Linda Esposito, NY Expert Home Stager New York Home Stager Blog and Instructor

As a home stager, I work with agents and sellers and never meet the buyers. Well, last week changed that! I pulled up to my 1800's staged house in New Paltz NY with my movers to remove the furniture and there was a towering white-haired gentleman on the front porch! He shook my hand and introduced himself as the new owner. He already knew I was the stager as his broker had told him to expect me. He was very enthusiastic about the look of the house he had just bought and said, "the staging was just right". He went on to say that he liked that I had used "livable furniture" and that the house looked very comfortable. This was important to him because although he loved the idea of owning a house with history, he was a big guy and would not have felt that the house was right for him with a bunch of formal period furniture.

I have staged many period houses in Ulster and Dutchess counties in New York. From the beginning of when I relocated my business from New York City to Upstate NY, I decided to build a furniture inventory that was neutral enough to look good in any house. Of course, I enjoy adding accessories that honor the house--antiques and rocking chairs for my period stagings and modern art and decor for my contemporary ones-- but the furniture is interchangeable.

The most important thing to remember when putting your house on the market, is that your house look well-cared for and cozy. People want to be able to imagine kicking back on the sofa to read the paper or perhaps watch the game. Very few people can imagine casual living in a house that looks like a museum. So, if you are serious about selling, then pack away most of your antiques. By creating a relaxed and spacious environment your house will be more appealing and hopefully, like this New Paltz house, find a buyer this selling season!

Linda Esposito, Professional Stager

HouseSetters Home Staging Services

Ulster, Dutchess, Greene and Columbia counties New York

Put your best space forward

Stagers boost sale price by subtly altering a home's look and feel

When she put her house on the market, Dena Roy had already downsized, moving a lot of her personal stuff into boxes stored in the basement. She’d heard that it’s important for sellers to “depersonalize” their property so that potential buyers could better envision themselves living in the house. But her realtor suggested she do more, by hiring a stager. At first, Roy was a little apprehensive, fearing the process would involve prettying up her house and buying a lot of new stuff. But when stager Linda Esposito, whose mid-Hudson Valley company is called HouseSetters, arrived for the consultation, Roy, whose house is located in Hurley, was pleasantly surprised. She discovered that staging wasn’t about filling up the house, but rather parsing the existing furniture down and rearranging what she already had to better showcase the space.

For example, at Esposito’s suggestion, Roy moved a recliner and side table from the living room into an upstairs bedroom that was mostly empty. Esposito also recommended that Roy pack up the Cuisinart, blender and other clutter from the kitchen countertops and that she remove the attractive jewelry hanging on her bedroom wall, because it distracted visitors’ attention from the house. Finally, she advised that Roy put her shampoos away in a cabinet and drape one of her scarves over the bed, for a splash of color, prior to a showing. As Esposito went through the house, “you start to see the difference,” Roy said. “The house became a lot tidier.” Roy said now she keeps a list on her refrigerator of all the steps she needs to take prior to a showing, which makes the process manageable.

A warmer welcome

In this tough market, it’s vital for sellers to show their house “as if they were expecting company,” in Esposito’s words—clean, neat, and well designed, what she refers to as the Pottery Barn or Crate and Barrel look, that universal language of good taste. National statistics show that having your house “staged”—a process that ranges from an hour and a half, $200 consultation to monthly rental of accessories to monthly rental of a full set of furnishings for a vacant house—improves its prospects of selling. According to a study conducted in 2000 by Joy Valentine, a California-based broker with Coldwell Banker, staged homes were on the market for 13.9 days versus 30.9 days for homes that hadn’t been staged. The study also showed that staged homes sold for an average of 6.3 percent over the asking price, compared to 1.6 percent more for unstaged homes.

Increasingly, real estate brokers themselves are recommending and in some cases even paying to have their listed homes staged, for the simple reason that “a staged property sells quicker,” according to Terri Colucci Shand, president of the Ulster County Board of Realtors. Hiring a stager is important, Shand added, because “quite often people are unable to imagine how the furnishings should be placed. For example, in a very small bedroom, it might be good to add a double bed, to show that it fits.” And particularly in this tough market, when there’s so much for sale, if your house is vacant that’s a huge disadvantage. “When people see houses with furnishings in them, it’s a warmer welcome and they can feel at home,” said Shand. She noted that a beautiful old colonial that she fell in love with when she saw it furnished had lost its appeal when she visited it again, after it had been emptied. “All the blemishes showed,” she said. “I’m seeing all the work.”

