Bidding War Listing

     This Spring I put a house on the market and not only did it sell within days, we had a bidding war. As soon as the house was officially listed the realtors began calling, then the Open House on Sunday was packed and by Monday I emailed seven realtors about how we were going to handle their multiple offers. A couple days later the sellers accepted an offer that was well over the asking price and before we knew it we were in attorney review. (AKA-Escrow) It sold for $35,000 over the asking price!

                                  Click here to watch the video of the story of this house.

So what caused all of the excitement? 

The house looked great online.

    For 13 years I have been "The Paint Diva" helping clients choose paint colors. It all began when I went to work at a paint store as their in-house Interior Designer and Color Consultant. I fell into staging as I began going to clients' homes and a lot of them would tell me they were planning to put their homes on the market. So not only was I there to choose their paint colors, we discussed what they needed to do to get their homes ready to sell. This usually involved removing wallpaper, de-cluttering and making their homes look as updated as possible. Just like realtors, I had really good insight into what buyers were looking for because a large percentage of my other clients were people who had just bought new homes. I knew what buyers were looking for, what they liked, and what they did NOT like! (Eventually I got smart and got my Real Estate license. :) 
    

  I don't just work for my own clients, I am hired by other Real Estate Agents to do pre-staging and color consults. When they send me out they'll ask me "Are you going to gray it up?" to which I answer "Yes I am!" They laugh, but they know that's what sells. When a client will be living in their home for a few years I will choose colors that I know will make them happy, but as soon as they tell me they are selling their house we have a whole different conversation. I tell them "It doesn't matter any more what you like. It's about what your potential buyer is going to like."  Right now gray is what sells, and if you are selling and you don't like gray, it doesn't matter! You won't be living there much longer! 

    The sellers of the house featured in today's blog started out as my "Paint Diva" clients. Every time they had a project they would call me to come help them choose paint colors. Then around the holidays they called me because they were planning to sell their house in the early Spring market. They didn't just want a pre-staging consult, they also hired me to be their realtor. They didn't know what they were in for! Now I had to critique their home on behalf of potential buyers and looked at their home through a whole new lens.

 As an artist I look at homes as a painting or as a photograph. When I do a pre-staging appointment I'll hold up my hands and look through them like a camera lens. Then I take pictures with my phone and look at the photos to see what stands out. 

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    In my seller's living room here is what I saw. We had just had the rooms painted a nice, light, warm gray called Collingwood (they used to be green) which lightened up the space, but it still needed work. I took a photo with my phone and looked at it. The first thing I saw was a VERY RED rug! Then a heavy coffee table from what I affectionately call "The Tuscan Era" with sparkly candle holders in the forefront. Then I saw dark furniture in the corners, and the LAST thing I saw was the fireplace and didn't even notice the hardwood floors at all. The fireplace and floors are important items that will sell the house, so they should have been the first things I noticed, not the last.

   Next, I looked at the dining room, and again I saw a big oriental rug, and everything else looked really dark. First of all, we are selling the HOUSE, not the furniture. So buyers should notice the features of the home first, not the furniture or rugs. Secondly, dark is a kiss of death for a photo. Buyers want homes that are light and bright. So I gave them a list of items that needed to go (furniture in all the corners and the rugs) and told them to call me back after the holidays.

   I returned a month later and was happy to find the sellers did their homework! Then I began doing some tweaks. First, I cleaned out the hutch. Glasses and crystal bowls don't photograph well so they were removed. White dishes in a dark hutch however, look great! I pared down the amount of dishes to make it look neat, clean and uncluttered. I moved the painting of the Westy dog (they own 4 Westy's!) from the dining room to the living room and placed it over the fireplace. (I liked how the color of the dog's fur went with the painted brick.) We hung a mirror in the dining room to reflect light which brightened up the space, (She had ordered it but it was still in a box) and I brought in two end chairs in a light, neutral fabric to give the room a more modern look. The sparkly candle sticks now found a new home in the background.

    Thankfully her couch and two chairs were solid beige, so we were able to get the room down to the bare, neutral bones. I emailed her a couple of blue rugs that I was planning on purchasing to add to my staging inventory, but she liked them so much she bought them herself! I used my glass coffee table (which has appeared in several staging jobs) and she found one just like it and bought that too. The blue rugs set the tone for the room, so I went to HomeGoods  (Do I have the best job or what?) for the blue pillows, a throw, some artwork and accessories (HomeGoods happy!) My client started getting into the whole process and bought some new plants, blue planters and accessories. She liked all of the things I bought so much she decided to keep all of it for her new place!

