Heather Cook

Kitchener-Waterloo Business Woman Heather Cook NAMED AS FINALIST IN THE 2011 REAL ESTATE STAGING ASSOCIATION’S 2011 HOME STAGING INDUSTRY AWARDS

Winners to Be Announced in Las Vegas at the industry’s yearly convention January 24^th, 2011

Kitchener-Waterloo, ON – November 15, 2010 Kitchener-Waterloo home stager Heather Cook of Rooms in Bloom Home Staging & Design Inc. is named as a finalist in the Real Estate Staging Association™ (RESA®) Home Staging Industry Award™ in the Professional Home Stager of the Year Award for all of Canada. Home Stagers from all over North America submitted their before and after photos for consideration for the industry’s most prestigious awards.

The RESA® Home Staging Industry Awards™ are the most prestigious awards in the home staging industry. Home Staging professionals from all across North America compete for the RESA Professional Stager of Year™ and the RESA Rookie Stager of the Year™ awards. RESA will recognize professional stagers in six different regions of North America and each of those winners will compete for the overall crowning of the RESA Professional Stager of the Year™ and the RESA Rookie Stager of the Year™. RESA also recognizes a product or service of the year, a REALTOR® of the year and innovator of the year.

“RESA congratulates and recognizes each person for their contributions to our industry. Our Industry Awards are a wonderful way to give back to the staging industry as a whole and to recognize some amazing people” said, Shell Brodnax, President/CEO of RESA.

“My partner and I are both honored and thrilled to have been selected as a finalist for this prestigious award. We have worked so very hard to ensure that every home we staged had that tangible WOW factor to impress potential buyers. We sincerely thank all of our supporters who voted for our staging designs and we hope you know how dedicated we are to providing top notch professional service to every client we work with,” said Heather Cook, Staging Designer for Rooms in Bloom Home Staging & Design Inc.

The finalists will be judged by a panel of industry professionals and the winners will be announced at the RESA Home Staging International Conference, January 24^th in Las Vegas.

For more information regarding Real Estate Staging, please visitwww.RealEstateStagingAssociation.com or www.RESAConference.com or call 888-201-8687 For more information on Rooms in Bloom Home Staging & Design Inc. please visit www.homestagingdesign.ca and contact Heather at 519-502-3185.

In recent weeks I have read many blog posts about realtors worried about their own safety while showing houses to clients and it got me thinking.

We often go into homes without knowing our clients well or what their personal situations are like. I have been in certain situations which made me both very uncomfortable and eager to leave. I wrote a post about one of those situations where during the course of a consultation, our male client proceeded to get quite drunk and follow us around making inappropriate comments both in regards to our appearance as well as making hostile comments about his wife and pets. This culminated in him basically asking my partner out – in front of his wife – at the end of the consult.

Just last week I did a consult on my own and had to meet with two men – both were my clients whom I had talked with over the phone but I had no idea they were both over 6 feet tall and very muscular. Yes they were nice but they might not have been and as a single female I felt quite vulnerable. I kept my cell phone in my hand the whole time – just because it made me feel safer.

So here are some of the tips I can think of – and I would welcome more – for stagers going out to visit client’s homes.

1) Do your homework and ask qualifying questions on the phone. Ask for as much information as you can and get a sense of the situation. This way if you get any negative vibes you can make arrangements to either meet the clients with someone else (my partner in this situation) or to meet up for coffee before continuing onto their home.

2) Ensure the people in your life know your schedule and are aware of when you should be done. Check in with them when you have completed a meeting or staging appointment so that they know all is well.

3) Google your clients. I know people don’t want to hear this but information is king when it comes to meeting clients on their turf.

4) Keep your cellphone with you throughout meetings, or at least have it accessible. This way if something goes awry you have options.

5) When your instincts tell you a situation is ‘off’, make your excuses and leave. Be as honest as you need to be but remove yourself from the situation.

6) For meetings with clients which you just aren’t sure of, take someone else with you. My partner and I do this often with clients where there is either a large renovation involved or when we have gotten certain ‘vibes’ from our inital conversations with clients.

I don’t like to be ‘doom and gloom’ girl but safety is vital when your business is essentially service based, planning for possibilities is never wrong.

I hope you’ll read my suggestions and also give me some of yours as well!

All realtors want their listings to stand out to buyers online. At least 90% of buyers are shopping ONLINE first before they even make arrangements to visit a home so its vital that pictures stand out - in a good way - to buyers.

I'm sure you can imagine how it works - buyers (most often the wife/girlfriend) is searching online clicking through homes going "ugly .. ugly .. ugly .. ooohhh this one's pretty, we need to see it!"

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So how do you get those visits and that positive attention? Well, here's a list of the top 5 things you can do to get buyer's in the front door:

1) Take the time to PREPARE the home first. From home staging to completing repairs and doing smart upgrades, these things make the most DRAMATIC impressions on buyers.

2) Professional photography and virtual tours showcase all that preparation and ensure buyers see the home in a positive way. Skipping step one and doing step two only highlights a home which is NOT prepared to be shown either online or in person. This can also ensure that your home ends up on a site like this.

