Preparing for a Showing

By Kim Kuhteubl

What sold you on your home the first time you walked in? Was it the fresh flowers in the entranceway? Perhaps it was the huge kitchen with lots of storage? Or maybe it was the inviting family room with the stone fireplace? Since most buyers aren't interested in a property's 'potential', home stagers use a repertoire of tricks to help sellers create a lasting first impression and move their properties quickly, and often for more money.

"Home staging has been confused with interior decorating," says Lori Matzke, president of Center Stage Home and author of Home Staging: Creating Buyer Friendly Rooms To Sell Your House. "People get used to how they're living in a house and it's home, but it's not wow. I go in and instead of showing off your stuff, I show off your house."

To increase potential resale value, sellers must learn to look at their homes as products to be marketed. A home stager deliberately plays up what is structurally attractive about a home and deliberately plays down what isn't. It's not about décor. Instead, it involves choosing a focal point in a room, like a fireplace or hardwood floors, and arranging everything else in the room to heighten the focal point.

A young but growing industry, the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO) was founded as a not-for-profit professional association in 1985 to set and define quality standards in the United States. While in Canada there is no such regulatory body, a host of companies are providing home staging and organizing services.

Barbara Vanspall hired Bradford-based White-Tornado, a professional home staging and organization company, to prepare her Aurora home for sale last fall. "My basement was empty for the first time because everything was boxed in the right spot. We went through each room and moved things from place to place until they were organized. By the time my house was finished I didn't want to sell it."

Widening the flow of space through a home, the home stager works from curbside in, room by room, not even the garage or garden are off limits. Cleanliness, clutter elimination, organization, furniture layout, and lighting are just a few of the areas to be considered. Real estate agents and homeowners are then provided with a detailed list of enhancement instructions, repairs, and simple remedies in a suggested order of priority.

Tips range from the obvious?rid your house of strong odours?to the not so obvious such as pull furniture six or eight inches away from the wall to suggest a larger space. "Pull it out a foot," says Matzke. "It sounds funky, I know it does, but it creates the illusion that your living room, family room, bedroom are so much bigger and most buyers are looking for more space."

Fees range from company to company but most charge between $35 and $50 per hour after an initial consultation. "People can't figure out why their house isn't selling and many real estate agents think they're offending the homeowner by asking them to make changes," says Matzke. "I know a homeowner who had a house on the market for six years and they'd been through 11 different agents. I came in and they got rid of it in two weeks."

Home staging tips by the room

Kitchen:

Clear off extra objects from the countertops.
Completely clear the refrigerator off, front, side and top.

Be sure kitchen is clean, in front of cupboard doors, counters, backsplash, sink

Organize/tidy contents of cupboards

Bathroom:

Remove excess items from countertop

Remove excess items from tub area

Master Bedroom:

Only bedroom related furniture in this room, make it look like a haven and not an office

Put all clothing away
Clear off tops of dressers and keep items to a minimum

Living Room:

Be sure people can walk around your furniture with ease

Plants add a nice touch to any room

Before a Showing

Remove any magazines and newspapers from tables

Clean kitchen by removing dirty dishes, tidy and shine all chrome

Be sure garbage is taken out

Clean bathrooms, once again shine the chrome and have clean, matching towels

Play some soft classical music

Open curtains or turn on lights

Take your pet dog or cat with you

Make all beds

Fresh flowers add a nice touch

For details contact Cynthia Kay at white-tornado.ca or purchase Lori Matzke?s book by visiting www.centerstagehome.com.