| Back in 2002, Forbes Magazine aptly referred to "house fluffers" as "the dream weavers of the real estate world," for their ability to take a home and turn it into another house entirely, often in a matter of days.
Since then, reality shows like "Dress this House," "Designed to Sell," and "House Doctor" have increased awareness of Home Staging as a way to significantly boost the selling price of a home.
Home Staging, Real Estate Enhancement, House Fluffing, Real Estate Merchandising, House Dressing... all these terms are used almost interchangeably to describe the art of decorating a house to sell. Here we've linked some of our favorite stories on the subject. We've also included resources on real estate trends or how to pick the right real estate agent.
| CNN Money, January 13, 2006 - "5 Slow-Market Strategies" |
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| Les Christie, CNN Money, interviews Home Staging expert Debra Gould, President of Six Elements Inc. and creator of The Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program on how home staging can help homeowners sell for more money when the real estate market begins to slow.
5 Slow-Market Strategies
It takes a little extra effort to move a home when the market has turned
Excerpt:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Sellers are having a harder time getting good prices for their homes. Even in the hottest markets, getting top dollar is a challenge when you don't have 20 buyers battling it out in a bidding war.
Debra Gould, owner of Six Elements, a home-staging consultant in Toronto, consults with clients whose homes are not selling and supercharges their appeal. Her job, she says, and the job of anyone selling their home, is to make "as many people as possible fall in love with a house."
How?
 Read the full story and Debra Gould interview at CNNMoney.com!
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| The Wall Street Journal, Personal Journal - "Tricks of the Trade" |
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| Home Staging expert Debra Gould was interviewed by Hanna Kinersley of The Wall Street Journal, in January 2006 for a story on tricks professional home stagers use on their own homes when it's time to sell. More information as available.
Debra Gould started her home staging business, Six Elements Inc. based on the phenomenal success she had buying, decorating and selling 6 of her own properties.
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| Homethinking: Find exceptional neighborhood realtors to sell your most valuable asset |
| Homethinking is a new online service that helps home owners choose the best realtor in their neighborhood to sell their house. Homethinking measures performance by monitoring real estate transactions to know which houses each realtor has sold, for how much and how long on average it took them to do so. There are also user reviews by home owners who have sold their house with the particular realtor that helps determine their ranking.
The Homethinking web site is currently tracking 61,283 Realtors across 130,975 home sales transactions. To use the service, you enter your town or zip code which generates a list of real-estate brokers in your area. Consumers can view the properties agents have sold, how much the final sale price differed from the original asking price, and what their clients say about the jobs they did.
"There are 50 percent more realtors out there than five years ago. This service throws a light on the exceptional ones," Homethinking's CEO Nick Scevak said.
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By Stephanie Cavanaugh
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, January 14, 2006; Page F01
Excerpt:
Alice Wilson paced the empty Capitol Hill living room. The manager of Antique and Contemporary Leasing, a company that provides furnishings and design advice for houses going on the market, pursed her lips and said, "Usually you want the bones of the room to show, but . . . "
What remained unsaid: There were no bones. It was a blank box without a single distinguishing feature.
"You have to have a focal point," she said, waving in the delivery men, backs bent under a mammoth black lacquered secretary, a Chinese antique of about the same size and scale as a fireplace.
"Living rooms are built around a fireplace," Wilson said. "If it doesn't have one, you need a focal point to make it more interesting."
With the secretary in place, the room quickly took shape. A white damask sofa, a few heavily carved chairs, a jewel-colored oriental carpet, a gilt mirror for glitz, a couple of wall-sized Chinese ancestral portraits and suddenly there's a British-occupation-of-Hong Kong motif. That utterly boring, characterless room positively screams for a chic load of guests clinking ice cubes.
Is it cheating for home sellers to imply detail where none exists?
Read the full story
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Debra Gould's Home Staging expertise is featured in a full page story opening the magazine's RD Living Section. |
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Excerpt:
"When house hunting, people like to imagine they can look past ugly decor or empty rooms to see potential, but usually they can't! That's why sellers might want to 'repackage' their house to appeal to potential buyers.
Enter professional home stager Debra Gould, president of Six Elements Inc. She rearranges rooms, chooses paint colors, stores superfluous items and even brings in rental furniture. The results can be dramatic: After Gould staged a home that had sat on the market without an offer for six weeks, the owner received three offers within days and sold at 98% of the asking price. Her fee was modest when you consider that the owner was going to drop the listing price by $50,000 but called Gould first.