That’s not the kind of message you want to send to today’s buyers, added Elise Barry, chief executive officer at the Ulster County Board of Realtors. “Buyers today don’t want to do anything,” she said. “They’re spending a good deal of money on the purchase and they may not have money left over. It’s a different generation” from the do-it-yourselfers of a few decades ago.

Barry noted that the first step is for sellers to detach their personal memories from the house and realize the house now belongs to somebody else. “They have to get in the right mindset and be ready to move on. They have to make the break.” They should pack up all their personal things—anything that bears the stamp of themselves or their family—in boxes and move it to a storage unit. The house should be kept meticulously clean and the owners should make obvious repairs, such as fixing the loose handle on the refrigerator. Medical equipment should be moved out. Cabinet doors should open and shut properly.

Your home on a job interview

Staging, however, involves much more. In essence, it’s making your house look confident—akin to your demeanor when you’re going for a job interview, said Esposito. She noted that according to Barbara Corcoran, one of the top brokers in New York City, prospective buyers decide in the first 10 seconds of stepping inside the house or apartment whether they’re interested in the property. So in her consultations with clients, she starts with the exterior. “While the realtor’s fiddling with the lock box, the buyer is looking around.” Making sure the mailbox looks good, getting rid of cobwebs and insect nests in the porch overhang and putting out a fresh mat help create a good first impression.

Esposito said that she always begins the consultation by sitting down at the dining room table with a client, to establish goals, room by room. A basic aim is to remove attention from the seller’s stuff and create a model home environment (Esposito helped an interior designer do model homes, before leaving the city in 2004 and establishing HouseSetters in Hurley and Kingston). “It’s not about buying a lot of things. I don’t like to over accessorize.” Yet it also shouldn’t look like a furniture showcase room. “It has to be somewhat cozy, in order to feel inviting.”

One goal is to establish a balance between hard and soft surfaces, said Esposito. In a living room, it’s vital to show off the hardwood floor; if most of the floor is covered by a large area rug, she’ll suggest replacing it with a smaller carpet under the sofa and chairs. Another aim is to let the light in. She’ll recommend removing window treatments, repainting dark walls with a lighter color, and turning on all the lights to achieve this.

Another tenet of staging is that “interior real estate equals money,” which means you want to maximize your free floor space. Sellers do this by removing clutter—baskets, bookshelves and other items. Esposito, who used to be a fitness instruction, said “I’m very physical. I’ll say, ‘let’s start clearing out this space,’ so the client can start to visualize the difference.”

At this point, the house is 85 percent there. The final aim is the least tangible, but perhaps most important: what Esposito calls “the wow factor.” Perhaps it can be achieved by throwing a pair of orange pillows onto the gray couch, or arranging three vases of varying height on a dining room table, filled with pussy willows. Instead of a bunch of small pictures, it might be a single large painting or print hung over the sofa—something that “quiets the space” yet adds visual drama. Esposito said the “wow factor” is particularly important because so many people first view a house on-line, and form their impressions from photographs. In a small photo, a room engulfed in lots of tiny details gets lost.

Esposito might recommend covering a tired old sofa with a nice throw, purchasing neutral bedding—used only for showings—and a bin or bag with fresh towels. “The idea is to set up a system so it’s easy for the seller,” she said. In the kitchen, she recommends not only removing all appliances but also putting “icky factors,” such as the greasy toaster oven and coffee maker, into a cabinet just before the showing and putting out a bowl of fruit or leafy plant. In the bathroom, remove toilet-bowl brushes, scatter rugs, and cutesy items—like a kiddie fish-patterned shower curtain. “All you need is nice towels and a decorative pump” for soap, she said.

“The house has to look well cared for. Potential buyers like to think ‘this is a detail person,’ perhaps because the same colors are used throughout the house. When everything’s fresh, they think ‘we don’t have to worry about the roof or the electrical,’” she said. “But if they see icky factors, like stuff all over the counters, they’ll think, ‘they couldn’t even clean up the sink.’” If the kitchen doesn’t have the latest appliances, that’s okay, as long as it looks respectful (it goes without saying the inside of the fridge should be clean.) However, if it’s a high-end kitchen in which everything is stainless steel except the dishwasher, she recommends getting a new stainless steel one, to avoid a jarring disconnect.

It isn’t always necessary to stage the full house, said Esposito; just the most important areas—where the family relaxes and enjoys a meal together and where each member sleeps. If the house appeals to families, sometimes she’ll put a table and chair in a third bedroom and stock it with a few toys to keep the potential buyers’ children entertained.

