Beverly Carlson

When life hands you lemons, make lemon aide, is common folk wisdom. Despite marketing hype to the contrary which often advises folks to stop making a landlord rich and buy instead of renting. Unfortunately, I am not getting rich from people paying me rent. To prove this point, a recent past tenant gave me pause when there was dog poop found inside the house, and a truck load of trash to be hauled away just for the start of the cleanup. Now you can better understand the saying that when life hands you lemons, make lemonaide.

A SKILL I have acquired and honed to an art form is the marketing strategy of home staging. I have marketed successfully sold numerous staged homes for sale. The main trick I have up my sleeve is the understanding of balance, proportion, and scale as it applies to home staging.

In recent years, I have begun to apply the same home staging strategy to my rental properties and my property management houses.

In the kitchen of this particular rental property, I strategically placed five lemons on the counter on a placemat in front of a silk plant.

After the mega cleanup, some paint and repairs, I staged this house for lease with room vignettes.

From the day the sign was put in front of the house until the tenant began moving in was only ten days, not too shabby of turn around particularly for the location of the house on a busier street.

For successful leasing, STAGE TO LEASE!

Lemon Vignette on Kitchen Counter.

My prior post on Why Not to Be a Property Manager depressed me and didn't get any comments toboot!

In order to rectify the situation, here are five good reasons to be a property manager.

1. Property Management provides the manager and the owners another stream of income.

2. A property manager helps make other people money and owners love to get checks in the mail!

3. A property manager accomplishes what other owners don't want to do!

4. You help make housing more available by successfully renting or leasing owner homes out and increasing the available affordable housing.

5. You help owners accrue equity in real estate that has long term financial benefit to owners.

I think these reasons are a little more palatable than discussing leaky roofs, dog poop, trash in the yard, abandoned cars, and overflowing storage buildings. (my previous post to members)

Life is good when sellers are motivated to sell.

and they follow staging recommendations. Well, my sellers did it. They painted the backsplash and walls around the counters and appliances back to a neutral color. The backsplash was previously purple. They also removed an old chain link style kennel from the back yard. It just gets better and better. They painted the patio posts. Now it is on painting some patio door trim!

Here are the kitchen photos before and after Note the dark colored backsplash.before#1 and now Today! FRom purple backsplash to neutral tan

Today I talked to a "For Sale by Owner" and they own a house t hat I have previously staged. One positive outcome to staging a home, is that one never forgets that experience and there remains a bond to that home that doesn't disappear entirely. When I saw that For Sale By Owner sign in less than a year a little pain went through my heart and I felt the question arising from deep inside: "What has gone wrong?"

Fortunately after visiting with the current owners, they have good reasons to move on, to get closer to a job and closer to family. When I asked for the listing, they explained they wouldn't be able to afford to as if that is any surprise to anyone!

Money is the reason I hear most often from "For Sale by Owners." Does this reason pan out? Obviously not or the For Sale signs would not disappear being replaced instead by Realtor signs. One house that I have shown has very outdated wallpaper and overpriced to boot. I don't have a crystal ball, but the wallpaper is either going to be painted or the sales price is going to come down about $20,000. This is a huge high end home for my area.

I picked up a flyer from a For Sale by Owner out of box and It's black and white and incredibly enough no where on it is the owner's name. I guess I'm picky. One thing for sure For Sale By Owners flyer's won't be the reason buyers beat a path to their door. Another flyer has just the first name of the owner on it. I find that a little odd as if the owner thinks that somehow that will protect her privacy?!

My favorite explanation is that I'm going to test the market for a month. The sad truth the market is already tested day in and day out by very competent buyers who are only going to pay what they think the house is worth!

Cute Cottage Style Home that I own and rent in Abilene Texas!

I got a call from my daughter asking plaintively, Can you help my friend? I feel so bad for her. She has a cute house built in 2006 and she confided in me that the house has now been on the market with a Realtor for 356 days and ONLY six showings! Is there anything she can do? Of course, there's always something to do! The two variables that an owner has complete control over are the price and the condition. The easiest and the simplest to do FIRST is to enhance the condition with home staging.

The way buyers evaluate a home on the Internet is through the photos and the simplest place to start is to see if the photos can be enhanced. With buyers making decisions based on the photos that they see, one needs to evaluate the photos and take new ones if they don't showcase your home.

After viewing the current MLS photos, here are some of the suggestions (ten of them) I discussed with the owner to enhance the marketing of her home.

1. Trim the front bushes to open up the view of the front door.

2. Showcase the Fireplace. Remove the small decor pieces and replace with one painting over the fireplace proportionate to the wall space. Pull the couch out to create cozier conversation group around the fireplace.

3. Living Room - Use a smaller area rug to showcase the hardwood floors.

4. Dining Room - Remove 2 of the six chairs to showcase size of room. If you have a round table somewhere, change out the rectangular table with a round table.

5. Living Room - Create a conversation group inside the photo with at least two easy chairs and a small table and a lamp.

6. Include a Master Bedroom Photo.

8. Show one of the bedrooms as a child's room with a twin bed in it. A blowup mattress can make a bed.

9. Pull the office desk to the middle of the room and remove everything else that does not relate to being an office.

10. Get a patio umbrella table for the Flagstone Patio and surround with pots of colorful flowers.

As you can see there is plenty a homeowner can do with little to no investment. I will keep you posted as to the success of this one.

This is an abbreviated example of a professional home staging consultation. I also do written consultations that contain complete step-by-step directions for each room. FOR YOUR HOME STAGING CONSULTATION, CALL 325-721-2429.

Here's a before and after of a living room that I helped another homeowner.

This is the living before enhancement with furniture rearrangement and a rug and curtains were changed out! HERE"S BEFORE:

AFTER!