Realtor Partner: All in for Home Staging
When a Realtor partner sells his own home, who does he call first? His home stager, of course.
One of my biggest supporters and veteran Realtor Richard Mishkin of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Bedford, NY, once told me that there isn’t a house out there that couldn’t benefit from a 2-hour home-staging consultation.
And he’s right. Even the nicest homes are made even more desirable with a working consultation.
Richard’s support begins almost 10 years ago, in a bad real estate market, when a home on the market for 3 months, sells just a few days after a 3-hour working consultation with AtWell Staged Home.
Since then, Richard has seen many satisfied seller’s homes’ transformed and sell quickly—in both good and bad markets. So when it comes time to sell his own home, he knows exactly where to start.
I thought it would be fun to have Richard share his experience firsthand. Richard’s candid and witty responses are below.
Question: As a real estate agent, what is it like being in the role of home seller?
Answer: Very nerve-racking. You want to be the best agent you can and also be the best client—listening to what your “agent” tells you and understanding that potential home buyers don’t care about how you, as the home owner, feel about your house. We spent 40 years of our life in our house. Raised our kids, celebrated life events, had the best of times and the worst of times, so keeping emotions out of the process is almost too much to expect.
A: I am always sympathetic to the turmoil my clients go through when selling a home, but understanding something and actually living it are completely different experiences. I have found that I can prepare clients for what they will be facing on a much more profound level. I am a better listing agent having gone through the process.
A: Our house was never dirty, but it was always a bit messy. Making the bed in the morning was not on our agenda. We hung our wet towels over the shower door to dry, washed the breakfast dishes before dinner, and I tried not to even go into my wife’s bathroom—the makeup, hair products, vitamins and stuff were everywhere. My agent told me “ease of showing” was an important factor in selling at a higher price and in less time, so we made sure the house was in “showing shape” every day when we left for work. We bought new towels, which we weren’t allowed to use, that went on the towel racks, hid the wet ones (and the laundry) in the closet, and had a brand-new white duvet that went on the bed in the morning. We had to take it off to lay down at night. My wife put all her stuff in a plastic bucket under the sink so that the bathrooms had the look of a hotel room after the maid service came. As we went through this daily ritual, I was always in fear the neat police in the form of Susan would descend on us to make sure a quarter would bounce on the bed or the towels were perfectly centered. I like to stay in bed up to the last minute before I have to move, but my wake-up dream was Susan saying, “Up, up, up, it’s time to make the donuts and make your bed.”
A: In a word, overwhelming. We thought we knew what we were in for, but it exceeded all our expectations. We just had a lot of stuff. It was worth it for several reasons. It took six months of hard work to go through everything, but we knew it had to be done. Susan did a consultation before we started and basically went over every room. The hardest part was sorting through absolutely everything and deciding in which pile it went; keep, toss, or try to sell. We filled 3 big Dumpsters and still needed to remove a few truckloads of junk at the end. It was truly a cathartic experience. Once we got most of the stuff out, the staging part was fun. Our house was transformed into a museum we visited every day. The change was astounding. After 40 years it’s impossible to see the forest through the trees, so a new set of professional eyes (ears and nose, too) made all the difference in the world.
A: Leave your ego at the door and start today (only because you can’t start yesterday)—you’re going to move sooner or later, and unless you’re a neat freak to begin with, be ready for change. Change is good. Staging is a key element of selling, and no matter how creative you think you are, a professional stager sees things from a different perspective, the buyer’s perspective. The stager has done it before and often.
Q: If you were to do it again, is there anything you would do differently?
A: Maybe start a little sooner. My goal was to get the house on the market by June 1st and the actual listing date was August 13th.
Richard is also gracious enough to allow Lohud reporter Akiko Matsuda to shadow our initial consultation. The article appears at USAToday.com, Lohud.com, The Journal News, and BuilderOnline.com.
