We’ve been offering staging services for several years for our clients and with good results. Over the past 4 years we’ve acquired upwards of about $20,000 of staging equipment that we now have available for use with our clients and we frequently will purchase small items for specific color schemes that we need to work with – this can often mean a new bedding set or curtains. Sometimes it might be a specific color of pot for outdoor plants, etc. I’m going to post a few before and after photos below so you can see the difference a renovation can make.
One project I worked on for 3 months and actually managed the near full renovation of a client’s home which included picking out paint colors for the interior and exterior, and choosing the new carpet style and color. I then used a combination of the seller’s belongings and some of our own accent items to stage the house. The photos from this project aren’t as good as some of our listings in the past year because we weren’t yet using Scott Chytil of Chytil Photography for our photos then. But, they still turned out pretty good. We do really enjoy working with Scott as he really has brought in a new level of professionalism to our listing photos that really helps them shine online – which is what today’s seller really needs to get interest in their home. Between 70-80% of all buyers start out on the Internet when beginning a home search – so as a seller you have to find every advantage to stand out over your competition.
We’ll start with the comparison shots of an Edmonds property we represented this past Spring 2007:
Here is the final product in a slideshow. You may have to activate an Active X control on your computer for the slideshow to run properly. We think it turned out beautifully and so did the buyers that fought over it. We had 5 offers competing in a 13 hour period for this home which sold for over asking price.
This is how the front of the house looked after we had it cleaned up with the landscape crew we usually use. Both the front and back yard areas were prepped prior to sale which included bringing in new beauty bark, edging, mowing, trimming back overgrown bushes and tree branches, etc. We also had a window cleaner, professional house cleaning crew, and photographer involved in prepping the house along with our staging products. The house was empty when we got ahold of it so all of the items you’ll see are part of our staging equipment. We provided feedback to our clients about what should be updated in the home prior to sale and also gave advice on color schemes and finishes.
