One of the many services Mast & Falls enjoys providing is home staging. If you haven’t sold a home in a while, staging is a vital tool realtors use to quickly sell a house at the best possible price. Staging takes a listed home and makes it more appealing to prospective buyers. We work home design magic every day - so we’re just the ones to call for such an undertaking! Yet, a successful staging job is a bit different from a traditional interior design job – because staging tweaks a home specifically to appeal to a wide variety of buyers, not to meet a homeowner’s personal desires. So, we adjust our methods just a bit for staging while still utilizing all our design expertise.
Staging is setting a scene – the same way a stage designer sets the scene for a theatrical production. We use a touch of suggestion, a dose of understatement, and plenty of common sense – leaving room for the buyer’s imagination to step in. After we’re done, buyers should be picturing themselves comfortably living in the home. Negative qualities of the home should be neutralized or maybe even diminished. Staging removes many personal touches of the current owner and generalizes the decor. This can be as small a step as removing family photos or as big as changing very personal paint colors and editing furniture choices. We may remove furnishings that don’t have broad appeal or that don’t fit the space well. Staging includes reducing clutter, clearing counter tops, and moving furniture so that spaces appear larger. These steps – part organization and part design - are not very difficult but they really let buyers see a home as a blank canvas they can make their own.
We recently staged a lovely Victorian home in Newton, Mass. (Photos here are from this job.) We were hired by the realtor because the house sat for four months without generating much interest even though it was in a very desirable neighborhood. The owners had moved out and the house was empty. It was hard for people to envision this place as theirs. Getting the house sold required a two pronged attack – lowering the listing price to a more reasonable number and making the home feel welcoming. For this job, we didn’t need to repaint any walls or make any changes in materials or fixtures. But those tasks are often a part of staging – a fresh coat of paint, a new faucet, light fixture, carpeting or counter tops…..all are easy updates. Some minor carpentry works wonders too. You’d be surprised how many nominal expenditures can help a home feel well maintained and therefore desirable and worthy of top dollar.
In Newton, we rented high quality designer furniture for a three month period. We focused on the most important rooms: the living room, master bedroom, kitchen and entry. Bringing in artwork, lighting, accessories and some key furniture pieces did the trick. Staging gave buyers a vision of how a room could work and how it might look. It made the home feel alive again. Now that it’s Spring, a bit of exterior curb appeal (a pot of flowers by the door, edged garden beds, sparkling clean windows and a freshly painted front door) will be the finishing touches.
If you’re selling a home sometime soon, please give us a call. We’re very happy to help!