PRICE REDUCED! What is your company’s branding image?

September 16, 2017 by melissamarro

As I scroll through my social media, typically Instagram and Facebook, it surprises me how often I see specific listing agents, or teams with a graphic that proclaims “PRICE REDUCED!” I also happen to get emails from local Realtors when they list their homes and when they reduce prices. It’s an email blast that goes out to their sphere. The thing is, that the more I see this message from these same Realtors, the more I wonder if it is becoming their BRAND.

YOUR BRAND IS WHAT YOUR CUSTOMER SEES AND KNOWS YOU BY.

As professional home stagers we often hear that a home will sell at any price. PRICE IS KING! While there is no questions that any home will eventually sell at a price, that is not to say that there aren’t opportunities to sell at a better price if the marketing is better. Many years ago, colleague Craig Schiller, wrote about this in his post, Chipping Away at “The Price is King” Myth that too many Realtors Rely on. In this post, from 2008, he compares luxury potato chips with standard potato chips, from the same company.

While his comparison regarding branding being more important than price is focused on the home itself, the same standard applies to operating your own branding machine. When a customer sees a consistent string of “Price reduced” posts, then they may start thinking of you as the bargain Realtor.

When you go to a listing appointment and recommend a listing price, will the customer have confidence that this is really what they can hope to sell the home for, or will they believe that in a few weeks, you will be recommending a “Price Reduction”?

WHAT IF YOUR BRAND SAID SOMETHING DIFFERENT ENTIRELY?

Compare this brand with an agent who was able to consistently post, “Sold in 6 days!” Would the customers, sitting at that listing table feel more confident in your numbers? Would they have more confidence in YOU?

5 Tools Every Stager (and most homeowners) should keep in their tool kit!

August 11, 2017 by melissamarro

I’ve been a professional home stager for about 13 years now. I have had almost every kind of gadget you could own but over the last year, I’ve pared down my tool kit to the essentials. Aside from the standard hammer, nails, picture hooks, and picture wires, here are my top 5 staging tools. To keep you from having to guess which brand is the best, I’ve included links to my favorites, the ones that are in my team’s tool boxes.

#1 Professional Grade Steamer.

I’ve had expensive and inexpensive steamers. I’ve had handheld and upright ones. About six months ago, I purchased six of these for my team. They work like a charm. I also have one that I travel with, because frankly it works better than most hotel irons!

#2 Furniture Sliders.

This will not only save your back, but will help you get a lot more done in a lot less time. I keep at least 12 each of the carpet sliders and hardwood sliders. Oh, and I strongly recommend this brand. Not all brands are created equal. I use this brand at my home and at our retail store Linen & Rust.

#3 Laser Level

If you need to hang art at the same height around the room, then this is an absolute necessity. This handy tool will cut your art hanging time dramatically.

#4 24″ Level

Sure, a 6-8″ level fits in your tool kit a whole lot easier than longer ones, but the 24″ level is really a necessity for hanging those longer pieces of art. I love that this level works both horizontally and vertically. It’s also super sturdy, which is great because I’m super clumsy and drop it all the time!

#5 Magic Erasers

Ok. I buy the knock off brand, but that’s OK. They still work just as well. I use these for nearly everything, including getting marks off our upholstered furniture. The key to making them work their best is to get them wet first.

Well, that’s my top 5. What are your favorite things to add to your tool kit? Be sure to comment on our Facebook post and let us know!

Quality Control: It’s one of the key differences between Rave and other staging companies.

August 3, 2017 by melissamarro

I would love to say that each and every staging job goes completely smoothly. Unfortunately, especially when you are super busy, like we are, a stager can have an ‘off’ day. Last week that happened on our team. Fortunately, because of our systematized approach to staging, we were able to catch it and correct it BEFORE the customer noticed.

The difference between average staging and Rave’s staging

Most staging companies either work with rental pieces or they have limited availability to inventory. Rave has a 10,000 sqft warehouse and approximately $1 million in retail assets. On average we have between 50-60 vacant homes staged at any time. What is available is constantly rotating and we buy more assets every month. This means that the stagers on our team always have access to amazing pieces for any price point of home.

