Great Editing: The Secret to Home Staging
The secret to home staging is great editing.
You have a choice.
Write an article for your local paper OR edit one you have already written. You have one hour.
I’m a huge fan of collaboration. I’m also all about efficiency. Given the challenge above, I choose editing because when time is limited, this is the most effective way to get it done.
That’s what staging owner-occupied homes is all about. Great editing.
And that’s why we always encourage our home sellers to contact us first—before removing any art, accessories, or furniture from their home.
A good editor can make any writer look great! The same is true in home staging and redesign. You, the home seller, build the foundation, and we, the home stagers, make it look great just by using what you already have.
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Rita begins as a redesign client with an eye toward selling sometime in the not-too-distant future. Before our first meeting, she tells me that she thinks the store designer sold her too much furniture. Our session confirms her suspicion.
Four years later, Rita reaches out to me and Realtor Denise Giordano of Coldwell Banker in Yorktown Heights, NY, to stage and sell her son’s Mohegan Lake, NY, house.
Just a few months after that successful sale, Rita once again reaches out to me and Denise to begin the process of selling her own home in Yorktown Heights, NY.
The property has a pool, tennis court, cottage, long, tree-lined gated driveway, and it abuts a nature preserve. These are all features that show best in the summer.
It’s August when we begin, but the plan isn’t to list until early January. We take advantage of the warm weather and advanced planning to stage and photograph the exterior areas so that home buyers can truly appreciate these features, even in the middle of winter.
Rita lists her home on January 16 and just six days later texts me to share:
“After some negotiation between two interested parties, we have an accepted full-price offer. Thanks for the amazing staging. All five showings said the house looked excellent!”
She also asks when she can start the destaging process. As always, I recommend keeping the home staged for showings as long as possible, but I encourage her to continue to clean out storage areas, closets, and the garage.
It’s a good thing she asks because the inspection brings up a potential issue with the home.
The issue causes a delay but does not hinder the final sale. Instead of closing on May 5, they close three months later, on a very lucky Friday, August 13.
The big hold-up is a result of having to get plans for a new septic system through the county board of health. She teases that someone could have almost had a baby in the time it took to close on the house!
That’s why it’s even more important to stage and create a home that buyers are willing to wait for and to work with an agent like Denise, who will guide you past the obstacles and get you to the closing table.
This 4-bedroom, 5-bath, 4,500-square-foot, Yorktown Heights, NY, house with pool, cottage, free-standing garage, and tennis court, has 2 offers in its first week on the market and sells for $1.6M, which is $101,000 over the listing price.
Rita also shared:
“You had a good eye for what we needed (and didn’t need) to stage our home to sell quickly. I also appreciated that you were able to stage our house using just my existing furniture and that we only had to buy towels, doormats, pillows, and a throw!
It was a lot of work to stage the house, the cottage, and the outside but well worth the effort because the house looked beautiful, and I’m sure that is why it sold so fast. Thank you!”
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