What does Gould look for?..." |
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Story by: Julie Cazzin
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Excerpt:
Coldwell Banker Realty tracked 2,772 properties, ranging in price from $229,000 (U.S.) to $4.8 million, in eight major U.S. cities.
It found that while the average home was on the market for nearly 31 days, the typical staged home sold in just under 14 days.
And while the average home sold for a mere 1.6% over the seller's asking price, the staged homes went for a hefty 6.3% more.
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"Home stagers perform their magic by playing up the best features of your house and minimizing the worst.... Debra Gould, who owns the Six Elements Home Staging firm in Toronto, says it's important to avoid planting negative associations in buyers' minds.... gives the example of an open house she attended where the owner had left all the garbage and recycling bins at the top of the long and steep flight of steps leading up to the house.... she advised the agent to have the homeowner tuck the bins away behind the house rather than drawing attention to the major inconvenience of not having a place to store them at sidewalk level...
... Home Stager Gould recommends you pay special attention to the furnace room since every home buyer wonders what shape the furnace is in. "If the furnace looks clean, it looks newer," says Gould. That goes for the fuse box and electrical panel too.
... A couple of planters on your front porch, a vase of flowers on your dining room table, even a simple rose in a bud vase can warm up a room. This is where you can let some of your creativity show through. "You want to get away form making rooms feel dull and sterile," says the home stager Gould. "Flowers and plants are good for that." Candles help too." |
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By Daniela Deane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 30, 2004; Page F01
Excerpt
Get rid of at least half your stuff. Clean the house until it sparkles. Have your carpets and floors professionally cleaned -- or replaced, if they're worn. Paint if you need to.
Put crisp green apples into a stylish black bowl on your kitchen table. Turn all the lights on. Start some soft jazz on the CD player. Bake some chocolate chip cookies.
Lights, camera, action. It's time to sell your home.
Styling, staging, or fluffing a house -- whatever you want to call it -- is something most real estate agents wish their sellers would do. Even in times like this, when houses can sell in a matter of days, agents say staging a home as if it were the set for a play is a sure-fire way to get the best possible price in the shortest time.
Read the full story
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Story by Ellen Roseman
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Excerpt
When selling your house, how can you engineer a bidding war? What are the secrets to finding buyers willing to pay more than the asking price?
Price it on the low side, real estate agents say. Show it aggressively and entertain offers on a specific day and time. Finally, invest a little money in making the house light and bright, clean and clutter-free.
That's the strategy followed by a young couple who had 16 offers for their semi-detached Toronto house in midtown Toronto. They sold it for $512,000, more than 20 per cent above the asking price of $419,000, after paying $307,500 less than five years ago. . . .
Real estate agents stress the importance of "staging" or "fluffing" a house, a process designed to hide flaws and help persuade buyers to fantasize living there.
"You have to get rid of superfluous stuff," says Debra Gould, an interior designer in Toronto who offers house fluffing tips at her Website, http://www.sixelements.com.
"If your closets are full, people will pick up on it. Often they're moving because they've run out of space. If your closets are half-full, they'll imagine lots of space for themselves."
Selling a house is all about romance. Just as you try to look your best when going on a date, your house should look as good as it can, too.
"The little repairs need to be done," Gould says. "Many people say, `It's not a big deal. The new owners can do it.' But if you do the work, potential buyers won't be distracted by the cracks in the walls." . . . |
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Story by Gabrielle Bauer
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Excerpt
. . . Debra Gould used this strategy to advantage when she bought a home in Montreal in May, 2002, and resold it three months later at a $30,000 profit. The president of Six Elements Inc., a Toronto firm specializing in home staging or "fluffing," Ms. Gould used her decorating talents to polish the home's appearance before selling it.
To her clients interested in the "flipping" scene, Ms. Gould advises: "Buying a structurally sound but ugly house in a great location, and preferably one that needs lots of minor repairs and cosmetic changes like removing old carpets, wallpaper and lighting. These changes can make a huge difference to the perceived value of a property, often at minimal cost.". . . |
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| The New York Times, August 22, 2004 - "How to Get the Most When It's Time to Sell" |
Story by Sara Rimer
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Excerpt
. . . Our attached brick row house, which was built in 1817, had four bedrooms, two bathrooms, six working fireplaces, the original pumpkin pine floors and exposed beams, and moldings galore. The house, in mint condition, was on cobblestoned, tree-lined Quince Street, between Spruce and Locust, one of center city's prettiest blocks.