Last week, when this home, in the high $700’s was staged, we were swamped. Perhaps we had taken one too many jobs that week and our stagers were exhausted. Fortunately, that never keeps us from putting out the best product possible, because each and every job is audited for quality control. When something isn’t quite right we always know about it and are able to correct it, usually before the customer even knows.

Since, on this occasions, our on-staff photographer beat us to the QC, we have photos of the changes. For our many staging colleagues, some of which find me a little tough on critiques, they may be comforted that I’m just as hard on my staff as I am on any of them – probably much harder actually. In my view of business, we are only as good as our last job.

When I saw the original photo I was a little taken a-back. I just didn’t feel like this met the standards of my company. The stager is an amazing stager and constantly does beautiful work. I could tell some of the reasons for things that didn’t feel right. The tray ceiling should dictate the direction of the table. When placed that way, as in the first photo, the room was too open. Things felt crammed to one side.

The room is HUGE. It needs to show as expansive as it is and needed 1) a rug and 2) to have the table turned the other way, allowing for more large furniture pieces to balance the space.

As you can see, the changes really make the room feel larger, not smaller, showing off how much room there is for entertaining or holiday dinners with the family.

Always consider who will be buying the house when staging.

I had a nice long conversation about some of the choices that were made in the home. Some things were simple. The movers forgot to bring her stack of rugs, so she tried to make-do. The biggest thing that went wrong is that, in this case, the stager forgot about demographic staging and tried to go “neutral”. Appealing to a broad audience is what many Realtors and home stagers will advise is the goal of our service. The truth is that it is really to appeal to the RIGHT buyer – the one who is most likely to purchase the home.

Rather than going with a transitional look, one that may be more broadly appealing, this home should have been staged much more traditionally. Based on the community, the features and appointments of the home, and the price point, the buyers demographic is much more likely to be someone with more traditional tastes.

In the case of re-staging this room, we also brought in additional seating and a larger rug. By showcasing the room with more furniture, again, in a house like this, more is better. When there is too little furniture in a room, the room feels far too small.

Pre-existing angles require more angles

We’ve all seen the bad staging work where everything in the house is at an angle, including the dining room table. It looks crazy. The general rule of staging is that straight placement is preferred by almost everyone. While we want to think outside the box sometimes in decorating, staging isn’t about decorating. It’s about marketing. That means making people comfortable when you want them to buy something.

When a home comes with pre-existing angles, straight placement can create awkward spaces, however. In this case, if a rug had been added, based on this placement of furniture, it would have awkwardly fit. By working with the pre-existing angles, instead of trying to fight them, we are able to get a much more comfortable layout.

What is this space going to be used for?

The final room I’m going to highlight in our up-ended Quality Control upgrade, is what we are calling the Control Room. This large, executive home, had a bonus space converted with multiple desks, built-in filing cabinets and work stations. While the purpose of this room seems pretty obvious, not everyone needs such a powerful work-zone. Some families may want to use this for relaxing, or ‘kicking the kids’ to.

Sometimes you really do need to add that “WOW FACTOR”! In this case, we added some additional seating, which added both color and function. Now this large bonus space isn’t just for homework. It’s also for family time, a hang-out space for teenagers, or even TV viewing.

I debated about writing this blog because re-stages aren’t our best moments. It means that we fell short of our high expectations. Based on what the Realtor had to say about us calling this to their attention before they brought it to ours, inspired me to step outside and say, “Hey, we are human. We make mistakes. We also own up to them and fix the problems immediately! We don’t wait and hope no one will notice.”

“Thank you Melissa. You know the capabilities of your company & we appreciate the sense of value that you have in your business. In our opinion the home certainly looked better after it was done, but we don’t have much to compare to.

Again…. thank you for your honesty. It is reflective in your quality of work.” Rene Zook, Keller Williams Atlantic Partners Southside

We are not the cheapest staging company in town. We are the BEST.

July 11, 2017 by melissamarro Leave a Comment

I was speaking with a Realtor that specializes in luxury homes yesterday and in our conversation she advised that she thinks what we do is great, but that we are priced higher than our competition. That’s not a surprise to me. There will always be stagers who will undercut our pricing. The truth is that very few of them have over a decade of staging experience behind them, very few own their own inventory (and if they do, what is the quality?), and very few of them have anything close to the success rate that we have.

