Know these staging secrets and sell your home fast

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — With home prices increasing and inventory still low, sellers have the upper hand in the current real estate market.

But that doesn't mean sellers are simply waiting for buyers to come knocking with cash in hand. One of the strategies used to make a home as attractive as possible to buyers is staging.

Ubiquitous on home design shows, staging is essentially working to present a home for sale in the best possible light, whether that means bringing in rented furniture and accessories or simply decluttering and painting. 

Home staging began to gain traction during the recession when anxious sellers resorted to any means possible to gain a competitive edge, but now even Realtors have become savvy stagers.

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"Back in the day, everybody talked about curb appeal," said Donna Cox, a Nyack-based associate broker with Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Rand Realty.

"Now, the number one thing we want to focus on when you put your house on the market is 'click appeal.' Your pictures have to be amazing."

Home hunters' first impressions now come via photos on real estate listings on web portals such as Homes.com, Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com 

Move-in ready

The goal of staging is to present a property in its best light to sell it quickly for the maximum profit. Some homeowners do it themselves, but many hire professionals.

Creating the feel of "move-in ready" is particularly important these days as buyers — unless they are all-cash buyers — have little extra money to make improvements under the tightened lending standards, said Darrow Samberg of Nyack, a professional stager. 

"Years ago, people built in extra $20,000 to $30,000 into their mortgage to do renovation," Samberg said. "Now they only get the money that the house is appraised for." 

A professional stager will go through your property and offer suggestions — which include cleaning and decluttering as well as recommendations on things such as new paint colors and furnishing — to make the home appealing to many people.The cost for consultation varies depending on the property size. Susan Atwell, home staging expert and president of AtWell Staged Home in Somers, N.Y., said her three-hour walk-through session would be in the ballpark of $500. 

Based on the experts' suggestions, sellers can either make improvements on their own or continue working with the stagers, who would make a staging plan and implement it. 

Jennifer McLaughlin, 41, of Piermont and Lilli Weisz, 38, of Upper Nyack went above and beyond to stage their homes, Donna Cox said. 

"One of the first things we did was to declutter the space by removing extra clothes from the closet and dishes from the cabinets," said McLaughlin, a software engineer whose family home on Hudson Terrace is on the market. "We also removed large pieces of furniture and put them in a storage facility." 

In addition, she replaced a majority of her family photos on the wall with more generic ones to "depersonalize" the space, she said. 

To stage her Highmount Avenue home, Weisz, whose job is to help people digitally organize, reached out to professional organizer Jocelyn Kenner and designer Simone Eisold. 

"The biggest thing we did was decluttering," Weisz said. "We worked really hard." 

Weisz also painted the front door — which was formerly dark green —  in bright red to give the Colonial a welcoming atmosphere. 

"I've been wanting to paint the door for a long time," Weisz said. "Selling the house made me get it done." 

Power of staging 

Hal Wolkin of South Salem said he was undecided about hiring a professional stager when he was putting his investment property on the market last fall. He thought his three-bedroom condominium in Heritage Hills in Somers would present well.

But after his listing agent Richard Mishkin, an associate broker with Keller Williams, suggested it, he met with stager Susan Atwell. 

He was so impressed by Atwell’s simple but thoughtful suggestions that he decided to seek her help beyond the initial consultation, which was paid for by Mishkin as part of his listing service. 

Wolkin invested in new paint, some repairs and a new deck. Atwell furnished the rooms with rental furniture and decorated with art and accessories from Wolkin's home. 

At that time, a similar unit was sitting on the market in the Heritage Hills complex, but his unit quickly received two offers and sold for full asking price of $550,000, Wolkin said. 

"The property was sold faster than the other apartment in the same complex, and none of the properties was selling at a listing price," Wolkin said, adding that the cost of staging — about $2,400 — was well worth it.

He concluded that his profit was about $30,000 more than without staging thanks to the savings from the speedy sale — such as the unit's common charges and utilities that he didn't have to pay — and the maximized profit. 

"I would do it again in a heartbeat," he said. "Even in the market with a shortage of inventory, there's inventory. And you're always competing against somebody else's property. And it's not just a question of 'Can I sell?' It's 'How long will it take?' and 'What price?'"

Realtors understand the power of a well presented property. And some are getting hands-on expertise in how to achieve it. Joseph Rand, managing partner for Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty, recently offered a one-day home-staging training session for his agents, inviting Martha Webb, a nationally recognized expert, as an instructor. 

"We're trying to make our agents feel empowered to provide staging services to their clients because every client needs it," Rand said. 

Rand added that for luxury homes, hiring professional stagers makes sense because the cost would be easily covered by the increased value of the property. But for smaller homes, he believes real estate agents with basic staging training should be enough to do the job. 

"You should always take more out of the house than you think is necessary. You think that the counter top looks very nice with those books on it. But the counter top looks better if it's clear," Rand said, noting the "less is more" philosophy works well in staging. 

Buyer's perspective 

When real estate agent Richard Mishkin and his wife, Cathy, decided to sell their own four-bedroom raised ranch in Pound Ridge, they had no second thoughts in hiring Susan Atwell to stage it.

"My job is to sell the house and get it to close," he said. "I rather have somebody who's a professional stylist and a stager to do that (staging) part of it. It's like I hire a photographer. I can take pictures, but professional photographers can take much better pictures."  

Atwell said whoever the stager is, the person must have the ability to see the property from a buyer's perspective. 

"I really try to get into the shoes of potential buyers to see the house from their perspectives," Atwell said. "For a house like this, it would be a family most likely. So we're thinking about kids playing in the backyard, and what the parents would want."

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For the Mishkins, she suggested small improvements such as switching the light bulbs from "soft-white" to "clear" to give the maximum brightness; fixing some missing tile, and on a porch switching out the large dining table to a smaller one in another room to make the space look larger and to create a clear path to the adjacent grilling area. 

"When you have a showing, you have a couple and a real estate agent. You're going to have two or three people walking," she told the Mishkins. "They may be bumping into things, and that makes the place look smaller than it is." 

Richard Mishkin said many homeowners can't see their homes objectively because of their emotional attachment to their homes, and that's why professional stagers are helpful.

"She sees everything in the eyes of buyers," Richard Mishkin said. "It’s impossible for a seller to understand." 

Follow Akiko Matsuda on Twitter: @LohudAkiko