But we were worried that buyers would be put off by the small rooms in the house -- it was only 14 feet wide -- and the lack of modern amenities like granite counters, a lot of big closets, and high ceilings.
Alan explained to us what we had failed to grasp: our house was going to appeal to buyers who cared more about authenticity. ''You have a beautiful colonial house,'' he reassured us.
What we had to do, he said, was to emphasize its historic charm. . . . But who had the time? Besides, nesting had never been one of my skills. It was time to call in the professionals. . . .
Read the full story
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Staging Space for Greater Marketability
Though still largely a West Coast phenomenon, home staging in NY grows
By Melissa Dehncke-McGill
Excerpt
When New York buyers tour an apartment, they usually see bare walls or furnished open houses full of the owner’s possessions.
However, home staging, a sales technique that started on the West Coast, is starting to present visions of perfection - homes full of specially selected furniture, artful drapery and tasteful decorative touches that create the critical first impressions that make prospective buyers fall in love and close the deal - often on favorable terms for sellers, which means bigger commissions for brokers.
Read the full story
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Written by: Gabrielle Bauer
Photos by: Virginia MacDonald
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If you're looking to score on the real estate market, your best investment may not be a house or condo, but an hour with Debra Gould. Through her company, Six Elements Inc., she dispenses design advice to people who want their property to sell faster and for more money.
The results can be stunning. One week after implementing Gould's suggestions, a Toronto couple sold their house for $12,000 over the original asking price of $349,000. Gould's hourly consulting fee "was the best $125 they ever spent," says Cristina van Blommestein, the couple's real estate agent.
Then there's the magic Gould worked on her own home in Montreal last year. To prep the place for buyers, she spent $2,000 on new lighting and fresh paint, and also strategically rearranged the furniture. Then came the payoff: her house sold for $30,000 more than she had bought it for just three months earlier in a virtually identical real estate market.
With reports like these spreading through the real estate industry, it's no surprise that a growing number of home sellers are hiring consultants like Gould. Known officially as "home stagers" (you may have heard the more colorful term "fluffers"), these professionals maximize your home's appeal and value to prospective buyers.
Home staging isn't just about boosting your selling price; it can be a big help if you need to sell your house in a hurry. "The prospect of dealing with showings and open houses for weeks was horrifying to us," says Louise Summerhill, the mother of two young children and a full-time lawyer whose husband is in the same profession. "We wanted a quick sale," she says, so they hired Gould, who put superfluous items into storage, had the carpets cleaned, moved furniture around in the house, and shopped for new bathroom towels and other accessories they could use again in their new home. She also purchased and arranged flowers for showings and did "dozens of other things that made the house look planned and designed," Summerhill recalls. The total bill: $5,500. Result: their home sold on the first day of offer-taking.
Looking back, Summerhill muses that "a lot of people would resist staging because it does require you to depersonalize. But it helped us to think that we had bought a new home and were now just custodians of our old house. Our object was to sell quickly, and that we certainly accomplished." |
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How Staging a House Can Pay Off For Sellers
by Penny Doherty
Excerpt
Mary Summers believes she could have sold her two-story colonial in Severna Park, Md., for $10,000 to $20,000 more if she and her husband had merchandised or "staged" it properly. Her four-bedroom house, originally listed at $470,000 in December, sold for $450,000 in February.
Unfortunately, brokers from the Summers's real-estate agency were only learning the sales technique of staging a home as it was closing at the lower price. By the time her agency had learned how to provide this gentle art of temporarily redecorating a house to facilitate a buyer's purchase the sale was complete. But Mrs. Summers, who enjoys decorating and remodeling, decided to let a group of local agents enrolled in staging class practice on her house after-the-fact.
"It was the wildest experience I've ever had. They went all over the house, they even went in closets and updated the house with things I'd bought for the new place," she says. Using her existing furniture, the group changed the look of several first-floor rooms. They expanded the dining table in her French-provincial dining room, made creative use of holiday linens, and moved an old trestle-style sewing table from an upstairs room into the dining room. In the living room, they switched pictures and mirrors on the wall with art from other rooms of the house and also traded accessories, such as lamps, from other rooms. "They found props all over the house," she said. "They gave it a whole new feel."
