Selling a house in ancient times bears little or no resemblance to how it’s done these days. The most glaring difference in them days is that people lived in caves (like my ex-husband) and later on in huts (like his mother). All a prospective hut buyer had to do to see the inside was to stick their head in past the yak hair blanket that served as a door and they basically saw everything they needed to see. It’s a little known factoid that the practice of thanking the hut owner for the “open hut” started around this time…rumored to be approximately 2:30 PM. It wasn’t unusual to hear compliments like: “I really like what you’ve done with your choice of mud” and “ The rays of light coming in from the hole in your thatched roof really plays off your furniture made from dung”. I know, I know….it’s as if we’re really listening in on real conversations from those times. I am a stager. I make things happen. Sorta. These days, real estate agents have a little more to contend with, what with the advent in hut design where there’s now different rooms used for different bodily functions; eating, sleeping, bathing, grunting, and that’s not including the room that the previous owners added on to store their yak butter which is a must-see if what you’re looking to buy is a yurt. That’s why real estate agents came up with the concept of the “open house”. Tags: featured, Sellers’ Tips
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Disclaimer: What you’re about read is true. Only the inanes have changed to protect other stagers from pointing and laughing at my clients. When I’m called in to stage a house, the Realtor and I will chat about anything I should know before I go in so I won’t be shocked…like the homeowner usually answers the door naked. I’m telling you right here and now that unless it’s Robert Downey Jr. answering the door, the Eeeeeuuuwww Factor will be set to Code Orange. So my Realtor lets me know that her seller’s house is decorated in a style that can only be described as “Late Green Acres-Early Hee Haw”. In other words….“country”. Additionally, Mrs. Home Seller is really into pigs. So I go to meet with them and Mr. Home Seller answers the door with clothes on and I walk in. From my vantage point, I see pigs (note that’s pigs…plural); we’re talking pig pictures, 25 or so stuffed pigs in various parts of the house, pig wall hangers for oven mitts…that themselves look like pigs, pig wall stencils, blankets, fireplace screen, lamps shades, etc. Oh, just kill me now. The sellers seemed like very nice people that understood the need for their house to be staged and were prepared to follow my every instruction. I wrote up my VERY specific list of things they needed to remove from the house and as always, I went over my list with them and explained the reasoning behind asking them to remove things like certain pieces of furniture, heavy drapery and…all things porcine because the pigs may be the only thing that buyers will remember about the house. Studies have shown that buyers can get distracted by looking at personal photos, extensive collections, a motorcycle in the living room, etc. and will…
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Ever walk into somebody’s house and immediately wish that one of those oxygen masks would fall from the ceiling like they have in airplanes so you wouldn’t have to inhale the wall of odors that smacked you in the proboscis? (For those unfamiliar with W.C. Fields, that means “nose”) Now image that you’re looking to buy a house and the same things happens when you step foot in that really cool looking house with the awesome curb appeal. Now let’s take it one step further…. your home is for sale and the oxygen mask scenario is being played out in a prospective buyer’s brain. Can you say “turned off”? I knew that you could…. Every house has a smell of some kind, some less than others .. unless you live in a hermetically sealed home which means I’m busy the night of your dinner party. Just because you can’t smell it isn’t a guarantee that your home doesn’t smell like your grandmother’s attic. Barb Schwarz, the originator of the concept of home staging says “ If you can smell it, you won’t sell it”. Total corniness aside, she’s absolutely correct. As a stager, I’ve literally walked in a home (as opposed to hovering on a cloud of rarified air which is my usual mode of travel) and expected to see a wet dog smoking a cigar while standing at the stove and stirring what can only be described as a pot of stale cabbage being boiled in fetid water. I’m pretty sure I faked my own death on that job. Animal odors, litter box odors, somebody keeps missing the toilet odors, last night’s dinner or even worse, last week’s dinner odor, cigarette or cigar odors , etc. will turn off even the most hardy of buyers so…pay attention here because…
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Unless you’ve been living in the remotest regions of Iceland, you’re probably aware that being “green” has become a very big deal. And it should be. So let’s talk about green flooring. If you even briefly thought of grass at the mention of green flooring, I’d rather not be invited over for cocktails any time soon. Recently, Conklin Brothers, a local flooring distributor held an open house for us designers so that we could pick the brain of flooring representatives for companies such as Armstrong and Karastan to name a few. The overall theme that night were the “green” features that the manufacturers had to offer and to a much lesser extent, the hope that all the food got eaten. (I did my part with the Lemon Bars.) For example, there are now some carpets being made from corn-based polymers which is a renewably-sourced polymer. It’s being called an earth friendly carpet fiber because it reduces CO2 emissions over the production of equal amounts of nylon. Not only that but since it’s made from corn, it reduces our dependence on oil and is more degradable in the recycling process. Rest assured that these carpets look perfectly “normal”, are very soft, long lasting, fade resistant and you won’t be tempted to want to chew on them to see if they taste like corn. Tags: Buyers’ Tips, Sellers’ Tips
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