It’s easy for home sellers to be unable to see the impact that their home decorating style may have on potential buyers. Home sellers often are wearing rose colored glasses when they assume home buyers will fall in love with their decorating style. And absent a home staging consultation, many home sellers do not even recognize their personal fingerprint throughout a home.

Such was the story with a Middleton WI (the good neighbor city) home that had an unsuccessful Spring selling season and now opted for an home staging consultation. At my initial home staging consultations I often show pictures of the rooms of my home as I recognized many some home sellers feel as if their home decorating style is on trial. I personally love bold colored walls and I have objects that reflect my personal decorating style as this is how I need to live in my space. But as I explain during my consultations, "this home stager is not currently selling her home." When selling your home it’s all about presenting how the general public can live in the space; not how you live in the space.

BEFORE

While this particular home seller’s chose to accentuate the dusty rose tweed in the sofa and loveseat, I chose to work with the other furniture’s other colors. To appeal to more buyers, it was necessary to move away from the dusty rose color that dominated the room.

AFTER

And while the sellers chose to pass on the recommendation to paint the walls, infusing color and warmth into the room was pulled from the artwork, window treatments and accessories that were rented from my home staging inventory. A large mirror was recovered from the attic and given a new home. Finally, furniture was repositioned to allow the buyers to focus on the fireplace upon entry into the home. Placement of twigs was included to draw the eye upward in emphasizing the open floor plan.

By initiating a home staging consultation, home sellers are taking the pro-active steps in understanding how to properly present their home to sell. Once the seller’s rose colored glasses came off and the rose valances came down this living room became more marketable to a broader pool of Middleton WI home buyers simply by home staging.

www.creativeedgestagings.com

5117 Shorecrest Drive

Click HERE to view the virtual tour.

Opportunity knocks for the savvy Buyer! MLS# 1632685.

Friendly Middleton neighborhood, very special setting. Seriously, check out the screen porch and back yard overlooking endless NATURE!

Master suite with enormous closet. Big, solid home, needs cosmetic improvements (see Cond Report). Recent updates include chimney ('09), A/C ('06), water heater ('05).

To view a picture gallery, click here.

Full, dry basement. Welcome to the neighborhood!

Price reflects need for improvements. 1-year Home Warranty included.

To schedule a private showing, call me at 608-219-8989 or email at jennyswain@kw.com.

Besides new clients, referrals, online presence, a great education and great friends from all over the country, blogging on ActiveRain can be deliciously satisfying as well.

I had grabbed a bite to eat at Villa Dolce in downtown Middleton with a friend last night. When we had finished we wanted to see if Bloom Bake Shop was still open and strolled to the other end of the block only to see the sign on the window indicating the shop was closed. However, my alert friend noticed the door was open, so we stepped inside just to take a look and see what we could see.

Annmarie, the owner, greeted us with great exuberance. After her very warm welcome, and hinting to my friend, whom had never been there before, that she would offer him a free cupcake of his choice, she remarked that I looked familiar to her. I said yes that I had blogged about her shop at the open house last October and I told her my name. Yes! Oh yes! I loved your blog-you emailed it to me and I sent it on to my Mother and friends around the country. She was effusive in her praise and now offered us two cupcakes free of charge-strawberry with butter cream and lime with coconut frosting. She went on and on-nearly to the point of embarrassment (well, OK, I was able to actually soak it all in).

It was just adorable, mainly because of the enthusiasm of Annmarie.

I have been a lapsed Rainmaker lately, but this little event reminded me of the delicious benefits of ActiveRain and has prompted me to post 4 times today (so far).

And, oh boy, were those cupcakes yummy! If you are anywhere close to Middleton or Madison, you owe it to yourself to stop in and try some of these tempting delights.

Saturday April 16
1pm – 3pm

Sponsored by the Middleton Jaycees-great they are doing it in the afternoon-the kids can do one in the morning at other places

Lakeview Park (East Shelter) - 6300 Mendota Ave Middleton, WI
Easter egg hunt for the kids

The cool thing about living in Wisconsin: when the Packers win the Super Bowl, everyone gets a trophy.

A woman from Oregon got my attention on Wednesday evening. She was calling from a IMX Advertising to sell Google Search placement. How many of these calls do we get weekly? For years I have said "Not interested. No, I do not want more business. No, I do not want to be found." Maybe it was the way the caller's ability to laugh at herself and her script that kept me from saying, "Thank you, goodbye now", or it was the free month, no contract required offer that got me to stay and eventually say, "OK". I bought the service. Today I am the owner of Middleton Wi real estate in Google Search.

Of course Middleton isn't the only market I serve, but it's where I have always done business, I live there, and it's as strong of a market as any place in Wisconsin. I've moved my advertising budget from paper print to electronic. Spending a couple of bucks a day to be found by people who want what I have is simple, tried and true marketing. Now that my sign says Open For Business, I know changes to the shop were in order.

First step was to make some changes to the landing page on my web site, TomMeyer.com. I know when I land on a page after searching key words, it's important to see something that says I am in the right place. OK. I modified the welcome message, the banner, and the home search capabilities. My web site is a Z57 model. Their support folks are great. A guy did some quick magic and showed me a better way to make my site user friendly. Nice. We also discovered that my home search wasn't working...not so nice, but it's all good now.

Second step--get a point of reference. In a month I have to have some way of evaluating the free 30 days, because the cost goes up at the end of March. My site has some fine stats reporting tools. I see Google has always been the key search engine directing people to me, but the people finding me are coming at a crawl. I think doubling the traffic would be less than modest improvement. I see people were coming in the front door and not going further. I know what that means--I don't see anything I like here. Not surprising those who tried my Home Search tool got nothing. Note to self: check your tools from time to time.

Third step---I've got more work to do, and a house to show in 30 minutes to a person I've known for decades. She found me the old fashioned way. I gotta go before I start getting found.