Less clutter, more light and a fresh look can sell listings quickly. That’s why more and more Realtors are bringing in interior decorators and staging homes to sell. Here’s how. by Bridget McCrea It starts when Carmen and Ski Zielinski pull up to the home’s curb. First, they scan the yard, check out the paint job and roof, and eyeball the entryway and front door. Even the mailbox and rosebushes aren’t safe from their scrutiny. Once inside the home, the Zielinskis buckle down and start looking for quick ways to bring more light into every room while making the spaces look less cluttered. Sounds like a pair of homebuyers on the prowl for new digs? Think again. The Zielinskis are a husband-wife team of associates with Century 21 AAA Realty Inc. in Fort Lauderdale, and they “stage” every one of their listings.

It’s a strategy that Carmen says helped push the Carmen and Ski Sales Group’s sales to $18 million last year. The pair began staging homes about four years ago after realizing that in order to sell at the right price and in the right time frame, every home needed that extra touch to attract the right buyers. “Every home is different,” says Carmen. “It’s a matter of finding the appeal in each home and heightening it — that’s staging.

”No matter the price range of the home, a little sprucing up and decluttering can make a huge difference in the final sales price. And, it doesn’t have to be expensive.

Recently, for example, Carmen listed a small home that had been updated, but still had older bathrooms. The flooring, in particular, was just “downright awful,” she recalls. “I suggested that the owner install new carpeting and accent it with towels, and it sold,” she says. “It’s amazing that something so incidental can make such a big difference.”

To get their homes staged, the Zielinskis provide the direction and their own labor. The homeowner pays for any materials, props or professional labor. One of the simplest steps costs absolutely nothing, says Carmen, who sweeps through every home opening all the windows before a showing. “If there’s something blocking a window, move it,” she advises. “Letting the light in can make a monumental difference in a home."

Enter Staging

Realtors have been sprucing up homes and making suggestions for years, but it’s only in the last five years that the word “staging” has caught on. The concept’s originator is Barb Schwarz, president of Stagedhomes.com of San Francisco, who says she invented staging back in 1972.

Today, Schwarz holds the U.S. federally registered trademark on the word “stage” as it pertains to preparing homes for sale. She speaks often on the subject and in 1998 developed an Accredited Staging Professional (ASP) course.

“Realtors were afraid to tell sellers what to do with their homes for fear of insulting them, and many of them still are,” says Schwarz, a Realtor herself. “We all knew about the cat smell and the bad wallpaper, so everyone was very hungry for a way to alleviate those issues and sell the homes quickly, and at the right price.”

Jerry Fowler, broker of Jerry Fowler and the Result Team Realtors in Columbia, S.C., began staging his listed homes in the early 1990s with the help of an interior designer who charged $75 to prepare a home for sale. After learning the tricks of the trade from her, Fowler brought the service in-house in 1997, and today he and his wife, Judy, stage each home that they list.

With one location and eight agents who sold $16 million in properties last year, Fowler first provides each seller with an extensive, room-by-room checklist of staging tips and advice. He then walks the sellers through the property, pointing out simple steps that they can take to improve their home’s position in the marketplace.

Sometimes, the results of staging can be both dramatic and profitable for agents. Fowler recalls a recent listing that had been on the market with four other associates for 10 months. After giving his newly acquired listing a once-over, Fowler pinpointed a drab, crowded master bedroom as the culprit. “We [opened] up the drapes, added some color and removed a few pieces of furniture,” says Fowler. “It sold within three weeks.”

It Can Be So Simple

Sometimes staging simply means hauling out mementos and clutter that new homebuyers don’t need to see anyway. One of Fowler’s favorite lines is “You’re going to be moving anyway, so why not start packing now?” He points his clients in the direction of a mini-storage facility and helps them figure out which items it would be best to keep out of the potential buyers’ sight.

“ When you have a home on the market, it’s a lot like living in a glass house,” reasons Fowler, who also uses props to make homes appealing—a vase of fresh or silk flowers as a focal point for a family room, for example, or a new table to replace a worn one. Over the years, he says, he’s honed his technique for breaking the news to sellers that their comfort items — for example, an old armchair — probably won’t help sell their home.

“ People are sensitive, so you have to be careful,” says Fowler. “The key is to just suggest a new approach, such as bringing in a table that will blend with the home’s style a little better. More often than not, it’s more a matter of removing items, since collecting and cluttering are simply human nature.”

