Guest Post – Organic Home Staging

To stage is all the rage.

Slower home sales are challenging agents to become more creative in preparing their clients’ homes for high-impact first impressions.

Today’s post comes from Ruth Chancellor, a home stager located here in Portland. She suggests that a trip to the local craft store for a few decorating knick-knacks is not the way to go.

Ruth ChancellorOrganic Home Staging

    Really? Really.

    Recently, home staging has garnered a lot of attention and is being credited for selling homes faster and at top dollar. In short, home staging is the art of using marketing and decorating techniques to showcase homes both vacant and occupied.

    But in a city known for scenic beauty and environmentally conscious citizens, fake ivy and silk flowers won’t help sell a house.
    Effective home staging builds connection points, creating a vision of home that buyers want. While a silk plant might make the dining room appear a little less bare it won’t evoke that emotional connection that attracts attention. As perspective buyers tour a house, they imagine the lifestyle they would live in that home.

    Organic materials bring a sense of well-being, both consciously and subconsciously. Potted herbs, bamboo, and fresh flowers add a feeling of luxury that buyers aspire to. With a trip to the farmers market, a few props and some creativity, any kitchen can feel gourmet. An average bathroom can have a serene spa-like feeling with artfully arranged sea shells, polished polish rocks and coral.

    And while occupied homes can easily be staged with live plants or fresh flowers, organic materials can easily be incorporated in the staging of a vacant home. An empty home feels anything but homey. A few furnishings and some nature-inspired accessories add warmth to an otherwise cold environment.

    In the current market, the decision facing Realtors and home sellers is not “if” but “how” the home should be staged.

    Contact Ruth at:
    Ruth Chancellor
    Chancellor Designs
    (503) 807-8167

Footnote: Staging Under Fire

On a related note, a Realtor organization that exclusively advises home buyers suggests that home staging is ‘distracting’, uses ‘trickery, and misleads buyers to overpay for homes that are nicely presented.

I don’t think I’ve read anything more absurd in a long time. Heaven forbid you present your home as a nice place to live!

For further details, read the Realty Times commentary on the NAEBA ‘advisory’. Craig Schiller, interior designer and staging expert, also weighs in on the subject.

[tags] real estate, staging, organic, marketing, selling, homes, houses, NAEBA, Realty Times [/tags]

August 30, 2007 · Filed Under Selling Advice

Comments

One Response to “Guest Post – Organic Home Staging”

  1. chris on August 30th, 2007 3:32 pm

    There was an NPR piece on staging that had some interesting perspectives from buyers, sellers and renters in staged homes. In the end, the stager was being hired for interior decorating because of how good it looked to the people involved and represented to them an ideal of how they should be living.

    The investments in staging were not trivial, $1-3k, but had the potential to command the higher price.

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