How Rave Home Staging is DIFFERENT than the competition

Small homes look bigger with home staging

In addition to the items listed in my opening paragraph, there are a key component that makes Rave unique in the industry. Because of this singular difference, we have a different approach to staging, pricing, and ultimately success.

Rave Home Staging doesn’t offer a product. We offer a service.

Listen to any other home stager and they’ll go on about how great the home looks. They’ll give you the same boring speech about selling faster and selling for more money. Yes. These are the simple things that we all do. Rave Home Staging takes things a bit further, however. Our goal isn’t to make the house look great. Yes. Of course we will make the house look great, but that’s not our “job”.

Our goal is to make the house SELL.

Luxury Homes feel warm and inviting.

Other home staging companies will frequently tell you that home staging is about making the home universally appealing. They’ll remind you that the home should appeal to a broad audience of potential buyers.

Rave Home Staging pays careful attention to the architecture and overall feeling of the home, but more importantly we also pay great attention to the neighborhood, we pay attention to the cars in the the neighbor’s driveways. We pay attention to the schools that are around the corner. In order for us to do our job properly, we need to understand who is most likely going to want to live in the home. We need to understand both the buyer’s demographics (who they are) and psychographics (what they think). When we understand who they are, and how they think, we can understand how they are most likely going to want to live.

Appealing to a broad audience has merits, but appealing to the RIGHT audience is much more important. Creating an environment that the most likely buyer wants to live in is the key to a quick and profitable sale.

It’s not about what you spend. It’s about what you keep.

Just like any other product or service, you can get a cheaper price. You can buy generic or you can buy brand name products. Some items they are more or less the same. Other items there are tremendous differences. In something as important as your home, can you really afford to go with the cheapest deal?

You may be able to get a staging service for $800, that we charge $2000 for. Of course they didn’t provide professional photos. They didn’t stage the entire home. They didn’t even add the key elements, in the rooms they did stage, that created a lifestyle. No. What the other stager brought was furniture, art, and a few accessories.

Just like when choosing a Realtor, the cheapest one isn’t usually the best. The same is true of choosing a home staging company.

How to make the most money after staging your previously listed home

May 9, 2017 by melissamarro Leave a Comment

So, you’ve finally decided to stage your home? The bad news is that you’ve already missed the buyer pool who would have paid you the most money. The good news is that you are in better shape to get top dollar than you were before you staged. In order for home staging to be effective, there are some things that you need to do NOW, however.

The best buyers for your home are always those who are anxiously awaiting new listings to hit the market. They’ve already been looking and haven’t found what they want yet. They are willing to pay much more than buyers who are just entering the market. Frustration and disappointment increase their emotional desire when viewing a properly staged home that works for their family’s needs. These buyers only exist in the first couple of weeks of your home hitting the market. After that point, you begin contributing to their frustration, not solve it.

Let’s face it, if your house has been on the market already, they’ve seen it. Sure, you may not have known about them, but that’s because they didn’t care about your home enough to make a showing appointment. If they did, and your house didn’t meet the cut, then you are definitely working against the curve.

When listing your house for sale, time is money…

How to make the most money after staging your previously listed home:

Update the listing with high quality photographs showcasing the staging. This can’t be over stated. Potential buyers are first shopping online and they really only care about the photos. If the real estate photos aren’t enticing, they won’t get excited. Quality photos of a great staging job, can create high levels of increased perceived value. This may create a bidding war, if you haven’t waited too long on the market.

Change the price. This is one tactic that seems tricky, but understand that in most Multiple Listing Services (MLS), buyers only see what’s on the “hot sheet”. Hot sheet homes are ones that are either new on market (and you already missed that golden opportunity), have a change in status (like falling out of contract), or have a price change. Notice that I said a price change, not necessarily a price reduction. After getting the photographs back, have your Realtor reassess the pricing of the home with the current competition. Even if you only adjust the home by a small variance, say $100 in either direction, it is usually enough to land on the “hot sheet” and get buyers taking another look at your new digs.

Host a broker open house. A broker open house is different than a standard open house as the goal is to get Realtors, not buyers through the front door. Your Realtor will need to do this part. They should also have some kind of food and giveaway to entice other agents to show up. Since your home has likely been seen by many of the local real estate professionals, they will need to see that what they have to sell has changed. By seeing the home in a new light, they may realize they have customers who were waiting just for a house like yours (who may even have seen the previous before photos in MLS).