3) Marketing which does not rely on phrases such as 'Handyman's Dream' or 'Fixer-Upper' to pique buyer's interest. Instead, showcasing the home's impeccable presentation and fantastic pictures should capture buyer's attention!

4) Pictures of relevant rooms; don't take pictures of 'pass throughs' or 'people' or rooms with unfathomable purposes. Showcase what shows the best in the home so that you will get the most first dates possible with intrigued buyers. If a buyer can see all the function/value they will be more inclined to pay the listing price.

5) Show more than one picture! Listings with only one picture of the exterior tend to scare off buyers who can only wonder what the house is hiding. By preparing the home properly, the realtor should want to show off the home to grab buyer's attention!

Buyers are extremely picky in terms of what homes they will view and consider purchasing. Home that are turn key, show well online and in person and which portray a modern and upgraded lifestyle get the most interest and offers. Follow these tips and your house will stand out from the crowd!

Lighting is a vital part of any type of design. Whether its for staging or re-design, having adequate and style appropriate lighting is essential. You can create a beautiful design but if the lamps or light fixtures don't fit with the style of the space, they will stick out like sore thumbs.

This means all those lamps which have the bases styled as characters (Buzz Lightyear or Baseball players), animals, sports equipment or which are overly flowery or religious can really clash with the room's overall style. For staging those types of lamps have to be edited out but sometimes its as easy as changing out the lampshade:

Empire Shade Coolie Shade Drum Shade

The first two style of shades are what we normally encounter. The empire shade is the most popular and the Coolie shade is often found on lamps purchased in the 1980's. Changing them out for the Drum shade is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to give lamps a total facelift.

When it comes to ceiling lights or table pendants, dated fixtures often significantly affect how buyers view the home. Updating these lights or switching them out for neutral fixtures dramatically changes the overall feel of a home - very much the same way switching out brass light switch plates for white ones does.

When we gave this bathroom a facelift, if we had ignored the lighting then it would really have stuck out in a negative way.

Instead we opted to switch them out and the whole space felt cohesive and much more modern.

Lighting affects mood, colour and overall design style. When staging, its important to keep the lighting elements neutral. Investing in some modern fixtures makes an instant and significant impact in any space.

Changing from the pink flowered fixture to the neutral yet modern white linen drum provides an instant update and will change the feel of any space

When it comes to designing to live, the lighting can take on more personality and yet, like any of the elements in a space, it should be the proper scale and style as the rest of the room. I love lighting and I just wanted to share a few of my current favourites!

Whether you're staging to sell or designing to live, don't forget to pay attention to the lighting and make sure that it does the job you need it to do as well as reflecting the look and feel of the space.

As a professional home stager, I can't count how many times I have heard this statement from home owners and realtors alike. They want to try to avoid investing in staging and they think if they have de-cluttered a little, set the table and mowed the lawn .. voila! They are good to go.

Well sometimes that kind of gambling pays off, but most homes need a professional to go through them before they are listed for sale just so that the sellers can get a clear, concise list of things which should be done before buyers show up. The cost for a consultation can vary from $150 up to $500 depending on what professional stagers are charging in your area and virtually all of them include a comprehensive list of 'must do's' as well as a prioritized list of 'should do's' for the home owner to accomplish before any photographs make their way to MLS. Getting a stager in before listing gives the sellers a completely objective secondary opinion on how their home looks to someone who has absolutely no emotional attachment to the property. It's also a wake up call for most sellers. No, the doll collection can't stay or yes the pink carpets should be taken up so buyers can see the hardwood floors.

So, when my partner and I hear that a seller wants to hold off on a consultation or has had one, knows what needs to be done but doesn't want to invest money in our recommendations, we have to walk away. It's their decision. Their decision however, has repercussions.

If the home garners little interest, no offers and sits on the market, their agent is going to want to do a price reduction. As price reductions generally run anywhere between $5,000 to $25,000 (or more depending on the list price), that is a bitter pill for most sellers to swallow. In addition to that, once the sellers realize that 'its not going so well', they are going to want to re-visit the idea of staging. Which means a price reduction AND the costs associated with staging. Which is a double bitter pill to swallow.

Its also important to consider that a home's busiest time on the market is the first few weeks after it's been listed for sale. That's when all the realtors who have buyers waiting for homes in your area will bring them through. If the house doesn't impress them, they move on. Sellers may never get them back in the house - even if they stage it a month or six months later.

This is why its so important to do all your repairs, neutralizing and staging before your house hits the hot sheets. Its not enough that a home is priced competitively, a property still has to show well to impress buyers. If the home's appearance - from the beginning - is great, buyers will justify the seller's listing price and want to jump all over their home. This means a shorter (less stressful) selling experience and more money in the home owner's pocket.

I was never awesome at math but I know that the cost of consultation, some fix ups and some staging for most family homes may come in at the top end around $5,000. Usually unless your home is vacant, the costs are considerably less than that to get your home show ready. That doesn't even come close to comparing a price drop of anywhere between $5,000 - $25,000 and then staging costs on top of that OR no staging costs and extremely low ball offers.

When selling your home its vital to see the big picture and invest money in your house so that when it comes time to sell it, you can be confident that buyers will pay you the price you want.

Price + Appearance = Sold Home