I was really happy to see my client start to get excited about moving into her new home. This is so important!
    The key steps to going through the staging and moving process are: 
1. Losing the emotional attachment to your home.
2. Understanding that your house (notice I did not say "home") is now an object to be sold.
3. Create an object that buyers want to buy.
4. Start getting excited about moving into your new home. 
   Staging the seller's house made it feel fresh and updated, yet by keeping her existing stuff it made it still feel like her home. It helped her imagine herself living in a new place, and also helped her realize that although they will be moving the new place will still feel like home.

Colors For Staging

    When choosing colors to stage a house I usually want the main living areas to be neutral, but I make exceptions in kids' bedrooms. This house is in a great neighborhood in a town with excellent schools, so we knew that most of the potential buyers will have children. So it's OK for kids' rooms to look like kids' rooms! This way the potential buyer can imagine their kids in the house. (The hard part is making sure their rooms look as neat and clean as possible!) In these bedrooms we removed the desks to make the rooms look more open and spacious, but the paint colors remained the same because they looked great!

     

In the Master Bedroom and bath I already chose the colors previously so it was almost ready. The only things that needed to change were the dated artwork, (if you have artwork like ducks with mauve or mint green matting, it screams '80's as much as Laura Ashley wallpaper) and the fancy mattress looked too low and needed to be fluffed up (our little secret!).

    Photography is also important. Make sure that your Real Estate Agent hires a good photographer and doesn't just take pictures with their phone. Real Estate Photographers take the same photo several times with different exposures, including one with bright indoor light, and another with bright outdoor light and then they photoshop them together to make the rooms look as light and bright as possible. Why? Because buyers like LIGHT AND BRIGHT!

Here is my "Before" shot with my iPhone, and the photographer's "After".

   

     Most people are used to seeing their own homes the same way for so long that it's hard to imagine them in a new way. Sometimes they just need a new pair of eyes to help them see things differently.  After I help homeowners stage their homes they usually look so good that the sellers say "Now I don't want to move!"  As you can see, I'm not a typical "Stager" that brings in all new furniture. I like to work with what homeowners already have, and then just tweak it. Up until now I have called myself a "staging consultant" but I think I need to come up with a new, hip word for re-designing or re-imagining rooms. Hmmm. I'll have to think about this one. Maybe this is why people have called me "The Paint Genie".  

    The "Staging" word has become so familiar now that I'm starting to get calls from clients who don't want to move, but they just want to freshen up their homes and want a new look, so they call me to come "stage" their homes that they're staying in. I started calling it "Stay Staging". Or maybe I should call it "Stay-ging".  If you don't have a color and design consultant in your area, but you're looking to freshen up your home and need some help, find a local stager to help!  

    If you are going to sell your home, you should bring in someone to help you see how a potential buyer will see (and smell!) your house differently than you do. Which brings me to one last point. Yes, the house looked great, but I also had to make sure that with four (totally adorable) dogs in the house it didn't smell of dogs. (Not that it did, but it was on my radar to make sure that it didn't.) Homeowners can go "nose blind". You don't want buyers to walk in and immediately smell odors of any kind. Odors can come from anything like animals, food, baby diapers, dampness, cigarettes or teenage boys' feet! 
    Everyone has different ideas of what they consider to be "clean" (just ask a teenager to clean up the mess and they'll say "what mess?"). If you're not sure if your house looks and smells clean, then ask someone you know who is a real clean freak to come look at and sniff your house and tell you if they think your house is clean. The house has to look clean and smell clean! Shampooing rugs, removing or replacing carpets and painting the place all helps eliminate odors. (Febreze helps too!) As the manager of my Real Estate office always says:

 "If you can SMELL it, you can't SELL it!"

 I recorded a video in my home office a few years ago on the subject of how to prepare your home to go on the market, so if you are one of the ones who plans to sell your home, grab a comfortable seat and watch this video. (click the link below the photo.)

How To Prepare Your House For Sale

    The lesson to take away from today's blog is, if your Realtor says you need to get rid of rugs, paint the place, do something about that musty odor, don't get insulted. They know what they're talking about. They have worked with enough buyers to know what they'll complain about and what they are looking for. They are trying to HELP you to create a product that will sell. They don't want your house to sit on the market not selling for six months any more than you do. Listen to your Realtor. They are the experts.