Home Staging Makes a Difference!

Living Room Before

When you first walk into this lovely home, this is the view from the front door.  There is an opening to the kitchen, an opening to the front hall, a short hallway to the master bedroom, plus you need to cross the room to go up the stairs.  Furniture arrangement can be a challenge.  However, once you recognize that the fireplace should be a focal point, furniture placement then unfolds.

Notice how you are drawn into this room now. It is warm, inviting, and yet sophisticated. 

Living Room After

 

Living Room After

 

At Premiere Home Stagers, we work with you to make your home feel right. We don’t sell homes; we make your home more saleable. By using the right furniture and accessories, we emotionally connect your house to a prospective buyer. Or, we can make your home more comfortable for you.  Isn’t it time you become emotionally connected to your house? 

If you’d like to see more of this house, take a look at our slide show and contact Donna Birschbach at Keller Williams Realty for a showing.

 

Wisconsin Farmhouse Staging

Selling rural property can be challenging.  It’s the acreage that entices people who want to experience farm life. They can always change the farmhouse if they choose. 

Farmhouse Kitchen

Farmhouse kitchens are different than metro city kitchens. One doesn’t look for stainless steel appliances, granite countertops, or undercabinet lighting. Ever functional and pragmatic, farmhouse kitchens have everything you need.

Farmhouse bathroom

Even though the colored tiles might not be your choice, you can certainly work around them.  After all, there is no need to upgrade if everything still works.

 

Farmhouse Family room

Paneling is very good at concealing uneven walls.  You’ll usually find paneling in a farmhouse. If you would like to lighten it up, a coat of paint will do the trick. 

Farmhouse Exterior

Whatever the white wire is, it must be important enough to hang from the outside. Plus the antenna plays an important role in capturing TV images for free.

Wisconsin Barn

What a wonderful view outside your back deck.  A rural Wisconsin setting might not be right for everyone, but is definitely a good choice for the right buyer.  Premiere Home Stagers will be staging a farmhouse at the end of the week. Next week we’ll show you the inside results.

 

Guess Our Age

Have you ever visited a Guess Your Age booth at a carnival?  What are the clues the ‘guesser’ uses to come so close to a person’s actual age?  It’s amazing, and I’m sure it is more than pure guesswork!

Our challenge in home staging is to increase the appeal of a home to any age buyer.  It should be hard to guess the age of the current occupants–thus more successfully marketing the home of grandparents to the thirty-something buyer, for example.  Pictured below is a recent project–the beautiful home of a retiring couple.  Premiere Home Stagers was tasked to spend a few hours staging the home.  A clue to the age of the occupants is the many antiques and family heirlooms that are lovingly displayed throughout.

We love antiques and use them in our own home decor.  But when it comes to staging, antiques can ‘age’ a property.  Since this living room is the first thing seen when entering the home it was imperative to update its look, using what the homeowners have.  We scoured the house for other pieces.  We rearranged and pulled the sofa in from across the room to form a conversation grouping.  We left clear access to the lovely sunporch beyond–a big selling feature.  Below is the result.

Now the room is harder to categorize as belonging to an older couple.  We suggested the addition of a warmer tan paint color that blends well with adjoining spaces.  The home should appeal to any buyer.

 

Living Room “Before” Home Staging

These people have lived in this house for many years. They have delved into their genealogy and proudly display antique photos of their relatives.  It is a comfortable place for the whole family to gather around the fire.  

However, when we turned around and looked at the back wall,  it was a complete surprise to see a bear skin hanging on the wall.  Did one of the relatives shoot this bear, is it authentic or a replica? In any case, it’s generally not something most potential buyers would like to see when contemplating whether to purchase this house.

Let me ask you, dear reader, what you might do in this living room?  I’ll post the “after” photos once the homeowners are finished with their “do-to” list and see if we are on the same page.

How one lives is your business; however, how one sells is our business.  Make your first impression a good one!

 

Dining Room Appeal

Before

When you stand just inside the front door, you enter into the living room but your eye is immediately drawn into the adjoining dining room.  Even though this tablecloth is an heirloom and is cherished, a potential buyer would tend to think elderly people lived here.  One never should know the age group of the people who live in a house when you are trying to sell it.  Premiere Home Stagers wants a home to appeal to all age groups. Therefore, the best way to accomplish that is to remove the tablecloth and set the table as if you were expecting guests. After all, isn’t the next home buyer your guest?

After

The red placemats pick up the red tone in the seat cushions. And the three candle sticks are different sizes and contain different colored candles.  On a previous blog, we wrote about the “rule of three.”  Odd numbers are more visually appealing. With even numbers, your eye wants to match things up, making sure everything is level and even. Odd numbered items can be more haphazard, thus directing your eye to them.

We removed the antique photo of the relatives and placed dried hydrangeas under the mirror so they reflect and give a softness to the hard surfaces of the room.  We also removed the middle curtain panel.  We want the eye to travel out to the lovely patio, alluring one to step outside.

