Now more than ever, a home listed for sale in a crowded market knee-deep in a downturn needs to stand out among all the rest.
That’s where professional staging comes in. Near the top of the real estate agent’s bag of tricks, on the back of the “pricing properly for the market” card, is the list of stagers’ phone numbers.
Whether a house simply requires a few tweaks before it hits the Multiple Listing Service, or is empty of furnishings needed to provide buyers with an idea of what their life would be like if they lived there, staging plays a role.
“At any price, unless you are dealing with a shell, it is important to have the house look inviting,” said Joanne Davidow, vice president of Prudential Fox Roach in Center City Philadelphia. “Staging can make the difference between sale and no sale.”
Real estate broker and developer Allan Domb of Allan Domb Real Estate in Center City said he uses stagers all the time, on listings as well as models in his buildings.
However, some brokers, for example Paul Leiser of Avalon Realty at the Shore, say they never use stagers at all.
The real estate search engine HomeGain reported that in a 2009 survey of 1,000 real estate agents nationwide, 82 percent used professional stagers. The average cost of staging was $300 to $400, but the return on the investment — increase in sale price — ranged from $1,500 to $2,000.
Some houses simply need decluttering, Davidow said. Once that is done — and it isn’t as easy as it sounds — agents can bring in a stager to tweak the listing.
For this, Anna Powers and Mark Miklosovich, wife and husband and partners in the 10-year-old Busybee Homestore and Design Center on South Street, typically charge $250, Powers said.
“We come out to the house and suggest things — for instance, adding a piece of furniture, and then give them a deal on rental from our 5,000-square-foot warehouse in Fishtown or our retail site,” she said.
The meat and potatoes of their business — two houses a week, probably 80 to 100 a year, is the “redesign” of a vacant house, Powers said.
“There are so many empty properties on the market that it is a huge business.”
Some of their work is for developers with new construction; the rest for agents whose clients have moved and taken their belongings.
The 6,500-square-foot house in Wynnewood, Pa., they completed last week was owned by a couple who moved to San Francisco with all the furniture, for example.
One of the owners, Julia Salinas, said the house was built by professional baseball player and manager Connie Mack in the 1920s for his sons.
Powers and Miklosovich compete for jobs with other stagers, of course, and the competition turns on price, not aesthetics.
“Clients look at the bottom line, but cheaper is not necessarily better,” said Powers, whose pricing for a redesign starts at $1,500; a typical home is $3,000.
Once Busybee is hired, paid by sellers or agents or both, they sign a contract for three to four months. She said 75 percent of listings settle in four months from staging, although it was two months during the boom years.
Budgets vary. Sometimes the client can only afford to have the first floor staged, or a bedroom, so BusyBee’s proposals are room to room.
“In two weeks, we will begin ‘virtual staging’ for houses with limited budgets,” she said. “Renderings of what each room will look like are uploaded into a digital frame in each of those rooms. If the house has an outdated kitchen and the owner can afford $10,000 to remodel it, we can design it virtually.”