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Home Staging Makes Properties Sell Faster, Realtors Say

By Wendy Underwood for Real Estate Magazine

“A home that I’ve had staged sells quicker and 90 per cent of the time, for more money,” says Calgary realtor, Judy Bonnell. “There’s no doubt about it.”

After just four years in the industry, Bonnell has built a solid business on great people skills, hard work and a marketing plan with a difference. Her plan includes all the usual components: signs, open houses, print advertising and flyers, but unlike most Realtors, Bonnell pays for all of her houses to be professionally staged.

Originating in California, home staging transforms the house, inside and out, into the type of place that future buyers want to live in. Just like the display suite in a new development, the home is staged to reflect the lifestyle that potential buyers want to lead. So this is not just a case of painting the walls and replacing the shag carpeting, although that may have to happen, but also hanging artwork, putting champagne glasses on the coffee table, placing inspirational books on the nightstand, and playing a Frank Sinatra CD. It’s a trick that department stores use to make you buy their merchandise, and now Canadian Realtors are using it to sell homes.

After seeing an article on home staging, in President’s Choice Magazine, Bonnell, a Realtor with Royal LePage Foothills Real Estate Services decided to call Karyn Elliott of CRAZY HOUSE, a local stager featured in the article. She set Elliott to work on her next listing, and it was so successful that Bonnell now has all of her listings staged.

Bonnell says that having beautiful listings reflects well on her professionally, makes working an open house more pleasant, and when it comes to listing new properties she can offer something that few others do. She also says that her staged homes sell for more money in a hot market, and quicker in a slow market. And in the age of Internet marketing, having a listing photograph well is more important than ever. Bonnell tries to get the home staged before the sign goes on the lawn, so that everyone passing through gets the best impression, especially in that crucial first
week of listing.

Elliott first checks a home’s curb appeal, and the area around the front door, which is where potential buyers will probably spend a few minutes waiting. Once inside, she measures the first impression, and she starts moving and removing furniture, painting and accessorizing. Making sure the room has character and doesn’t seem too sterile is important, as is depersonalizing the space: taking down family photos, artwork that may offend and any religious paraphernalia.

Many Realtors will argue that they already tell their clients to do similar things with their home. So why pay an hourly fee to have someone else come in and do what you can do yourself? Bonnell has had this question levelled at her many times. “I’ve been to many home inspections and often joke that I could do a home inspector’s job. But I can’t – they’re trained professionals. Karyn is an interior designer; that’s her job, though I have followed her around for the past couple of years, I can’t do it anywhere as near as well as she can.”