Second, make sure the tidiness stretches outside the house. Paint the front door, clear the walkway and driveway, make sure lights are working and fixtures gleam. Add a splash of color to that front door with a wreath.
Third, sellers need to focus on anything broken that they’ve been living with and ignoring. Fix that dripping faucet in the bathroom no one uses or the cracked tile you forgot about by the back door.
Finally, neutralize colors throughout the house. That vibrant teal in your daughter’s bedroom? The I’m-so-tired-of-living-in-a-beige-house-purple you painted the little bathroom? Douse them with off-white.
Linda Stamker, an agent in Fort Lee, N.J., is convinced staging a Cresskill, N.J., home is what helped sell it after it had been on the market for a year.
“It was brand new and empty,” Stamker says. “The bedrooms looked really small, and buyers couldn’t even tell if a bed would fit in them.
“When we got the listing in January—after it had been on the market for a year—we convinced the builder to put some furniture in it,” Stamker says. “It sold in a week for $100 over the $688,000 asking price.”
The price had been reduced a few times from the original $797,800, which Stamker acknowledges was instrumental in selling the house. But staging also played a pivotal role in moving it so quickly, she says.
“You want to give it some warm touches—put a book on a bed or a magazine on a coffee table,” Stamker says. “I would say 99 percent of sellers do their own staging, working with their real estate agent. But when a house is completely empty you might need to bring some furniture and items in.”
Costs for renting items through a company can range from $2,500 to $5,000, depending on how much furniture and accessories are used and the length of time the house is on the market.
“Our prices range from about $300 to $350 a month per room,” says Fierstat, from Cort Furniture. “Let’s face it, a home needs to be priced right to sell, but staging can definitely make a difference.”
Sapuppo, who sold her home in River Vale in four months, attributes the relatively quick sale mainly to staging.
“My home was the type of house where teenagers grew up with friends—happy and comfy,” Sapuppo says.
“But Roberta had a vision when she looked at it and when she was done, the house just flowed. She made the whole place more open, so it looked like we were living there yet it wasn’t personalized. Kind of amazing.”
©2014 The Record (Hackensack, N.J.)
Distributed by MCT Information Services
