Goldilocks Home Staging
Goldilocks home staging gets it just right in Carmel, NY.
I’m excited when real estate agent Valerie Cunningham of Houlihan Lawrence reaches out about staging her latest listing. It’s a 3,400-square-foot home in Carmel, NY. Our previous project together works out so well that I’m eager to team up with her again.
A year earlier, Valerie and I work on an equally large home in Katonah, NY. For that project, I am the third—and final—home stager the owner interviews.
The first home stager insults the seller—in her own home.
The second stager’s quote comes in at $40K after the seller considers a hands-off approach to everything from the fix-ups to the final staging.
With neither stager acceptable and desperate to find someone to help, Valerie refers her seller to AtWell Staged Home. Just from Valerie’s description of this project, I have a strong feeling that I’m the Goldilocks of home stagers that this seller needs.
My gut is correct. The seller and I hit it off, and even more important, our conversation reveals what she is really looking for in a home stager. Her desire is for a staging guide—a professional who will assist her from beginning to end. Not too much, not too little, but something just right—for her.
She still loves her home and wants to be part of the staging process. She also has the time to invest and a helpful—but not at all necessary—great sense of design. AtWell Staged Home’s collaborative, or Stage to Profit®, approach is the solution to this Katonah seller’s staging dilemma.
Valerie’s new listing will be our second time working together, but what neither of us knows at the time, is that this will also be AtWell Staged Home’s second time working with her Carmel client.
Since this seller is now living out of state, Valerie becomes the de facto project manager. It’s only when we FaceTime the client during our second meeting that he says, “Of course I know Susan. She staged my previous house.”
His previous house is a small summer bungalow in one of the old lake communities of Somers, NY. That was seven years earlier, but it all floods back to me as if it were yesterday. I even remember loaning him a drop-leaf table and chairs to place in his vacant dining room. With his old bungalow being so small and having a slightly awkward floor plan, displaying a dining table is essential.
In more it’s-a-small-world news, this will be the third house I’ve staged in this Carmel neighborhood. The first is the home directly across the street and the second a few doors down. For a short street, with only about a dozen homes on it, that’s quite a coincidence. After almost 20 years in business, though, I guess it’s bound to happen.
Valerie and I work together to stage this Carmel home with as much of the existing furniture, art, and accessories as we can. We limit our purchases to new pillows and bedding, a variety of faux plants, some needed lamps, a few art pieces, and an area rug for the living room. All items that the owner will use in his new home.
This 3-bedroom, 3-bath, 3,400-square-foot home in Carmel, NY, has a full-priced cash offer within 4 days of listing. That first offer doesn’t pan out, but less than a week later another arrives. This home sells for slightly over asking at $926K, a 38% increase in value from the seller’s original purchase price seven years earlier.
Here’s what Valerie has to say about working with AtWell Staged Home:
Testimonial coming soon…
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