Invite the agents who previously showed the house back to see it. Yes. You are having a broker open, so this may seem redundant, but the agents who previously showed the house DID have a buyer who wanted a house like yours, but didn’t select yours. This is a great time to invite them back out to the house and get their feedback on changes. Find out if their customer has moved on, or if they are still looking. If they’ve moved on, get a commitment from them that they’ll show it again, if they have a buyer that is a match for them. They will. If you hadn’t showed them the change, they might not have, however. They instead would remember what their customers said about the house when they showed it before.

How to make the most money selling your home:

Now that we’ve gone through how to make the most money after staging your previously listed home, let me give a quick piece of advice. If you really want to make the most money possible selling your home, STAGE IT BEFORE YOU LIST IT. As I said, at the beginning of this article, the best buyers – the ones who will pay the most money for a home – are there BEFORE you list it. Don’t try to save a couple of thousand dollars by waiting to see “if it doesn’t sell”. Even if it does sell, it can be guaranteed, that if you sold it without staging that you left money on the table. Period.

Buying a home is an emotional choice. People don’t buy four walls, floors, and windows. They buy a life. If your home gave them anything less, you were paid too little for it. End of story.

You may also enjoy reading: The Curse of the Vanilla Box. Selling an Empty House.

The curse of the vanilla box. Selling an empty house.

May 3, 2017 by melissamarro Leave a Comment

This is as real as any horror flick out there. Imagine shopping for a new home. As all the Zillow.com ads say, “you’re not just looking for a house. You’re looking for a place for your life to happen.” But what you find are either lived-in messes, where you will need gallons of paint, primer, and possibly a vat of Krud Kutter, commerical grade cleaning products, or on the opposite spectrum bland vanilla boxes.

Let’s take this fine specimen of a house. It is lovely in every fashion. Unfortunately, it is about as boring a vanilla box as it comes. Carpet: check! Freshly painted walls: check! Windows: check!

Are you excited about moving onto the next photo, holding in anticipation of what it will bring? Does this home make you feel like this Zillow commerical does?

Do you feel the next phase in your life starting here? Do you think that image on Dad’s phone where he says, “If you have a bad dream, you can come to our room. Your mamma snores.” would have been so powerful an image if it had been a picture of an empty vanilla box? Would it have created the same imagination of the “dream life” Dad was trying to portray to his little son?

Let’s check out what this SAME EXACT HOME looks like staged and see if it fits a little better into the Zillow commerical “dream life”.

Yes. These are the same rooms, from the same direction, taken with the same camera & lens, by the same photographer. Do they FEEL different to you? Yes. Of course they do. People buy homes on emotion. Once they get through all of the rough data, which home to pick is all a matter of connecting to it emotionally. I’ll let Elizabeth Banks showcase this point for me in her Realtor.com ad.

Just like those mini quiches, staging skews buyer’s perspectives. Unlike the quiches though, this isn’t a bad thing. Home staging showcases the possibilities of the life that could be lived in the home. Think of it more like It’s a Wonderful Life looped up with a little A Christmas Carol. Sometimes seeing how things could be can really make you appreciate what’s here and now!

What do I do with that? Helping buyers understand your home.

April 21, 2017 by melissamarro Leave a Comment

I love my home staging career. Every home is unique, so every day is different. I get to adapt and determine how to best showcase features and benefits, while minimizing negatives. What happens when you can’t decide if an architectural element is a feature or a flaw though?

When buyers wonder what the heck you should do with that space…

It is hard to make a real estate sale when buyers just can’t determine what do to with major focal points of a home.

When viewing this San Marco home online, prior to our actual planning visit, I got really excited. I knew that I would have to really think outside of the box and come up with a plan that would not only make sense to a potential buyer, but also take a potentially negative aspect and turn it into a great feature.

I’m pretty sure this four bedroom, two bath home started off life as a two bedroom, one bath bungalow. The photo in this first shot (above) is when you immediately walk into the home. This long corridor is a major point of the layout and architecture. Because it was formerly the exterior of the home, nearly all of the walls are either brick or cinder block. The primary living spaces, including the family room, dining room, and master suite are at the end of this walk.

