9780814415221

Summary

Want to sell your home at a premium price¿now? Never mind simply tidying up: an amazing 91% of real estate professionals say professional staging is the way to go. But sure enough, hiring a staging consultant will cost you. Thankfully, you can now get all the secrets and techniques the pros don¿t want you to know, from one of America¿s most successful staging experts. Home Staging That Works shows you how to turn any home into a showpiece that buyers will be fighting over. With specific recommendations on what to do, keep, chuck, fix, paint, replace, avoid, update, show, hide, highlight, and much more, you¿ll learn how to: ¿ Focus on your potential buyers¿ tastes (not your own) ¿ Create curb appeal ¿ Drive Internet interest with photos that flatter your home ¿ De-clutter and pre-pack at the same time ¿ Clean and repair your home without spending a fortune ¿ Keep your home sale-ready¿without being afraid to live in it Complete with photographs of real-life before-and-after transformations, Home Staging That Works offers strategies for each room in your home, as well as conceptual approaches to bring the parts together beautifully. Your home is a magical place waiting for the right buyer to fall in love. Make the match happen with Home Staging That Works!

Author Biography

STARR C. OSBORNE (Philadelphia, PA) is owner and founder of Tailored Transitions, Philadelphia’s premiere home

staging, moving-management, and design company.

Features
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Staging for the Right Audience
What Is Staging?
Out with the "You": Disengaging from Your Home
Saying Good-Bye to Your Home
Five Ways to Say Good-Bye
In with the New: Figuring Out Your Target Market
Looking at the Overall Statistics
Asking the Pros: Interviewing Realtors
Understanding the Generations
Baby Boomers
What Boomers Want
Generation Jones
What Jonesers Want
Generation X
What Gen Xers Want
Generation Y
What Gen Yers Want
Media Influence on the Generations
Deciding on Your Target Generation
Determining Your Market by the Time You've Spent in Your Home
The Next Step: Creating a Great First Impression
First Impressions
The First Look: Attracting Internet Shoppers
The Drive-By: Making the Most of a Buyer's Second Look
Staging the Exterior
The Approach: Driveways and Walks
The Front Yard
Creating a Staged Garden
The Façade: Looking Good
The Front Door
Other Outside Entry Ideas
The Inside Entry: Creating a Sense of Welcome
Begin with Your Hall Closet
Provide Seating if Possible
Unclutter the Space
Make Use of Mirrors
Work with Color
Impressing Your Target Buyer
If Time and Money Are Short
The Next Step: Creating Space
Creating Space
Taking the "You" Out of Your Home
Prepacking
Why Not Show Your Home Empty?
If Uncluttering Seems Utterly Overwhelming
When Couples Differ in Uncluttering Ability
Help Children Unclutter
A Silver Lining to the Staging Process
Keep Your Eyes on the Prize
Everything You Need to Know About Boxes
What Boxes to Use
Supplies for Packing
Out with the Personal and Possibly Contentious
Removing Objects with Possibly Contentious Affiliations
Removing All Photographs and Portraits
Deciding What Furniture and Rugs to Remove
