Stagers Help Homeowners Prepare Houses For Selling

Getting a house in proper shape for would-be buyers can be expensive. But what happens if your home-improvement cupboard is nearly bare? The answer is to make sure you do the most with your limited resources.

A telecommunications professor and his wife, a nurse, had only $500 on hand to somehow make their 4-year-old townhouse look like a buyer's delight. At first it seemed impossible. But the couple accomplished the feat by making the most of their skimpy resources. They hired a 'stager," a person skilled in the art of rearranging a home's interior for very little money. Teri B. Clark, the stager who transformed the look of the 1,500-square-foot townhouse in just six hours, said sellers need not go on a spending spree to capture buyer attention. "With just $500 to $2,000, most people can do a lot to bring out the best in their home. If your neighborhood has a slow-moving real estate market, spending a small sum can make the difference between selling and not selling," said Clark, author of the book "301 Simple Things You can Do to Sell Your Home Now and for More Money Than You Thought." The professor and his wife are a prime example. The husband had accepted a teaching position in England. But to make the move--and obtain housing in their new location--the couple needed to sell their townhouse first. "After the property sat unsold for more than six months, they became desperate," Clark recalls. "They had already taken several discounts and couldn't go any lower on price. But once the property was staged, it sold quickly, letting them make their big move.

Here are several pointers on marketing an unsold property:

Realize that you must improve your home.

Sheron Cardin, an interior designer who often instructs real estate agents in the art of staging, said the use of staging techniques has become prevalent in a number of major metropolitan areas. "Trying to sell without prepping your home is like going to the prom in Levi's--you're going to get passed over," she said. "Yet surprisingly there are still skeptics who think all you have to do to sell a house is to throw up a sign." Skepticism about staging is often tied to the cost of hiring a stager, which Cardin estimates to typically run between $150 and $300 for a basic consultation. Expect to pay more if you want the stager to do the hands-on work of putting the plan in action. "This is cash out of your pocket that will pay you back many times over," Cardin said. A burgeoning number of design-minded people are becoming stagers, and several organizaitons represent them. These include the International Association of HomeStaging Professionals (www.iahsp.com) and the Interior Redesign Industry Specialists (www.weredesign.com). Because there are few barriers to entry to the staging business, Cardin stresses the need for consumers to check references. Also, review photos on the stagers' Web sites to be sure they have a track record of achieving the results they promise. What if you don't have the cash to hire a professional stager? Then use a listing agent who's been trained in the field, or look to friends or family members with a flair for design. Another possible solution is to do the staging yourself, with the help of a book, video or DVD.

Follow the "less is better" philosophy in preparing your home for sale.

When staging the townhouse owned by the professor and his wife, Clark decided that--to make the place look larger--more than 50 percent of the couple's furniture should be removed and placed in storage. Among the items taken away were a massive chest of drawers from the master bedroom, and several pieces of over-size furniture from the cramped dining room. Also, Clark subtracted a boxy coffee table and two huge bookshelves from the living room. "Having all that furniture detracted from the home's assets, including its beautiful bay window and its gas fireplace," Clark said. She also helped the owners cull through overstuffed closets and curio cabinets that were crammed with mementos. Once the de-cluttering was done, Clark rearranged the remaining items adding a few additional decorative touches. "The idea of staging is to show off the house, not its contents," she said. "Having too much stuff in your place just distracts buyers and makes it very hard for them to picture themselves living there."

Give your place the feel of an attractive vacation home.

All home buyers like to imagine that their lifestyles will be more relaxed and luxurious in their new abode. They'd like to close the door on the stresses and strains they endured while living in their former place, Clark said. "Probably their lives won't be any more peaceful in the new house,"she said. " But as a smart home seller, you want to create that illusion for buyers, which should help draw them to your home." Fine paintings and decorator touces, like the use of linen" tub drapes" in you bathroooms, provide hints of opoulence as do fresh-cut flowers. Another way to make your home seem like a more stressfree place to live is to remove reminders of the more mundane elements of everyday living, like the TV and the cleaning supplies.

Use color to intensify the "curb appeal" of your home.

Nowadays, many prospective home buyers like to prescreen properties by driving by them. They'll make appointments to visit only those houses that seem appealing on the outside, and skip the rest. This trend makes it all the more important that your place have pizzazz on the exterior, said Cardin, who contends that spashes of color can do more that anything else to improve the way an otherwise ordinary house looks from the street. "Flowers planted along the front walkway or in window boxes are great," Cardin said. She also recommended you paint your front door in a bold color--red, green or black--rather than leaving it neutral. "What you're trying to achieve is a honey-stop-the-car kind of curb appeal for your house," Cardin said.

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