THIS. This is the main entertaining and living space of the home. For most people, in the current form, this area is awkward and hard to look beyond. I mean, what do you do with it?

The home doesn’t feel easily understood. Thus far buyers haven’t had that instant, “Gotta have it!” instinct.

When buyers don’t know how it works, they don’t buy it.

Home staging is at its most fun in these moments, at least for me. This is not a generic beige box. This is not a luxury home that is already beautiful where we are just creating lifestyle and flow. This is actually turning an off-putting quirk into a fun retro vibe. Since this home is located in an artistic part of town, I expect it to pay off big-time.

The first step, to making sense of this massively reconstructed home, had to be turning this long corridor into something more interesting than simply a hallway. By adding an entry table, large furniture storage, bench seating, a bar, and more, we created opportunities to break up the walkway into smaller, more typical, functional spaces.

Each area was carefully crafted to become casual, modern options for every day living. The stage was down-played while completely up-styled. Warmth was brought into the contemporary room, making it feel more like a living room and less like an over sized sunroom.

Rooms that previously may have left potential home buyers scratching their heads wondering how they would live in the home, now can imagine an entertaining or family-oriented lifestyle. Crazy additions of seemingly unusable connecting spaces are now perfect for injecting a sense of personality and artistic style.

Want to see more of this home? Visit our Facebook business page.

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Home Staging Increases Perceived Value

April 13, 2017 by melissamarro Leave a Comment

If you’ve ever talked with a professional home stager, you’ve heard the phrase, “Home Staging sells homes faster, and for more money.”, or something similar. It’s become such a cliche, that it’s as if no one ever thinks about how this is true. Sadly, most home stagers don’t take the time to educate potential customers on exactly what we do, leaving many with the impression that we simply “make houses look pretty”. Making a house look good, is more of a by-product of our work.

What we really do is market to potential buyers in a way that increases the perceived value of a property.

Let’s take a look at a home Rave Home Staging worked on earlier this week. We tend to stage a lot in the Riverside / Avondale area. The bungalow style homes are adorable and the area is highly desirable. Many of these homes are dated, although it’s a big area for flippers who are changing the interior landscape, house by house.

2897 Forbes St, located in New Riverside Area

This home had been on the market for close to 30 days prior to our staging this week. There had been many showings, but the right buyer just hadn’t come along yet. (or had they, but they just didn’t have the vision) The seller, Anne Rain, with Coldwell Banker Vanguard Realty, knew that this was the perfect home for staging. The home was reasonably priced for the market and there had been a lot of showings, so clearly potential buyers just weren’t seeing the untapped beauty of the home, and connecting to it.

With no additional work required, we scheduled the showing and set to work. Here are the before photos I took, on my initial tour of the property.

The before photos were taken with my iphone, not a professional grade HDR Camera. The angles are not as wide as the professionals and the angles are not necessarily the same. I still think you’ll be able to get the point, however.

What this cute New Riverside Bungalow looks like after home staging

For the simple cost of 1% of list price, this adorable bungalow got a whole new look (and probably a whole new buyer pool).

Home staging creates the feel of lifestyle in an otherwise bland home. All of the miscellaneous oddities, suddenly fall away. Buyers can see themselves living in the home.

So the real question is whether you would pay more for house in the “after” photos than for the house in the “before” photos. Most people would. How much more? On a home, like this one, listed at $225,000, the answer is typically $10,000 or more. This is a 400% return on investment for the seller.

UPDATE: SOLD!

On 6/1/17, this house closed on MLS. The final purchase price was full list, at $225,000 with no listed concessions.

Did staging work? A question to ask is whether the house would likely have received a full price offer, with no buyer concessions, after already being on the market for 30 days, without staging?

Fleming Island Gets The Edge With Home Staging

April 6, 2017 by melissamarro Leave a Comment

Not all home sellers believe in staging at first. Sometimes it takes a great Realtor, with tenacious belief that all homes can do just a little bit better when professionals are allowed to manage things in the proper way. In this case, Jaime Tejera and Valerie Kelley, with The Edge Group at Keller Williams, were the tenacious Realtors.

Typically homeowners call the shots during the listing period, but that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be led in the right direction. The Edge Group stages all of their listings because they understand the value that staging provides.