Removing Freestanding Bookcases and Entertainment Centers
Removing Rugs That Are Too Stained or Too Small for the Space
Removing Selected Furniture and Rugs
Clearing the Decks and the Depths: Advanced Uncluttering
Uncluttering All Lateral Surfaces
Tackling Closets and Drawers
Clearing Hallways
Uncluttering Mudrooms and Vestibules
Uncluttering the Kitchen
Uncluttering Bathrooms
Your Home Office
Uncluttering the Dining Room and Living Room
Uncluttering Bookcases
Uncluttering Bedrooms
Uncluttering Guest Rooms, Sewing Rooms, and Multipurpose Rooms
Uncluttering the Laundry Area
Managing Pets and Their Paraphernalia
Uncluttering Porches and Patios
Uncluttering Basements, Garages, and Outbuildings
Revisiting Your Clutter Hot Spots
Double-Checking Your Uncluttering Through a Camera Lens
Recognizing What You Have Accomplished
If Time and Money Are Short
The Next Step: Fixing and Cleaning
What To Fix and How To Clean
How Do You Know What to Fix?
Do a Walk-Through with an Observant Outsider
Get a Preinspection
Why You Can't Just Ignore What's Broken
Commonly Needed Repairs
Yards and Gardens
Gutters and Downspouts
Roofs
Air-Conditioning Condensers and Trash Cans
Driveways and Walkways
Decks, Terraces, and Fences
Windows from the Outside
terior Wall and Trim Paint
Interior Walls and Ceilings
Overhead Lighting and Ceiling Fans
Windows from the Inside
Staircases
Wall-to-Wall Carpeting
Flooring
Doors and Doorways
Kitchens
Bathrooms
Clean Is What Sells
Yards and Gardens
Roofs and Exterior Walls
Windows
Interior Walls and Ceilings
Overhead Lighting and Ceiling Fans
Floors and Carpets
Kitchens
Bathrooms
Laundry Rooms
Fireplaces, Radiators, and Other Heat-Related Objects
Basements, Attics, Garages, and Outbuildings
If Time and Money Are Short
The Next Step: Setting the Stage
Setting the Stage
Deciding Each Room's Purpose
Targeting Room Usage to Your Most Likely Buyers
Creating Vignettes That Charm Your Buyers
Avoiding Multipurpose Rooms When Possible
Thinking About Flow
Finding Each Room's Architectural Focus
Using Color
Complementary Colors
Warm versus Cool Colors
Moods Associated with Particular Colors
Color as a Generational Cue
Generational Preferences for Color and Design Aesthetics
Identifying and Remedying Each Room's Hierarchy of Colors
Creating Balance
Avoiding Heavily Imbalanced Room Usage
Balancing the Style Throughout Your Home
Balancing the Furniture Within Each Room
Choosing Artwork to Suit Your Buyers
Using Mirrors to Enhance Spaces
Balancing the Light and Dark in Each Room
Staging the Key Rooms in Your Home
Styling the Kitchen and Dining Room to Sell
Styling the Living Room to Sell
Styling Bedrooms to Sell
Styling Children's Rooms to Sell
Styling Guest Rooms to Sell
Styling the Home Office to Sell
Styling Bathrooms to Sell
Going Back over Your Home as a Whole
If Time and Money Are Short
The Next Step: Presenting Your Home to Buyers
Presenting Your Home To Buyers
Using the Power of the Camera's Eye
Taking Another Walk-Through with a Camera
Staying Involved if Someone Else Takes Your Photos
If You Have Just Two Weeks to Do It All
Keeping Your Home Presentable While You're Showing It
Index
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

