Comments on: What if a home you stage doesn’t sell?

By: Move your staging business forward with this fear-busting exercise | Staging Diva Dispatch

Fri, 14 May 2010 13:52:06 +0000

[...] your fear is what will happen if your client’s home doesn’t sell, read this free article, “What if a Home You Stage Doesn’t Sell?”I hope this exercise, taken from the Staging Diva Training Workbook, helps you realize that in [...]

By: Home Stagers - Tips to Face Your Fears and Keep Going | Home Staging Business Report

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 13:03:42 +0000

[...] fear is what will happen if your client’s home doesn’t sell, read this free article, What If a Home You Stage Doesn’t Sell?”I hope this exercise, taken from the Staging Diva Training Workbook, helps you realize that [...]

By: Debra Gould, The Staging Diva

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 02:24:03 +0000

Kay, Giving the realtor the benefit of the doubt for a moment, it’s possible that the house was a mess when the agent turned up to take the interior photos (I have seen that happen).
The client should be looking at their own listing on MLS (I always build into my own contracts with realtors that I have approval to the listing and feature sheets when I’m selling my own home), but not all do.
You really only have two choices:
a) Contact the realtor and say you found his listing on MLS and you know it’s a great house since you’re a neighbor, offer your services as a stager so that the interior will be photo ready for MLS.
b) Contact the homeowner directly and say that as a neighbor and a home stager who knows the importance of interior shots to attract buyers on MLS, you’d be happy to do a consultation with them to ensure their home is photo ready since you noticed their MLS listing only had an exterior shot.

Let me know what happens!
Debra

By: Jodi Whalen

Jodi Whalen — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 03:23:28 +0000

I too staged a beautiful home that still has not sold almost one year later. It was a beautiful home, great location, but their price was too high. They refused to drop it even at the realtor’s suggestion. I’ve noticed it’s no longer listed with the original agent. There’s only so much you can do!

When I was selling my home, my realtor gave me great advice, she said, “your home is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.” Of course you need to price it competitively and put your best foot forward, however if someone doesn’t see the value and like it enough…their is no deal!

By: Jill Monczunski

Jill Monczunski — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 20:02:53 +0000

I have had clients ask me if I will guarantee the sale of their home after staging. My answer is absolutely not. I like Donna Dazzo’s “tri – pod” analogy above. We, as professional home stagers, are only a piece of the pie to getting a sellers home sold. I stage a lot of homes that I feel are priced too high, don’t have the ideal location, and think their homes are worth more than the market will bear, especially in todays market. I staged a $370,000 condo on the water that is about 15 years old. I could not … I mean I could not … convince the seller to replace the kitchen cabinet hardware. The hardware currently is brass and oak handles, perhaps popular “back in the ‘day”. I completely furnished the condo (it was vacant) and the sellers leased the furnishings for 90 days, and not one day more. Now it sits vacant … in need of many upgrades and updates … and probably won’t sell. All the walls are white and the sellers would not entertain the cost of adding some color. At the very least, the furnishings and art counteracted all the white walls! They have one of the highest producing agents in this area. She is marketing this property well. This is also the second time it has been on the market. The agent and I both agree that allowing me to really stage this condo would probably get this condo sold – and sold quickly. These sellers are missing the market and will probably lose out again. Guarantee? I don’t think so.

Staging To Sell
Jill R. Monczunski
President/Designer

By: Donna Dazzo

Donna Dazzo — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:00:42 +0000

Yes I have had plenty of instances where homes that I staged didn’t sell, mostly due to overpricing. Debra, as you pointed out, the price of that house had to reflect the fact that the house was outdated and on a busy corner. But at some price, a buyer would be willing to overlook these drawbacks. I believe every house has a buyer, it just has to be priced correctly.

I hate it when prospective clients ask me for my track record of how long a house took to sell after I staged it. Because of the dual factors of the down real estate market coupled with the unrealistic prices that sellers want to get, many of my stagings have been on the market for 6 months or more. So when they ask this question, I always point out that selling a home is like a 3 legged stool: staging is one leg, pricing is another and marketing is the 3rd, and I have no control over the other 2 legs. I then also tell them what clients have told me, which is that the staging definitely helped even if it did take 6 or more months.

By: Kay Keeton

Kay Keeton — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 11:59:43 +0000

Debra,
I have my computer set to notify me of every listing in a certain price range in my postal zip code. I received one that is a house in the next block from me. The listing had two photos and one was the front of the house, and the other was a playhouse. Have you ever heard of a house selling because of a child’s playhouse? What kind of realtor do they have? Listings allow 10 photos in my area. I happen to know that is a beautiful home inside. You taught us that realtors choose what homes to show, and prospective homebuyers look on the Internet to choose what houses to see. I want to knock on their door and offer my help, but have to walk a tight rope to not offend realtors. My heart aches for the people who have realtors that don’t care. I can stand on my corner and see four houses for sale.
My sign is at that four-way stop sign intersection. How can I help these neighbors without offending their realtors?

By: pat mcarthur

pat mcarthur — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 01:51:50 +0000

Great article Debra. I have been through this. I was hired to stage a large heritage home that had been converted into three units. The owners lived in the building and had updated their space beautifully. I recommended calmer paint colours, decluttered & staged this space. The other two units were vacant & were unfurnished. All the necessary work I recommended was done, everything looked great and I had rented funiture & accessories in the vacant units. The real estate agent, who was the home owner, marketed the property to potential buyers to return the home to a one family property. There were two issues that I saw, the street would not attract that buyer & market timing. The house did not sell over 6 months despite very positive feedback from prospects, the owners lost their down payment on a new condominium, and they have now rented the two apartments.