Focal Poin

tAsk Judi Starliper, a Realtor with Realty Executives Associates in Knoxville, Tenn., the most critical part of the staging process and her answer is simple: every room needs a focal point. “We walked into a house the other day that had stuffed animals all over the place — they had to be among the first to go,” she says. “From there, we go about finding and accenting the focal point in each room, such as the fireplace in a family room or the island in a kitchen.”

In the real estate business for about 28 years, Starliper and her 15-person team sold $60 million last year. They’ve been staging all their homes for three years now and have one team member dedicated to staging all the company’s listings. She says trimmed shrubs, a mowed yard and a clean-smelling home also go a long way in attracting buyers. Also important are open blinds and drapes that let sunlight pour into a home.

Staging Made Simple
Here are staging tips for every area of the home that you can use on your next listing, courtesy of Jerry Fowler, of Jerry Fowler and the Result Team Realtors in Columbia, S.C.:

The Outside
• Put a new doormat at the entry and a new mailbox and post, if aged. Then, trim back vegetation and add mulch to flower beds and shrubs.
• Paint, stain or varnish the front door, polish the brass and install a new brass kick plate.

The Foyer
• Make sure it is clean and not cluttered with furniture.
• Clean light fixtures and the floor until they sparkle.
• Add a nice touch with a small entrance table with fresh-cut flowers.

Family-Living-Great Room
• Put away all collections (figurines, fragile items, etc.) and store all political and religious mementos as well as any business, sports and personal awards.
• Remove all extra furniture to eliminate crowding; open the room up and show lots of space.
• Clean carpets.

Dining Room
• Take the extra leaf out of the table and put a nice white tablecloth on it.
• Place a colorful arrangement in the center of the table.

The Kitchen
• Remove from the front of the refrigerator all magnets and other items, including children’s pictures.
• Stow all small appliances under the cabinets to free up counter space.

Bathrooms
• Downplay dated ceramic tile colors with white towels, window treatments and scatter rugs.
• Replace rusted sinks or touch up spots. Repair or replace
defective exhaust fans.

Bedrooms
• Remove bulky furniture and, Voila! the room will appear larger.
• Clean out closets to make them appear as if there’s plenty of room to spare.

Garage/Basement
• Remove stains from garage floors.
• Clean all windows/cobwebs from corners.

Screened Porch
• Repair all screen holes or replace screens completely, depending on condition.
• Make sure outdoor furniture is clean, orderly and not excessive.

“A lot of homeowners put things in front of windows, and we try to remove that clutter right away,” Starliper says. “Many times a window can be a focal point, so we’ll put attractive furniture on either side of them to highlight those areas.”

For her vacant listings, Starliper charges $59.95 a month, using accessories and furniture that she keeps in storage, and she charges nothing for services provided on her occupied listings. She envisions a time when she can charge a flat or hourly fee to stage a home, but says in her region of the country, “staging just hasn’t caught on enough yet” for her to be able to charge for it, so she offers it as a part of her services.

It Pays to Depersonalize

Nancy Geoghegan, president and owner of One Day Décor in Fort Lauderdale, started staging homes about three years ago and calls the process “depersonalizing” a home. Her first step usually involves removing as much clutter from closets and living areas as possible. That means taking down personal pictures, mementos and collections, she says, to make the home look as big and bright as possible.

“Sellers need to make their focal point the house instead of the family,” says Geoghegan. “You want another family to be able to walk into the house and envision themselves in it.” She says that typical homeowners pay $500 to $2,000 to have their home staged and that the minimal cost can pay off handsomely in the reduced time it takes to sell the staged home and the higher price it can fetch.

Geoghegan says Realtors seeking additional revenue streams should be able to sell their staging services to homeowners, though she admits that some sellers may balk at having to shell out more than just the commission rate. If that’s the case, she suggests offsetting the cost with a higher home price — justified by the home’s newly staged condition — or splitting the fee with the homeowner.

“It should be feasible for Realtors to sell their staging services to homeowners, particularly those owners who have an agenda for getting the house sold for the best possible price,” says Geoghegan. “But, if a Realtor anticipates that a home truly needs to be staged, they can also absorb the cost or split it with the client, then bring up the price a bit knowing that they’ll get it back. Either way, everybody wins.”