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Excerpts

<html><head></head><body>Introduction Have you ever told a story in front of a crowd, only to have it fall flat? Or have you ever made a suggestion you’re excited about, only to meet with an awkward silence or a quick dismissal? It is a startling and uncomfortable feeling to realize suddenly that you’ve misjudged your audience whose outlook and taste and sense of humor are quite different from yours. When what you’re putting forward is your home, and your audience consists of the people who are coming to look at it, and not one of them likes it enough to put in a bid—now that is a very unpleasant feeling. This book will help you avoid having that feeling when you try to sell your home. In fact, it’s designed to help you sell your home quickly and for a price that makes you happy. To make people laugh at a story or to sell them an idea, you have to know something about who they are and what they like. You don’t have to know each individual in your audience, but you have to be able to sense their mood and preferences as a group. Selling your home works the same way. You won’t know your potential buyers as individuals—in fact, you may not meet them at all unless they put in a bid—but you must have a feel for the group of buyers you’re trying to attract. To draw buyers in, you need to create a visual story of how they could live in your home. You need to prepare your home in such a way that it “tells” them a fairy tale—in the best sense— of the wonderful life that awaits them, the life they’ve always wanted, in a space that not only meets their needs, but also speaks to their dreams. In short, you need to stage your home. Home staging had its origins in California in the early ’70s and has been booming since the early ’90s, even though many people still haven’t heard of it. I grew up in the ’60s and ’70s in New England. My childhood was one of antiques and ponies, of country lanes and moms who didn’t work. Our houses were not “decorated.” Fabrics were chosen to last a generation. When the fabric on a chair gave out—meaning that it split open, not that it went out of style—my mother had that one chair reupholstered. Once she had two chairs done at the same time; I remember it vividly. Threadbare chair arms reflected a worldview more than a budget. The summer I was thirteen, my parents sent my sister and me to camp so that they could have the kitchen redone. They embarked on this renovationout of dire need, not new appliance envy. Prior to the redo, we had lived for years in a post–World War II kitchen, with lemon-colored rug squares that mom had put down and that had slowly turned brown in paths traveled most frequently by the dogs and us kids. Houses in the right neighborhoods were bought and sold discreetly, often with handshakes. My father once bought a house over the phone, having been only in the living room for cocktails. To ask for a preinspection would have been an insult of great magnitude. Houses were often lived in for a lifetime, a backdrop to the lives lived within them. Times have changed. Today, many buyers and sellers never meet. The buying and selling of homes have become transactions conducted at arm’s length, with litigation looming behind every curtain. And the meaning of our homes has changed as well. Once upon a time, a home was primarily a shelter from the elements. Today’s homes still provide shelter, but now they define us in socioeconomic ways as well. In the past ten years, the self-equals-home equation has become even stronger. What type of building we live in, what we fill it with, and how we use it reveal a lot about who we are and where we fit into our society. We judge other people by their homes and how they live in them, just as they are judging us. Does a home have overly ornate, formal curtains? A high-tech media system? A wildly disorganized home office? Immaculate tile grout? All these choices provide outside observers with clues about the people who live in that home. Right or wrong, how we live in our homes has become a visual mission statement. Collectively, image matters—although which image we’re shooting for depends on which social group we aspire to. Culturally, we are selfconscious about image and the concept of home as never before. As outward manifestations of our inner selves, our homes have become emotionally loaded in entirely new ways. Living well—however we define “well”—is now pursued by all. This is why the shelter industry is booming in general. The mega chains have made good design and decorative arts available to all of us, and we are buying. In our homes, we’re in control of our universe.We want that sense of control, to create our desired sense of self in a world grown increasingly complicated. From the safety of our homes, we feel entitled to shoot for the stars. We’re buying the dream of the life that we want. The staging industry answers these desires. At some point in the past ten years, trend spotters began to realize that if sellers could manipulate the messages their homes were sending to potential buyers, they could make more money on their home sale. Home staging started with the tactic of baking bread before open houses, and it has grown into to a full-out sensory pageant designed to excite prospective buyers’ senses and fuel their dreams. Home staging has infiltrated the selling process all across the country. It’s a self-feeding industry, in that every staged home raises buyers’ expectations for every other home they see. A 2007 HomeGain® survey of 2,000 realtors nationwide found that 91 percent of the agents recommended that their clients have their homes staged before selling them. Clearly, staging boosts sales prices. Most people have more of their net worth tied up in their homes than in any other single asset. Postwar bullishness and decades of skyrocketing