This past weekend, I went to visit a dear friend in another Oregon town. She recently purchased a home after several months of looking. Unfortunately, properties in her area seem to be ridiculously overpriced with a huge glut of homes sitting for months and months without any interest being shown. So price was her first obstacle to overcome. Second was the condition of the homes she saw. In all, she viewed 53 properties before she found what she was looking for at an affordable price. The homes that were in good shape and showed well were price-inflated. In those priced a bit lower, my friend was amazed at the way most of these homes looked. Dirty, outdated, cluttered, funky decor etc. She told me, from a buyers perspective, that she was turned off from the minute she stepped inside some of these homes and couldn't figure out why sellers and listing agents weren't using professional stagers to help them prepare properties for sale. That remains my question du jour most days. I promote home staging on a daily basis, educating agents and sellers alike about what buyers see when they walk into a home. With a background in marketing working as a staging professional, I'm trained to see things from the consumers' perspective. It was refreshing to hear my words coming out of the mouth of a real life, home buyer...buyers do and should expect to see worthwhile "products" on the market and are turned off by much of what they see. I can't suggest strongly enough that home sellers slip on the buyers' mocassins and try to look at your home from their perspective. Most sellers can't be objective and can't emotionally detach from a home enough to see it other than through rose colored glasses. EVERY professional stager can.

I've been out of Active Rain action for a while but find myself getting more excited about the busy home selling season ahead. I joined my colleagues in our local professional staging network last week for a promotional activity.

You might say we’re back on home plate, ready for a winning spring season. Mid-Valley Professional Stagers (MVPS) recently attended a Salem OR vendor fair sponsored by Prudential Real Estate Professionals. Our group offered many receptive REALTORS guidance and information on how MVPS can be their Most Valuable Partner in Service. Over the past several months, homes in the valley that have been staged by our members are selling in a matter of weeks! Each of us looks forward to helping more Realtors and more home sellers be successful in selling a home. Professional Staging can make the difference between blah and BUY! Feel free to send your clients here to learn more about how home staging works. Today's Daily Real Estate News from Lowe's had a great article you can share as well.

Best Regards,

Liz Harrison ASP

Spruce It Up! Home Staging Consultants

Salem OR

"Offering free home staging". Magic words or at least attractive words to sellers. But those words aren't coming from professional stagers, they're coming from listing agents. Smart agents who know the real value of this unbelievably effective marketing tool. Here's advice to sellers who consider signing a listing contract for that reason or sellers who recognize what an important added service that is. Be sure you understand exactly what professional staging services your listing agent plans to provide. You might get a comprehensive consultation with a Professional Home Stager, a great benefit and a great Do-It-Yourself tool that will mean a (often much faster) successful sale for you. Or...your agent could be offering a limited consultation with a pro, even offering to pay part of a professional stagers fee if you agree to have the staging done. To some listing agents offering "Free Home Staging", however, that means placing towels in the bathrooms and a plant on the kitchen windowsill. I'm NOT implying that the listing agent is trying to mislead anyone, only that the level of education and skill in Home Staging that a Realtor has can range from very little to Realtors who are actually certified or accredited as Professional Stagers. You might notice I keep saying "Professional Stager", I just want to be clear. Just as a homeowner would hesitate to have their very skilled, very conscientious plumber install a new roof, or ask the landscape maintenance company to paint the house, hesitate long enough to find out if the staging you get is up to the same quality and standard as you'd expect from a Professional Stager. A good Real Estate Marketing Team is set up to let the members do what they each do best.

Received an update from the FSBO Blog...yet another article on the importance of staging and the basics. While the info is very basic, this might be a good link to share with listing clients or anyone even considering selling a home. http://fsbo.fizber.com/2009/09/30/the-home-staging-cheat-sheet/ . This wouldn't be enough, generally speaking, to help a seller stage a home but it might be enough to prompt a professional consultation. A comprehensive consultation with a written report (i.e. plan and "honey-do list") is a very effective way to stage a home that has a minimal cost. Sellers need to be motivated tho, to do the work.

Economists and Real Estate professionals are all making a good college try at predicting where the market is going, what's working and what's not. And many of them admit that we're in uncharted territory so predictions can change with the wind. What is not changing with the wind, are certain "flaws or deficiencies" in homes that will almost always turn away a buyer. A good professional stager will have ideas on how to work with or work around those challenges to still illicit the interest of a buyer. It requires engenuity, creativity and often, even just a very reasonable budget to make changes that will completely change the look of the room.

Go to this link Biggest Losers: 20 Home Design Features That Send Buyers Running to find a very comprehensive listing of those tough to sell features in homes. Below you'll find before and after photos of a couple design challenges I was able to help my clients with. The result on both, was a quick sale!

Ah! Seventies cedar! This was what potential buyers saw as soon as they entered the house. It obviously dated the house, made the dining area appear much smaller and squelched interest in seeing what else the house had to offer. A simple overlay of sheetrock, texture and paint brought this room into the new millenium.

Then in this 1970's kitchen, the space for the refrigerator wouldn't accomodate the sizes of more modern models. In its place was a wire storage rack, commonly used in pantries and garages. Since a new countertop was on the "to do" list, we simply created a space that looked like it had always been there.