HOME STAGING: PART TWO OF TWO
Small investment pays dividends
June 7, 2008
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Sherryll Sobie
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
Staging your home for sale is all well and good. But living in a staged home is a whole other matter.
In Thursday's Homes & Condos section, I shared my experience undertaking my own DIY fluff job, which I thought was pretty darn good, until certified Canadian staging professional Tara Savelle, owner, Home On Display (homeon display.ca), breezed through and gently but firmly told me otherwise.
I asked Savelle to grade my efforts, thinking that my husband, Robert, and I represent the average homeowner: whatever we can do, you can do.
What grade did "we" – that's the collective "we" – receive? We got a C. Yes, boring, bland, blah. Not good, not horrible. Not anything, really.
So Savelle rolled up her sleeves and began to transform my home. She rearranged furniture to better suit the room, took down framed prints, put up new ones in the right size and scale.
She worked as much as possible with what we had but ended up bringing in some props including side tables, a throw rug, prints and pretty pots.
I'll never know how much money or how quickly our North York bungalow would have sold presented as a DIY home stage. But with Savelle's fine-tuning, our house was snatched up in one week, in a competing bid, at $12,000 over asking.
According to our agent, Diane Speer, Broker of Record, Royal LePage Urban Realty Brokerage, our home's quick sale and healthy price tag was not typical for the neighbourhood.
"The 2007 stats indicate that it took an average of 26 days to sell comparable houses, and only one-quarter were over asking," Speer says. "Considering yours sold within the first week is a definite testament to staging and correct pricing."
That's the happily-ever-after ending. But if ever there was a "no pain, no gain" situation, this was it, because what happened between the completion of the home stage and the sale of the house was, in a word, agony.
As Savelle says, a staged home should strive to look like a model home: livable but not lived in. That means no dishes in sink (clean or dirty), no soiled laundry, no piles of washed clothes waiting to be folded and put away; counters, tables, floors and tubs must be sparkling; bed linens tightly tucked, hospital corners and all.
For those who like to conserve water, you can forget right now about saving up for a second flush. In fact, just leaving the lid in the upright position is considered a major staging infraction.
Add young kids into the equation, food and drink spillage, tons of toys, goopy arts and crafts, and all of a sudden, living in a staged home goes from agony to AGONY.
With our 2-year-old twins, Robert and I suffered double the work. On the up side, Callum and Quinn go to daycare during the week so the house was under control throughout the day. But come the weekend, when showings are most popular, we discovered that it's best to make alternate arrangements for naps and meals.
Here are some other tricks we learned:
Have you ever seen a model home with food-encrusted high chairs as part of the decor? Diapers and wipes in full view? No, neither have we. Remove kids' stuff from common areas. When not in use, roll high chairs into the garage (or a neighbour's backyard), shove bath toys into a storage bin in the closet, ditto the diapers and wipes.
Small toys, like trains and tracks, can be plopped into matching decorative boxes, while larger, sit-on toys can be neatly parked in kids' bedrooms. Display books on shelves.
Throw a load in the washer every morning, deposit it in the dryer before dinner, fold and put away after dinner. Get the kids to help if you can. Stay on top of this or you might resort to hiding smelly clothes under your bed.
Every morning, we stripped old mismatched sheets from our bed and replaced them with "show sheets," a brand new set, crisp with colours intact. Our kids' cribs were simply tidied up.
Read mail as soon as possible. Put in a desk drawer, but don't forget it's there. Same with newspapers.
Scrub all surfaces, including floors, countertops, tables, sinks, bathtub and shower. Vacuum carpet. Dust.
Eat out as much as possible to avoid constant cleaning (see above).
Add an extra half hour or more to your morning routine.
Another option is to rent, or if finances don't allow, consider staying with family or friends. Then again, if you want your loved ones to continue loving you, accept the fact that living in a staged home is short-term pain for long-term gain.
To read Part One of Sherryll Sobie's staging efforts, go to yourhome.ca.
Toronto Star