Amy and Tim Hughes knew that their house in Clemmons needed work before they could put it on the market. They budgeted money to refinish the hardwood floors, redo the screen porch and paint. But the house needed more.
So they hired Marybeth Barret of re:Design, a home stager, to show them how their house could put its best foot forward.
Home staging -- preparing a house for sale by improving its appearance so that it will appeal to the biggest group of buyers -- isn't new. But staging has gotten a big boost as the real-estate market has softened and television shows that include staging have proliferated.
"Obviously, our goal is to sell your house more quickly and for a higher price," Barrett said. The cost to stage a house can vary from under $200 for a simple consultation to several thousand for filling an empty house with furniture and accessories.
Stagers look at homes with an objective eye, devoid of sentimentality. They look for clutter, bad furniture placement and outdated decor.
"I try to tell sellers, ‘Get out of the mindset that this is your home and think of it as a product,'" Barrett said. "You need to market your product the best way possible."
Staging can pay off, especially in a slow market, Barrett said. A survey done by Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage showed that, on average, staged homes sold in half the time of nonstaged homes and for 6.3 percent more money. Another survey, done with more than 2,000 Realtors, showed that sellers who spent $500 on staging recovered 343 percent of the cost, she said.
Kim Scott of Clemmons, who owns Home Staging by Kim, said that staging includes playing up the good features of a house and downplaying trouble spots. The spaciousness of a den might not be evident to buyers if they have to walk around a recliner in the middle of the floor, so Scott would move it. She can get buyers to see the possibilities of a long, narrow room through clever furniture arrangement.
When Barrett went to the Hughes house, she started at the front door and went room by room, adding to a list of things that needed changing. That list included removing some of the big pieces of furniture that seemed to shrink the great room, changing the bold paint in their son's bathroom (every wall was a different bright color), changing their son's playroom back into a formal dining room and sprucing up the screen porch. Barrett told them things that weren't easy to hear, including the news that the wallpaper in the bathroom, which Amy Hughes loved, had to go and that the whitewash finish that she tried on her bedroom furniture didn't quite work.
Step back
Homeowners tend to be so emotionally attached to their homes and their possessions that they can be hurt by a home stager telling them that their taste just won't fly in today's market.
"I have to tread lightly," Barrett said. But, as she explains, "the way you decorate your house to sell and the way you decorate to dwell are two totally different things."
Although potential buyers like houses that seem warm and inviting, they can be turned off by big displays of family photos or homes that present strong points of view. A hunter, for instance, might want to remove animal trophies from the walls. A collector of religious icons might want to pack them away, Barrett said.
The Hugheses packed up many personal items -- "people don't want to see signs with your name on it," Amy Hughes said -- and put other personal things, such as their dogs' feeding dishes, away for showings.
When Scott staged a house that is now on the market, she removed the owners' collections, exchanging dozens of small figurines for a few big accessories that make an impact. In the room adjacent to the kitchen, she staged the mantel with a big clock flanked by a woven vase holding bare branches and two tall candlesticks. She turned the room into an informal eating area by bringing in a small-scale table that she found in the basement and moving out a big buffet with a hutch.
"It was very, very big," she said. "It took up almost an entire wall. There was no table -- just huge pieces at the ends of the walls." The hutch, staged with some of the homeowner's china, went into the formal dining room.
Scott removed a big secretary that stood by an entry door in the den, where its dark wood seemed lost against the room's paneling, into the master bedroom. In its place, she put a low cart that provides a good spot for people to drop their house keys and cell phones when they come inside. She exchanged the rug for one with more color from a different room. The den rug went into the adjacent sun porch, adding warmth and coziness to the tile floor.
In that house, Scott said, almost everything she used to stage the house was there already. She brought in just a few small pieces of furniture and some accessories.
New homes
When she staged a new townhouse, she raided the warehouse where she keeps her staging supplies for everything from lamps to linens. The houses are geared toward retirees or single professionals, so she staged one bedroom as an office with an uncluttered desk, a chair and a cushy ottoman with a soft throw. A bookcase holds a few choice accessories.
She set up the dining room, painted a warm burgundy, with art, a mirror and a table dressed with silverware, linens, plates and glasses. She used books, plants, patterned pillows, a clock and a red lamp to spice up the neutral tones of the living room.
Most staging clients don't request beds, but this one did. So she used one of her favorite tricks -- covering the bed with a lightweight, blow-up mattress, which she dressed in luxury linens. She made a headboard by stretching a remnant of fabric over plywood, and she hung a balloon valance over the window on a tension rod so she wouldn't have to mar the new walls with brackets.
In the master bath, she created a spa-like still life atop the vanity by piling a decorative tray with crystalline bath salts, bath oil pearls and decorative soap tied with ribbon. In another bathroom, she hung a chocolate-and-mocha shower curtain to go with the oiled bronze faucet and dark-framed mirror. She sometimes hangs a length of fabric, 54 inches wide, to one side of a bathtub to give color and pattern. The fabric isn't as wide as a shower curtain and wouldn't serve as one.
"It doesn't have to be used," she said. "You want the appearance. You don't have to have everything as functional as if you were living in it."
■ Janice Gaston can be reached at 727-7364 or at jgaston@wsjournal.com.
■ For more information on home staging check these Web sites:
www.hgtv.com/real-estate/30-cant-miss-staging-tips/index.html ,
www.stagingbug.com and www.homebuying.about.com.
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