Don’t Wait Until the Icicles Start Dripping…

From a business stand point, I love January! As a professional home stager, things typically slow down during the holiday months, but when the first week of January “opened for business” things really started to heat up for my company, Perfect Place Home Staging!

Anxious homeowners from throughout Southeast Wisconsin have been calling and emailing my office with requests for my home staging services. This jump into action approach is very smart. Working with an experienced home stager before your home is actually listed and placed on the market allows your property to put its best foot forward right from the get go. A well crafted staging plan from Perfect Place Home Staging can save you precious time and frustration because I zero in on exactly which efforts can make the most significant difference in the actual sale of your property.

It’s hard to envision spring with so many inches of snow on the ground, but it’s just around the corner! If you’re thinking about entering the real estate market this spring, now is the time to start making a plan. Weather you want some advice and direction, a resourceful project manager, or something in between; Perfect Place Home Staging can help you and your home get market-ready for 2010’s fast approaching real estate season.

Go to http://www.perfectplacehomestaging.com/ for contact information, client testimonials, and to print out my full color business brochure.

Could she be the Mario Andretti of Home Staging?

One of the best parts about being in the home stager industry is watching how people react when I tell them what I do. When I tell people I'm a professional home stager their typical response is…”Wow! You’re just like those people on HGTV!” It’s great to see home staging become more and more recognizable, and helping people understand the value of proper home staging is part of my commitment to the staging industry.

It’s true, more and more people now know about home staging, but sometimes I like to compare it to Mario Andretti --- Most of us know how to drive a car, but not all of us can be race car drivers. The point being is everyday driving and race car driving are two very different things. So when you look at home staging in this fashion, you may discover that knowing what staging is, and actually understanding how to properly stage a home, are also two very different things.

Now I’ll be honest; there are various tasks that home sellers can do completely on their own to prepare their homes for sale. Tasks like cleaning, painting, and yard work can be done fairly easily, but the truth lies in this…

Most people can not be totally objective when it comes to their own homes. This is why hiring an experienced professional home stager is a valuable investment for today's home sellers.

Sellers (and Realtors) can greatly benefit from working with a company like Perfect Place Home Staging because...

As a professional stager, I look at a home through the eyes of a critical buyer. This allows me to see things that someone who lives there simply can’t.

I understand what buyers want to see in homes of different price points.

I continually use my problem solving skills to quickly determine what needs to be done, and then recommend the options that will address those needs on time and on budget.

I’m experience in dealing with all sorts of decorating dilemmas, so Realtors don’t have to worry about how to handle them. They can simply leave it to me.

I can typically recommend trusted painters, cleaning people, contractors, and other service professionals that may be needed to help ready a property for sale.

I know how to bring a room together quickly, and I’m accustomed to staging with furnishings that the seller currently owns, or I will find needed pieces for them to either rent or purchase.

The task of selling a home combined with the demands of everyday life can be very stressful. Home sellers and Realtors choose to work with me because I aim to make preparing a home for market significantly easier and less stressful.

Bottom line --- when it comes to the real estate race, home staging can help get you to the finish line! Here's to seeing you in the Winner’s Circle!

Creative Compromise and the Wall of Wood

There are so many things I love about being a professional home stager. I get to meet lots of interesting people and work in all sorts of homes throughout Southeast Wisconsin and Lake County Illinois. My most favorite part of being a stager is the opportunity I get to use my creative skills in a variety of different ways. As owner of Perfect Place Home Staging I can say with certainty that no two of my many staging projects have ever been the same. Each home calls for a unique approach and I keep my staging projects on time and on budget with the use of creativity and compromise.

I typically approach my staging projects as a series of prioritized tasks. Tasks like painting, repairs, and possible updates need to be coordinated in a timely fashion and of course not exceed my client’s budget. So what happens when there are more dilemmas to deal with, but limited time and\or budget to handle them? That’s where creativity and compromise come in. Here is where my suggestions guide home sellers into deciding what things they want to do and what things they need me to creatively work with.

Here’s a before and after example: This before picture shows a lower family room in a country home in Kenosha County. As you can see the room is jammed packed and I discovered the back wall is quite unique. It’s covered in round log slices from pine trees that were cut on the property. These wood slices were attached to the wall with super strength glue that would not let go. It would take significant time and effort to get all the wood down and resurface the wall for primer and paint. This is where I had to come up with a practical creative solution to best market this room. I quickly came up with a compromise for my client. I said “I have a plan to work with the existing wood wall, so how about we replace this room’s old carpet instead of just having it steam cleaned?” I explained that new carpet could take some of the focus off the wall and show potential buyers some great added value. My client agreed, so I helped to choose a budget friendly carpet and it was installed within a few days.

After the carpeting was done I staged the room with some of the seller’s furniture, a few country accents, and proper lighting. The after picture below now shows a warm nature inspired family room with lots of space and new carpet throughout. I creatively worked the wall into my staging plan and the end results turned out great!

I’m happy to say the home was only on the market for a week! My client received a full price offer at their first open house! Like I said before, No two staging projects are the same. Sometimes I have to find a compromise and use my creative skills to make it work. After all, that is my favorite part of being a home stager.