Specific Techniques
Realtors forever have advised sellers on techniques -- picking up clutter, hiding dirty dishes in the dishwasher, brewing an aromatic tea -- to make prospective buyers feel comfortable. But effectively preparing a house to show at its best goes well beyond such obvious tips.
Indeed, these days, realtors themselves are learning the principles of staging or establishing referral relationships with staging professionals to help homes sell both faster and for more money. . . .
Read the full story
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ASSETS; A Little Style Works. Just Not Yours.
By VIVIAN MARINO
Excerpt
DR. DIRK SOSTMAN and his wife, Maria Preka, had expected their two-bedroom Upper East Side co-op to be snapped up quickly after listing it last spring. And why not? They had heard myriad stories of bidding wars and sky-high prices throughout the region.
To garner top dollar, ''we did everything that everyone told us to do,'' said Dr. Sostman, a radiologist. ''We got the windows washed, we got rid of clutter.'' But the apartment, with an initial asking price of just under $2 million, languished. ''I showed it 55 times in two weeks and I didn't have any offers,'' said the couple's broker, Jackie Vincent of the Corcoran Group. . . .
Determined to sell, he and his wife reduced the price, by around 15 percent, and at the suggestion of their broker hired a ''home stager'' . . . .
The couple's $5,160 [home staging] investment seemed to pay off: there were eight bids within two weeks, and the apartment sold for close to the recent asking price.
Even in the best of markets, it often takes more than just putting up a ''for sale'' sign and pulling out the vacuum cleaner to sell a home. Increasingly, brokers are bringing in design consultants who charge from $50 an hour to upward of $100,000 to give homes a more polished look so that they sell faster and for more.
In most cases, stagers -- a.k.a. ''home enhancers'' or ''fluffers'' -- will work with the homeowner's furniture for a day or two, perhaps adding a few outside pieces here and there. When a place is vacant, or in cases of more taste-challenged homes, rented furnishings are brought in. The goal is to ''neutralize,'' or in essence strip much of the owner's personality from a property. Photographs, knickknacks and other ''clutter'' typically get stashed away and well-worn recliners are relegated to attics or storage bins. . . .
But do average home sellers need to spend hundreds of dollars to hear someone tell them to hide their junk and paint the walls ecru? And besides, can't today's savvy buyers look beyond the superficial to spot a true gem? . . .
''You want to make people feel like they could live here,'' said Dolf de Roos, a real estate investor and author of ''Real Estate Riches'' (Warner Business Books, 2001). ''I'm astonished by the number of people who won't buy a house because there's a rubbish bag in the kitchen.''
. . . a recent study of West Coast homes found that 17 out of 25 staged homes sold within seven days and the rest within 30 days. All were at or above asking price . . .
THE goal of staging is to create the home that will be most appealing to the largest number of prospective buyers. It's a lot like designing a model home: furnishings and accessories are kept neutral and at a minimum to draw attention to the architectural features.
Cost varies by home and market. Stylers typically charge $50 to $150 an hour to rearrange furnishings and make other changes and can spend from three hours for a small condo to two full days for a house 4,000 square feet or larger . . .
Some real estate brokers may offer home-styling services themselves or even agree to absorb all or part of these costs as a marketing expense. . . .
Read the full story.
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All the home's a stage when it's for sale
Katherine Conrad
Excerpt:
There's an art to telling a home seller that his beer bottle collection lacks sophistication or that her souvenir spoons could detract from a home's appeal.
Sometimes it takes a "stager" someone hired to prepare a home for sale to delicately handle the negotiations that result in moving the elk's head from above the mantel to behind the garage. . . .
Since staging was first introduce to the Bay Area market 12 to 15 years ago, it has become, if not essential to every real estate transaction, at least highly desirable especially in slower markets.
"I use professional stagers because it makes the houses sell quickly and at the highest price. Houses show much better when professionally staged," said David Otero, an agent with Prudential California Realty's Montclair office in Oakland. "Staging removes the seller from the cherished orange shag carpet."
