Did you ever walk into a restaurant and smell the steaks on the grill and hear the sound of one sizzling as it hits the metal steak plate? Mouthwatering, isn’t it? Do you think your appetite would be just as piqued if the menu simply said “12 ounce T-bone?”
Restaurateurs are masterful at engaging all five senses to make you hungry. You smell steaks, you hear them sizzling, you see fresh, crisp-tender vegetables, you touch warm, fresh-baked rolls. And it all adds up to enhance the taste of your meal.
But do we Realtors create the same excitement when we market a home? Not usually.
People buy homes more on emotions than logic. It must feel like home to them or at least have the potential to feel like home. They are buying a dream, not a building.
How can you make their dream sizzle? How can you make their mouths water when they walk into the home you have listed? You must communicate, in a dramatic, effective way, how this particular home delivers their dream. You must sell the personality of the home more than its number of bedrooms, baths, square footage and exterior sheathing.
Enter home staging. Home staging, in its simplest form, is a list of ideas to make your home ready for a showing – open the curtains, turn on the lights, and bake an apple pie. These suggestions are intended to make visitors feel welcome, as much as to present your home in its best light.
In its more complex form, staging shows the lifestyle the home offers. It presents more than the sticks and bricks that hold up the roof. Staging showcases a home’s highlights in a powerful way – visibly and tangibly. It translates the features of a home – its location, architectural design, and floor plan, for examples — into dreams the consumer cannot live without.
When selling resale homes, staging is important, but when selling new construction, staging is essential. Have you ever gone into a brand-new house that a builder is holding open? No window treatments, no area rugs, no furnishings and personal touches? The house feels cold, uninviting. Too often, builders rely on a buyer’s vision to place furniture or change the basic white walls to sage or eggplant. Too often, the warmth of well-placed Ralph Lauren fabrics or bathroom linens goes unimagined in the buyer’s rush to leave.
News flash: Most buyers cannot visualize possibilities when it comes to homes and decorating. It’s not what they do. They are lawyers and doctors and accountants, not builders, interior designers, and RealtorsO. Don’t make their imaginations struggle; make it easy for them to fall in love with the home you’ve built.
Staging employs fabrics for windows & linens, lighting, area rugs, flower arrangements – even pots & pans! A properly-staged home will draw people in; it will engage them. It will “take them there.”
In 1982, I was hired to do the marketing for a vacation-home resort development north of Houston called Waterwood – a world-class golf course surrounded by one of Texas’ few inland lakes. That was twenty seven years ago and these weekend homes started at $450,000. The development had a landing strip so we flew prospective (and well-qualified) buyers in by private jet. Extravagant, yes, but extravagance was part of the allure of the project.
In Rochester Hills, a builder I worked with loved the huge, Corian cooking island he’d built at the edge of the kitchen, opening to the family room, but buyers didn’t seem nearly as excited about it as he was. So, for an afternoon open house, we hired a chef (tall, white hat and all!) and three local actors to gather ‘round the island, just as we all do at house parties. The home sold that day. Staging.
Today, home offices are popular, but they’re often a converted bedroom space. Show how the space can be used efficiently with organizers or a modular workspace.
Exercise rooms are trendy. Ask an exercise equipment distributor to place a treadmill and bicycle, and promotional brochures in the home, in exchange for you recommending the distributor to your building clients.
Is there a space perfect for a grand piano? Don’t just bring one in, hire someone to play it for open houses or the Parade of Homes. Did you wire it for a home theater? Contact a high-end distributor and see if they’d like to showcase their product in your theater space.
Staging sells the dream. The sizzle … not the steak.
If you’re too busy building to bother with staging, hire it done. Hire a RealtorO who has the experience and resources to do it well. Or job it out to professional stagers who will consult on an hourly basis and bill you time and materials. Either way, in the overall construction costs, include staging as an essential marketing cost.