Making Time for the Value of Paint

We’ve heard it said before…Time is valuable and time is money. These simple words speak volumes when it comes to selling a house and part of my job as a professional home stager is to help my clients understand that investing time and money in staging their homes to sell can potentially pay them back with a faster more profitable sale. For many of my staging clients I recommend they start the ball rolling by repainting any marked and scarred walls throughout their homes. A new coat of paint is one of the best investments a home seller can make in the marketing of their home. Freshly painted walls provide a clean cohesive back drop for staging and it’s a relatively inexpensive way to make the whole house look and smell like it’s brand new. As part of my service, Perfect Place Home Staging provides color consultations to help home sellers choose the best colors and sheen levels for “painting to sell”. Repainting (especially rooms that show noticeable wear and tear) will help your home show better than the others that are also listed in your price range. If a buyer has several homes in their price point to consider, the house that looks clean, fresh, and ready to move in is going to stand apart from all the others. Like many of us nowadays, home shoppers are busy people with all sorts of work and family obligations. The added task of finding and buying a house is stressful enough without having to worry about finding even more time in the future for things like painting. When you look at it from the buyers perspective it becomes clear that the "move in ready home" is certainly a very valuable find worth paying for. "Time is Valuable and Time is Money".

In closing I offer you this, if you plan to put your house on the real estate market, please consider taking some time to repaint. Make the project a family affair, call on friends to help, or hire a trusted painter. The bottom line is, don’t let the need for a few gallons of paint stand in the way of selling your home.

New Resources that Set the Stage for Confidence

Several years ago I came across a saying that has become a personal credo of mine. The saying is... "If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got.” I carry these words with me everyday on an old tattered and torn slip of paper tucked inside my purse. When I feel I can’t make a change, or I’m scared to try things differently, the phrase on that tattered slip of paper gives me the confidence to move forward.

As owner of Perfect Place Home Staging I want my clients to feel confident in me and my service, yet it would be foolish on my part to forget that most people have never hired a home stager before. Here too, the thought of the unknown can be scary and trying something different isn’t always easy. That’s why I feel it’s so important to give my potential clients a variety of ways to get to know more about me, my business, and the art of home staging. It’s about building trust and making it easy for people to find timely relevant information about Perfect Place Home Staging. With all this in mind, I’m excited to share some wonderful new additions and updates to Perfect Place Home Staging’s portfolio.

For starters, Perfect Place Home Staging is newly certified as a Better Business Bureau (BBB) Accredited Business. As an accredited business Perfect Place Home Staging meets and maintains the high standards of the BBB for trust, honesty, integrity, ethics, dependability and responsiveness. Please feel free to check out my company’s BBB Online Reliability Report at www.wisconsin.bbb.org

Next, I added some great new content to my web page on the Staging Diva® Directory of Home Stagers. You can now see 3 new sets of Perfect Place Home Staging’s before and after project photos, new client testimonials, and even a new picture of me too. I’d love for you to see it all at http://www.perfectplacehomestaging.com/

And lastly, this new blog The Perfect Place Home Staging Review, where you can find helpful home staging information and interesting stories about my life as a home stager.

Please feel free to check out each of these Perfect Place Home Staging online resources. I’m confident (thanks to that little slip of paper I carry) that you will find them helpful.

When it comes to selling your house, how can less be more?

I can definitely feel it in the air today… Spring is finally coming! As I stood on my porch this morning I see the sun is shining, the snow is quickly melting, and the trees are swaying in the wind. It’s like they’re dancing in celebration of a long winter coming to a close. It’s amazing how days like this make me feel. As the sun warms my face, a sudden urge starts to come over me... "I feel the need to clean out a closet!” Yes, I know that’s probably not what most people feel like doing on a nice day, but the sense of renewal that comes with spring inspires me to clear, clean, and de-clutter my home. And even though I feel every homeowner should take some time each year to clear the excess stuff from their homes, it’s even more important for those who want to sell their house this spring real estate season.

As a professional home stager I always tell my clients that a home with less will show a buyer so much more. What I mean by this is potential buyers can best appreciate all your home has to offer when there is less of your stuff distracting their vision. If you want to sell your house this spring, now is the time to take a hard look at each area of your home. We all tend to accumulate extra stuff, whether we really need it or not, so this is the time to reduce. Every closet, every cabinet, every storage area… they all need to be addressed. Decide quickly what to keep, what to donate, and what to throw away. When it’s time to show your house, closet contents should be reduced by at least half and cabinets should be whittled down to neatly organized essentials. Think about it, how many old Cool Whip containers does a kitchen really need! Instead, re-purpose these kinds of containers. You can use them to organize your crafting supplies. Once everything is sorted into the containers, just close the lid and label it with permanent marker. Now you can easily stack them in a plastic bin or decorative storage box. Not only is this stuff contained while showing your house, it’s all packed up and ready for your future move! Imagine the amount of pre-packing you could have done if you did this throughout your whole home! So go ahead and get started tonight by organizing one junk drawer… Believe me; you just might feel the need to keep on going!

Why stage your home to sell? The answer is at the grocery store.

As a professional home stager, I hear this question from time to time…
"Why should I stage my home to sell?"
"Why would I put work into a house I plan to leave?"

To best answer this question, I want you to think about just how visual our world really is. Let’s face it; we all take notice of how things look. We can’t help it. It’s part of our nature. This makes presentation very powerful because it influences the choices we make everyday. Whether it’s our clothes, cars or even our significant others… looks were most likely part of what drew us to them in the first place. I’ve noticed this about myself even when I’m at the grocery store. As I walk down the aisles comparing one item to another, I find myself time and time again drawn to products in nice eye-pleasing packages. That’s exactly why those nice looking packages were created. To get me to notice them, desire them, and of course buy them. Companies invest millions of dollars in creating just the right look for their product packaging. Believe me, their money is well spent. One look at my stuffed shopping cart proves that their investment works! These companies understand that the right overall look and feel will not only get their products noticed, but also build desire for them too… “I like what I see, so I want what I see!”

Now imagine this whole presentation scenario in terms of selling a house. It becomes clear that home staging is basically product packaging for real estate. Your house is the “product” and staging is the valuable investment in proper “packaging”. A home that is staged properly has the look and feel of a great place to live. It’s all about building desire for your home, and just like the packaging in the grocery store, Staging Works!