Realtor benefits greatly from home staging.

Colleen knows that home staging sells homes faster and for more money and starts prepping her home for sale earlier than most. We first speak at the end of last summer. Colleen postpones our meeting to allow her more time to sort out all the belongings in her almost 5,000-square-foot home of 25 years. No small task for one person.

In the spring Colleen reaches out to us again. She still feels she needs more time, but does not postpone the meeting, instead choosing to move forward with preparing her home for sale.

Our first meeting is a 2-hour working consultation. We review the entire house, inside and out, and finish by making a plan to accomplish the fix-ups, updating light fixtures, window treatment removal, painting, new carpeting, repairs, decluttering, organizing, and yes, the staging.

There’s a lot of work to be done before the final fluff. We recommend professional organizer Andrea Bowser of Space Matters in Yorktown Heights, NY, to handle that task.

It’s a collaborative effort for a home owner who still loves her home very much and needs to feel good living in it while it’s on the market. After 2 weeks of professional organizing and a few days of staging, this home lists in the heart of the spring market.

This 4 bedroom, 5 bath, 4,650-square-foot Armonk home is in contract in just 34 days, and sells for $1.4M, just 3.4 percent below asking price.

Colleen moves on to her next adventure exactly one year after our initial contact. After a year of solo work, just a few weeks of work with a coordinated team of professionals allows Colleen to realize her goal. I’m reminded of the Helen Keller quote, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”

Here’s how Colleen sums up the experience.

I am a real estate agent and it finally was time to sell MY own home. I had been following Susan Atwell on line for many years and called her in to give me an objective eye as to what I needed to change to get the house sold quickly and to appeal to the most number of buyers. As an agent, I realize that sellers, myself included, do not always see what the public sees. Sellers remember the day they picked out the new carpeting and wallpaper and how expensive they were… they are reluctant to consider that today’s buyers are no longer into those colors and prints. Susan came in and did a comprehensive survey of my 4500-square-foot home and made suggestions. Together we started the work of making my home “showtime ready.” I also needed help to organize and declutter after raising 4 kids in that home over 25 years. After shopping, moving, junking, decluttering, and storing, we were able to get my home to market with a buyer within 2 to 3 weeks. Susan was able to call in all the right people to help me do the job in a very short period of time. I would highly recommend Susan to any of my clients.”

Colleen M Gallagher

Realtor / Home Seller, Armonk, NY

Enjoy a few of our favorite transformations and listing pictures.