Jenifer Shorrosh, HSR Certified Home Stager, Mobile and Baldwin Counties, AL

This may sound like a crazy idea, but I have a question to throw out to mortgage professionals - With the onslaught of bank-owned homes now, because of the foreclosure crises, wouldn't it be in the best interests of the bank to hire a home stager to evaluate a home and make recommendations about what needs to be done to the home to enhance it and make it more marketable?

I visited a home today that was a foreclosure - and I have to say one of the most beautiful homes I have ever seen - well, at least in the eyes of a stager. There are issues with the home, some simply cosmetic, that I think could have been addressed and taken care of if the mortgage company had enlisted the help of a professional home stager. The tragedy is that this house has been sitting on the market, owned by the bank, for long time.

I know mortgage companies would like to re-coupe their losses, and I've been in many homes that are on the market due to foreclosures, and there has typically been no effort on anyone's part to clean, much less stage these houses. It seems to me like banks could ask and receive a higher price for these homes if a little effort were put into making them more marketable.

What do you think?

I have the highest respect for Realtors. Because I have so many of them in my family, I have spent a good part of my adult life watching them work tirelessly on behalf of home buyers and sellers (and often, myself). Yes, there commissions can be good, but many times they do a lot of work and don't get paid a dime. Buying or selling a home can be one of the most stressful transactions an individual ever undertakes and having someone alongside you who knows what they are doing helps alleviate a lot of that stress.

One of the responsibilities of professional home stagers is to assist Realtors by helping to prepare their listings to be seen by the public. Realtors can refer us to clients, but educating home sellers on the staging process and why it will benefit them is up to us. It is at this point that home stagers can assist Realtors in another valuable way. I talk to sellers about the three things that are most important in marketing a home:

1. Prepare the home to be put on the market (staging).

2. Present the home to the public in the best possible light (high-quality real estate photography).

3. Price it right.

It is the third point that enables the home stager to assist Realtors by being another voice of reason to sometimes unreasonable sellers, who choose a figure that they want for their house, not based on its real market value, but on what they owe or what profit they want to get from the sale. Home Stagers can reinforce to sellers that they need to listen to their Realtor about where to set the listing price, because their Realtor has the experience and training to perform CMA's (Comparative Market Analysis) and to know what is reasonable to expect to receive from the sale.

I have started including photographs of places of interest in the area of town where the listing is located. I think it is very helpful, especially for out of town buyers who find it difficult to narrow down where they want to live in a town they are unfamiliar with. This is a small 2/2 in a popular midtown neighborhood in Mobile. If location, location, location is the key, and your listing has it, you should pique the buyer's interest by showcasing that in your slideshow.

Our January WCR luncheon was titled "Sell this House" and presentations were given by three speakers: a home stager, a real estate photographer (me) and a local home inspector. Jane Ann Lance of Enhanced by Lance, and an Active Rainer, gave an excellent presentation on the benefits of home staging. I gave some tips on improving Realtor's listing photos and John Williams, our home inspector talked about what issues show up most often in an inspection report and how to take care of those issues beforehand. I think the combination of speakers was a great idea on the part of the WCR leadership, and hopefully everyone came away with some good information to take back to their clients.

This was a slideshow a did recently for a waterfront listing using Photoshop Elements. I decided to combine background music with sounds of water lapping at the end to make you feel like you were sitting on the pier enjoying the water. Do you think I accomplished this? I did the twilight shots with the help of a very sturdy tripod.