Orange shag carpet aside, when the trend began, some agents decried the practice, calling it deceptive. Buyers would fall in love with a 'look' rather than the home, they said. That is all past; today's buyers expect homes to be shown to their best advantage whether it's the homeowners taste or a professionals. . . .
In these days of maximizing marketing potential, stagers are members of the sales transaction team and can cost from $5,000 to $50,000. . . . While it's hard gauge how much staging adds to a homes' value, real estate companies estimate that spending $10,000 on staging offers a return of $50,000 on the sales price. . . .
"The value added is in a quicker sale, more offers and higher offers," Brunk said. "When we come in and stage a house, we try to make them more user friendly. People are put off by too much formality, or too much style. Our goal is to make the house as appealing to as many buyers as possible." . . .
Read the full story.
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Story by Sandra Martin
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For homeowners with itchy feet, the next few months will be a real bummer. That's because real estate sales drop off in November, and stay subdued until spring. But while a wise course of action would be to hold off listing your home until the market picks up again, you needn't feel paralyzed in the meantime.
Instead, the real estate service ForSaleByOwner.com suggests using the winter months to make improvements that will boost the selling price of your home -- and also help it sell more quickly. Studies by ReMax suggest that if you do nothing else, you should get a bit of planting. The national realty chain has found the return on landscaping is 7% better than for any other home improvement.
ForSaleByOwner also recommends touching up any bedraggled aspects of your home's exterior. Similarly, de-cluttering rooms and cleaning closets will make your home more appealing, and all it costs is a little time and elbow grease.
Trouble is, for many of us time is in short supply and, left to our own devices we could leave all those little improvements undone. That's where a home stager, such as Debra Gould of Toronto's Six Elements, can help. For $1,000 and up, she'll come to your home, assess what needs to be done for maximum impact, then make it happen. "You're trying to create a situation where potential buyers will fall in love with the home," she says.
Depending on the neighborhood and what type of buyer might be drawn to it, Ms. Gould will rent furniture and buy a few accessories to create the illusion that someone like them already lives there. For example, when a childless couple in Toronto's family-crazy Riverdale area hired her, she transformed two of their five bedrooms into kids' sanctuaries.
In a few cases, the value of a stager's service is the time and money it saves you in renovations left undone. "If it's a tear-down type of situation, there's no point [in doing renovations]," Ms. Gould says, "because who really cares what color the kitchen is?" |
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"Maybe it's my MBA training," says Debra Gould, "but I really take a bottom line approach to decorating a home, especially if it's with an eye to resale." Gould is a professional 'house fluffer,' one of those people who can come into your home and provide you with a 'laundry list' of things that can be done to spruce your home up when you decide to put it on the market.
Her company, Six Elements Inc. provides color consulting services tailored to her clients' budget and do-it-yourself experience. In this hot Beach real estate market, she could be the person who could help garner top dollar for your home— and in a hurry. "My guiding principle in any house fluffing project is determining which efforts will make the most significant difference in the actual sale of the home."
Gould, herself, just returned to the Beach area from a four-year creative exile. "Sometimes you need to get away for awhile to really appreciate what you've left behind," she said. Call Debra at 416-691-6615, or visit either of her two web sites at www.sixelements.com, or www.debragould.com and take advantage of her return to the Beach. |
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Excerpt:
"Home Stager Debra Gould, president of Toronto-based Six Elements gives insider house fluffing tips:
• Boost 'curb appeal' with landscaping, potted plants, painting the porch or just mowing the lawn.
• Wonky cabinets, loose tiles, damaged caulking, dripping taps— fix them all! 'These repairs make people feel the house has been well cared for,' says Gould.
• Get rid of all your junk or rent a storage locker. Buyers who find clutter in the closets will think the house lacks space.
• Small touches count, so leave fresh flowers, quiet music and all the lights on before showings. 'People shop with logic, but buy on emotion,' explains Gould.
• Bring in a professional house fluffer if your impatient agent is recommending a price cut. 'At minimum, house fluffing should make a $10,000 difference, so it's worth it,' she says." |
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"Selling your home? Set the Stage for a Quick Sale"
by: Kathy Sena
Excerpt:
To decorate to sell, Debra Gould of Six Elements, removed excess furniture and clutter. She changed the art and accessories and had the walls repainted. This enabled the architectural features of this N.D.G. duplex to stand out instead of being an added distraction. The house sold within days for $30,0000 above agent's estimated selling price.
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