The Edge Group uses Professional Staging to SELL Fleming Island

The homeowner of 1516 Brookstone in Fleming Island chose not to stage from Day 1, as recommended. Instead, they believed that their vacant home would sell on its own. After nearly 70 days, their house unsold, they were finally ready to do what should have been done before hitting the market. They staged.

Nick Johnson Photography

The photography is great. The room, lackluster. This is not the best way to get a great offer or an excited buyer.

Photo by Sue Wilson, Rave Home Staging

This room is more appealing online (and in person). This room tells home buyers exactly how they will be able to live in the space. They understand where the TV will go, how many, and how large, furniture will be placed. More over, the home feels more luxurious.

Nick Johnson Photography

This is the master bedroom. Doesn’t it feel “masterful”? No? I’m actually feeling a bit blue about it.

Photo by Sue Wilson, Rave Home Staging

How does this room feel? Any different? Which home is likely to have more potential buyers, looking online, make showing appointments?

Nick Johnson Photography

While neutral palettes are always recommended when selling your Fleming Island home, it often makes more sense to stage the property rather than paint. Professional staging is less than professional painting most of the time. Empty rooms are still empty rooms.

Photo by Sue Wilson, Rave Home Staging

Consider the two rooms as two different homes, not the same one, and decide which one you would pay more for. Is it the same amount, or is one mentally worth more than the other? Why?

The end of the story. A happy outcome.

I’m sure, by this time, the value of staging in this Fleming Island home is apparent. The proof, of a job well done, is not in the photos, it is in the numbers, however. Well. In this case, I’m going to show it in one last photo.

Screen shot of information provided by NEFAR MLS

Let me break this down for you. This home was originally listed on 11/04/2016. It was staged on 1/16/2017. On 1/21/2017, the home went under contract. That is 5 days after staging!

The seller took a $10,000 price reduction after 30 days on market, over a month before they were wiling to consider the $2000 staging service. Imagine what the sale price would have been if they had staged from Day 1, as recommended by their experienced Realtor.

Sold by Design: Which Coffee Table is Right for My Home?

April 5, 2017 by melissamarro Leave a Comment

Whether you are selling your home and working with a professional stager, buying a new home, or simply redecorating, design choices can be overwhelming. The “right” piece is often more than dimension and style. Often homeowners know when something ‘doesn’t look right’ but they don’t know why. This also means that they don’t know how to fix it. Exasperation, along with multiple trips to furniture stores, makes something that should be fun into an daunting experience.

Understanding the Visual Weight of Materials

There are so many options for materials in today’s home stores. For the purpose of this post, I’ll break it down into three primary elements.

Wooden Coffee Tables: Stains may range from blonde to ebony, but generally speaking have high visual weight. The darker the stain, the more visual weight the table will have.

Glass Coffee Tables: Because glass is generally clear, it contains virtually no visual weight. If the glass is smoked or frosted, then visual weight increases with the darkness of color.

Fabric Ottomans: Technically ottomans aren’t coffee tables, but today they are frequently used in lieu of tables, so I am including them. Just as with wood and glass, the darker the color, the more visual weight they will score.

So, what exactly does it mean to have ‘more visual weight’? When looking at the space available for furnishings and traffic flow, scale becomes very important. Not only does the designer need to consider how much floor spaces is available, but they must determine how much ‘visual space’ is available before the room looks cluttered or over loaded with furniture.

The larger the visual weight number, the more prominent that piece will appear in a room. For example, a dark stained wooden coffee table will appear much larger than the same size glass coffee table.

For this reason, wooden coffee tables are frequently used in spaces that are larger, or have more open area. The heavy visual weight helps to bridge furniture pieces that are far apart, or may help balance large pieces placed away from each other.

On the flip side, glass is frequently used in smaller spaces, where floor space either appears minimal, or actually is minimal. Glass has the effect of being non-existent in a room. You have all of the convenience and function of a table without visually taking up the room in your design. This can make a small space seem much larger.

Fabric ottomans typically work about the same way as wooden coffee tables, but they have the advantage of being able to be broken apart into multiple pieces, and of being left alone, without accessorizing.

Once you have selected the right material for your coffee table, next, you’ll want to determine the correct shape. We’ll discuss that in Part 2 of Which Coffee Table is Right for My Home?