and I'll be done'," Duncan said.
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