Great article on staging a property... (Seattle: for sale, rental, selling a house)

[cmswazey]

Found this great article on staging a property. Had some ideas I'd never previously come across. I immediately thought of my realtor friends here.



Staging Recommendations for 119 Maple Avenue | The Spark

[homesinseattle]

Good stuff! Staging is so important. Many of my clients have great things, just need to tweak the home a little bit. Area rugs can do wonders for defining space and making places feel cozy

[franklin42]

Originally Posted by homesinseattle

Staging is so important. Many of my clients have great things, just need to tweak the home a little bit. Area rugs can do wonders for defining space and making places feel cozy

You obviously didn't read the article haha.

[homesinseattle]

Completely read it, hilarious! Some of my clients need almost that much help!!!

[Ruth4Truth]

Well, they're right about decluttering, and getting rid of clutter on the walls, too. I've heard of people being told to simply vacate the house and move into a rental while the house is being shown. Seriously. And in one case, it was for a home that already was sparsely furnished. " Um....pardon us for existing. We're only the homeowners."

I can kind of see the bit about removing all kitchen cabinets. There are houses that are great houses, but the cabinets are hideous and turn off potential buyers.

Neutral colors were always the standard in the past, but in Seattle in the late 90's/early 2000's, some RE agents were recommending painting one wall in the living room a dramatic color. Was that just a Seattle thing, or was it regional or national? Do things like this go through fads?

[cmswazey]

It's a parody though it contains some real info.

[Thom52]

Its a parody, but too close to the truth.

We are preparing our house for sale. We eliminated one agent because she was asking for a ridiculous amount of investment as prep. I notice other houses in the neighborhood that drank her koolaide, investing enormous cash and time, are not moving any faster or for higher price.

Consider from the agents perspective. It is absolutely no cost or risk to the agent to get you to rebuild your house from the ground up before it goes on the market, and yet the agent gets the benefit(higher commission) of any increased value. What a sweet deal.... for the agent. You put in $100k of improvements(I have seen this happen), and the house sells for $50k more than it would have. What a deal for the seller!

We went with an agent that had more realistic expectations. Although we are still expected to completely move out everything, so they can "stage" the place with tiny, undersized, sparse furniture, and we need to do a bunch of painting. This delay to get a place we could move to, and get everything moved, may have cost us dearly, as the prices seem to be plummeting locally after the British EU fiasco shook up everyone's faith in the economy.

Selling a house is a very strange game.

[homesinseattle]

Thom, sounds like you made a good choice. Most homes don't need full staging, just some tweaking, rugs, fresh towels and shower curtains, decluttering.

[cmswazey]

What about the frequent moving of TVs?

[Kayela]

The running 'neutral color' joke is well done.