There are many ways to make your home outstanding either for living or for selling.  Spring is an excellent time to “weed out” your closets, mulch your front walkway, open up the windows, and refresh your spaces.

 

Sale Pending in 3 Days

Living Room Before

Premiere Home Stagers were asked to give a consultation to the homeowners who planned to put their home on the market within the next few days.  When we walked in, we were immediately face-to-face with the sofa and an empty area rug. We see this fairly often–all the furniture is placed with their backs against a wall like you’ve moved the pieces for a ”barn dance.”  Just by moving the sofa to the adjacent wall and bringing up the chair that was sitting by itself in the corner (like it had done something wrong), we made a conversation group. Immediately the living room felt warm and cozy.

Living Room After

We then went about our consultation and left our report with the homeowners.  They followed our instructions perfectly and low and behold, their home wasn’t on the market long enough to have one  Open House. They listed it on the FSBO Madison site and had an acceptable offer within 3 days of our consult.  Granted, the area of town is a well-desirable place to live in Madison, WI.  But there are other homes in the area listed around the same price point that haven’t yet sold. Does staging make a difference?  You bet. Statistics bear that out.

 

Winter Woes

Madison, Wisconsin is one of the most desirable cities to live in. If you like winter, you’ll love it even more. Even though buying and selling of real estate goes on throughout the year, the selling “season” is really between March and November.  So what should you do from December and February for curb appeal? 

This homeowner accentuates the fact that we are inundated with snow. The character flag is half-way buried in the front yard.

Even though the birds need nourishment during the winter, this bird feeder is on the walkway to the front door.

Some suggestions for curb appeal when you are selling your home:

Put something colorful near your front door to brighten up the white snow. A potted evergreen, a group of lanterns, or a bench.  Remove the dead limbs or plants. Place the bird feeder in the backyard near a window. Remove the garden knickknacks until you see your plants budding. Make sure your walkway is cleared and safe for travel. When the front door is opened, have a light cinnamon scent, or my favorite winter scent, Thymes Frasier Fir. 

There are still people who move for business or finish college in December and are looking to purchase a home. Make yours one that looks appealing even during Wisconsin winters.

 

Premiere Home Stagers Staging Tips

Living Room "Before"

Some realtors offer their clients a home staging consultation before listing their home as part of their marketing package.  They realize that buyers make an impression of a listed house within 30 seconds of entering.  They also realize that staged homes sell faster and for more money than non-staged homes.

When Premiere Home Stagers entered this house through the front door, we couldn’t get past the large recliner because it was in the doorway.  Tip #1:  Enter your front door like a guest. Place your furniture so that it does not block the entrance nor a walkway.  We kept tripping over items. Tip #2: Declutter and clean.  The small photos on the wall were hung too high and were too small for the wall.  Tip #3:  Have a focal point and a purpose for every room.

This home could be the cutest bungalow ever with some elbow grease, some slipcovers, and a new wall paint color.  If you are serious about selling your home, a home staging consultation is one of  the best investments your realtor can make for you.

 

Window Shopping

This is the time of year when most of us shop more than usual. There is always the person who is difficult to buy for. They seem to have what they need and yet, we would like to thank them or acknowledge them with a token of our appreciation. I try to pick up some things throughout the year so that I don’t have to rush out and buy something on impulse just to cross it off my list. But try as I might, I still struggle with wondering if I should purchase additional stocking stuffers, a giftcard for the movies or gas, or just put some cash in an envelope. 

The stores that really do entice me to purchase things are the ones with the most extraordinary visual displays. I can’t help but be drawn into their store if their windows “speak to me.”  They are the store windows filled with color, mouth-watering edibles, or whimsy. Of course I’m just looking, I say. But before you know it, I come out with something I didn’t even know I needed.

The store window is like curb appeal for your house. People who are looking to buy a house are attracted by a well-kept front entrance. They will want to take a peak inside. And if they can make an emotional connection to the house and picture themselves living there, chances are they will extend an offer. Premiere Home Stagers can help make your house as inviting as a store window.

 

Home Staging Example

LR Before

If you ever need an example of what home staging can do to sell your house, check out this home. It is a lovely home with lots of space for teen-agers or a long-term stay of a relative. This homeowner had already purchased another home and needed to know what pieces should stay and what pieces should go to the next home.

This is actually harder to do than to stage it ourselves because we need to visualize in our head where pieces from all over the home should be placed and then write that down in our report for the homeowner to do.  Luckily, the homeowner was able to follow our directions to perfection–and it shows in this amazing transformation.

LR After

Notice that the fireplace now is the focal point. We’ve eliminated all the small pieces of artwork in favor of a few favorite pieces–that makes each piece more special. We took the armoire out of the bedroom to house the TV and take advantage of the high ceiling. Before, the sofa blocked the pathway to the kitchen, but now there is plenty of room to maneuver.

Check out the before and after photos of the bedroom.  If you’re not convinced that staging helps sell your home faster and for more money, statistics back up our claim. See http://www.stagedhomes.com/mediacenter/stagingstatistics.php

Bedroom Before

 

 

 

Bedroom After