Selling a house is stressful, so homeowners look for any advantage they can to get the price they’re asking and to sell as quickly as possible.
A realtor will give advice on what needs fixing, painting, perhaps removing, but there are people out there who specialize in putting the best face on the house you’re trying to sell. House staging can give a seller a leg up in a competitive market, according to the pros who do it.
St. Albert-based Lori Drinkwater runs Fresh Look Design. Staging at the outset is best, but she points out that if a house listing has become stale, and the realtor is talking price reduction, which will likely be in the thousands, enlisting someone to ‘stage’ your house to increase its appeal can pay dividends and attract interest. She says it also frees up the realtor to focus on their job.
Drinkwater has a three-step process. Based on square footage, she charges the client for the time it takes her to assess the condition of the home. Then she makes suggestions for improvements, and the third step is to “showcase” the home.
“It could be moving the furniture around. Taking items out. Bringing items in.”
Jill Gargas of Simply Irresistible Interiors insists that it’s always better to set a home up right, before it goes on the market.
“We have been staging for 13 years and the recurring theme I have seen is that staging is most effective when done prior to the first listing on MLS. The common misconception is that staging helps a seller when all other attempts at selling have failed. This is backward thinking, and it creates unnecessary stress for a seller. If a seller waits for months ‘trying to sell,’ then has to reduce their price a few times to generate interest, potentially losing out on their dream home or moving forward with their plans, how is that OK?”
Gargas ascribes to the old adage “that you never get a second chance to make a first impression, and it’s never been more true than when selling your home.” By staging early, “you are not behind the eight ball chasing the market,” she says.
Sheryol Shera is also a St. Albert-based stager. Most of her work happens after the house has been vacated. Buyers can have a hard time picturing the potential of a space when it’s stripped bare.
“If a house is vacant and somebody’s going to view it, a lot of people can’t look at a room and see how it can be set up. So if there’s furniture in it, it gives them the idea of the space of the room, what can be done with it,” she says.
“We don’t fill a room like you would your home. We make it so people notice things like the fireplace or the big windows that look out to the backyard. We highlight it with mirrors, paintings and that kind of thing. It gives space a definition.”
She describes one recent job where the client wanted to update a house that had ’90s-style oak cabinets and trim.
“Obviously, you’re not going to take all the oak out, so they painted some of it out. And we picked a wall colour that would highlight the oak, and then we put more modern furniture in there, so it lifted the room up, and it didn’t look so dated.”
Shera says sometimes less is more.
“Somebody might say ‘I’m going to put in granite countertops, and that’ll bring the value of my home up. But if the rest of the kitchen is very dated, all that putting granite countertops in is going to do is cost them a lot of money. It’ll make the rest of the kitchen not look as good.”
Sometimes the client just needs advice, and they’ll do the rearranging and other modifications, Shera says.
“We will go into a house and advise people how to stage it themselves before it’s put on the market. We’ll take away the clutter. We’ll tell them to take all your family photos down. We don’t want people looking at your family photos. We want them looking at your countertops and your cupboards. The purpose of staging is to make people want to go to a different room to see what else there is.”