Esposito has several storage units filled with furniture and accessories, which are showcased on her website, www.housesetters.com. She’ll rent clients an accessories kit, if needed, which usually costs $100 or less a month. She also has multiple couches, tables, chairs, etc. which can be rented out for vacant houses. Including moving, the cost for renting furniture for four months is about $2,000, she said. Occasionally, she’ll have to source out an item.

Even though staging is about “creating a product for the marketplace,” she added that on occasion “people will want me to help them set up their new house” (which she doesn’t do). What might seem to start out being a painful process ends up actually being kind of fun, if not downright inspirational.

Written by Lynn Woods

Will your real estate agent go out on a limb for you?

If you are a savvy seller, there is a good chance that you are interviewing more than one real estate agent. So, if this is the case, how are you going to choose one over the others? Certainly, all of them will let you know how they are going to market your house--through various real estate sites such as Zillow and Trulia, through their in-office network and perhaps by using social media like Twitter and Facebook. So how are you going to decide which one will do the best job?

With over 95 % of home buyers first going to the internet, online presence is very important. So, if one of the agents is on more online real estate sites than the others with the ability to upload more photos, this would certainly be a strong point.

However, more poorly shot photos of a house that has not been properly prepared for the marketplace is NOT a good thing. Of course, many home sellers think that their castle, I mean home, is beautiful just the way it is. They perhaps pride themselves on having designer-like skills and feel that buyers should or more positively stated WILL love their house just the way it is. So, if you were an agent who sees things differently and knows that the way we live in our homes is NOT the way we market and sell our homes, why bring up staging at a listing interview appointment? Why risk offending the potential client?

Well, the answer is simple: because agents who are confident and think outside-the-box will risk losing a listing to give their potential client the very best advice. They might also be willing to share the cost of a home staging consultation to encourage you to listen to what a professional stager has to say about your house. Quite frankly, the best agents often take a team approach and have stagers and sometimes professional photographers on their team. They are willing to stand behind what they know will make your house look its best and get noticed on the MLS.

So, when you are ready to begin interviewing agents, don't forget to open your mind to preparing your house for sale and choosing an agent not just by his or her personality or by who quotes the highest listing price but by who is willing to go out on a limb by suggesting home staging!

As an addendum to this post that I wrote at the beginning of the summer, I recently got a call from a Virginia real agent who was looking for a Realtor in my area. She only wanted to use an agent who has a stager on his or her team so she was asking me to recommend one! SWEET!!!

Are you selling your house in Dutchess County New York? Be sure to ask the agents you interview if they have a home stager on their team! As a home stager in the Hudson Valley, I am getting more and more calls from Dutchess Realtors. Why? Because Dutchess county has a very active Women's Council of Realtors which is a great way to get to know agents and have them get to know you. Let's face it--an agent is not going to recommend a stager he or she hasn't gotten to know. The agent wants to make sure that the stager is professional, gives good advice and is a good communicator. Luckily, Dutchess County's WCR chapter gives the agents and affiliates plenty of opportunities to become acquainted.

In the long run, it is not just about the agent you choose but his or her team- stagers, real estate photgraphers, mortgage brokers, home inspectors and contractors. Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a team to sell a house! Good communication between the stager preparing the house for sale and the agent is crucial to getting the house on the market looking its best. Professional photographers also make a big difference especially for spaces that require additional lighting and wide angles. Then familiarity and teamwork with all of the professionals involved from when you get an acceptable offer to the time you close is essential.

So sellers, take the time to interview agents, find out if they work with professional stagers and whether they have a team approach to their business. Factor this in when deciding which agent to use to sell your house. After all, it isn't just about price and personality--it is about teamwork!

Recently I told Rhinebeck, New York clients to rip out the carpet that went up the stairs and through the upstairs hallway. When selling your house neutrality is king!!

Sometimes when I do a staging consultation I have the unpleasant task of telling a client to remove window treatment that they paid a fortune for or rip out expensive woolen carpet that is too unusual. I cringe when I am challenged with this situation but the client is paying for the best advice and I feel obligated to give it. With window treatments it isn't too bad because I tell them to save them in case the buyer wants them. With carpeting it is a different story--once it's ripped out it's ripped out!

I keep in mind that it is all about creating universal appeal and anything that distracts or puts off the potential buyer should be removed. The client will hopefully see that the expense to take their home from "all about them" to "all about everyone" pays off!