real estate prices encouraged people to view their home as an investment. Now, in the wake of a prolonged housing slump, many people are scrambling to realize the financial plans they made when they bought their home. If you can properly stage your home, you’ve greatly increased your chances not just of selling it in a tough market, but of selling it quickly and for significantly more money than you would have otherwise. To sell your home, you must have a sense for the mood and preferences of the group of buyers you’re targeting. In Chapter One, I’ll show you how to figure out which group that is, but you may be wondering how it’s possible for an entire group of people to share enough preferences that you could somehow make your home specifically appealing to them. The answer is that we are all products of a particular place and time in history. We’re all products of the generation we grew up in. We’re individuals, but we’re all also members of our generational group, whether we’re Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, or members of another group. As one example of this, just look at the trends in baby names. My husband and I named our second daughter Lillie after his grandmother, whom he adored.We thought it was an uncommon and fun choice. And then I took my darling Lillie to toddler music class. Many other girls in the class were named Lillie, Lilly, or Lily. There were three in her kindergarten alone. Did we know we were naming her the equivalent of Mary in the 1950s or Karen in the 1960s? No. We tho ught we were being original, but we were unwitting parts of a trend. All of us are products of time and place, and anyone who thinks otherwise is seriously mistaken. So, yes, you can get a feel for the group of buyers you decide will most likely want your home, and you can stage your home to appeal directly to that group. My company, Tailored Transitions, stages homes in Philadelphia, a city endowed with a diverse and rich architectural heritage. We stage multimillion-dollar homes, new build apartments, Louis Kahn houses abutting Fairmount Park, starter homes, and the Philadelphia Story altars of stone for which our city is known. (About three years ago, we actually moved clients into the house where The Philadelphia Story was filmed.) By walking you through the process of staging and using numerous anecdotal and visual examples of work that we’ve done, we are going to demystify staging. Staging is so popular and successful that I believe it responds to some deep need. Much of staging involves simplifying a home’s contents and making them more neutral; perhaps we long for these characteristics as our society grows ever more stressful, complex, and partisan. As you go through the process of staging your home, you may find that you can apply the principles of staging to other parts of your life (including your own search for a new home, but also the parts of your life unrelated to buying or selling real estate). I have found this to be so in my own life and in my clients’ lives, and this aspect of staging interests me most: It can make our lives more satisfying on so many levels, beyond merely the sale of our home. Primarily, though, this book is designed to help you tailor your home for a fast, easy, and profitable sale. I recommend that you work your way through it in an orderly manner, rather than dipping into it randomly. You may want to go back and review certain sections as you move along in the process, but basically the book is set up to guide you step by step through preparing and staging your home before you put it on the market. Here, in a nutshell, is what each chapter covers: Chapter One discusses what staging is, how to say good-bye to your home, why it’s crucial to know who you’re staging for, and how to figure out your most likely group of potential buyers. Chapter Two emphasizes the importance of creating a great first impression for buyers, then tells you how to improve the look of your home’s exterior and entry hall to do just that. Chapter Three guides you through the hard work of removing your own personality from your home to make room for your prospective buyers’ visions of the life they could lead in your home. Chapter Four tackles the issues of repairing and deep cleaning your home. Chapter Five guides you through the process of staging each part of your home, now that you’ve created more space within it and have gotten it beautifully clean and in working order. You’ll learn how to bring the elements of focus, flow, color, and balance into play in staging your home to appeal directly to your most likely buyers. Chapter Six covers the nuts and bolts of getting great photographs of your property, includes a section for people who have a severely limited amount of time in which to prepare their home for sale, and provides a list of what you must do each day that your home is on the market in order to keep it ready to show. You’ll find more than forty-five features throughout the book that offer staging tips and useful information on everything from “Pruning Your Shrubs into Elegance” to “Cleaning Up After Rodents Safely” to “What About the TVs?” The book also includes sixty-five photographs, many of them beforeand- after pairs, to help you better understand what good staging looks like and to illustrate points along the way. To see any of these photographs in full color—and for additional full-color photographs, information, and staging help—visit my Web site at www.tailoredtransitions.com. Best wishes for the sale of your home, and have fun staging it! Starr C. Osborne President and Founder Tailored Transitions Philadelphia, Pennsylvania </body></html>

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Home Staging That Works

0814415229

Supplemental Materials

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials

Excerpts

Rewards Program