Home Sweet Stage

A realtor calls me up early in January.  He says he has a house, that's occupied, and his owner has requested that he get it staged.  (The owner is from Los Angeles, and realizes the importance of staging a home to sell!)  He asks if I can come see it, which I reply, 'yes'!

Then he leads into the problems:  'There are people living in the home, do you stage occupied homes?'  I said, 'yes'.  Then he states, 'it's not occupied by the owner, just by people who are living there... they're not paying rent.'  That's when I stated, 'My furniture is really not to 'live' on' - in other words, I could stage with my furnishings, but please don't 1) sleep on the beds, 2) sit on the couches 3) eat at the tables, etc. etc. etc.

I approached it with an open mind, and went to see the home, anyway.  That is when I took the 'before' photos.  As you can see by the before photos, the home was not showing very well, and that's one of the reasons it's been on the market for about six months.

After I saw it and gave them my proposal the homeowner decided to let the people move out first, then he was going to lower his price, then put it on the market without staging.  This all went on for another month.  The realtor just called me Thursday and asked me to stage it!  Well, I told him, 'all the furnishings I had 'earmarked' for his stage just went to another stage the weekend before'.  (See the photos for Cynbalaria, it shows really sweet!)  Let me look through my inventory and if I am able to I will call you back Friday.

Well, the answer Friday was 'yes', I can do it!  I staged it Saturday and finished it up on Monday.  When the realtor walked through it Monday evening for the first time since staging, all he could say was 'WOW!' .... 'WOW!' .... and 'WOW!' "This looks like a model home!" !!!  He was totally excited, and said he had two showings that evening, one at 4:30 and one at 5:00 - and he knows it's selling today!

This home sold that evening!  One of the two showings that evening that I finished up the stage made the offer that ultimately purchased this home!  That's what I call success!  Patty