Preparing Homes For Sale in Rockland and Bergen

Free monthly newsletter with advice for selling homeowners.

We can help you prepare your home for sale. To sell your house in weeks not months, start with an evaluation by a professional home stager.

The Art of Staging

Sell your house in weeks, not months

How do we know that staging works? Comparative studies. Here are results of a recent study of unstaged vs staged homes by the Real Estate Staging Association (RESA): For 87 vacant homes put up for sale in January through December 2009, average days on market were 277 with no sale. These same homes were then staged with rental furniture and accessories, and they sold in 63 days. Similarly, for 39 occupied homes put up for sale, average days on market were 233 without a sale. The same homes were then staged, and they sold in 53 days. Nearly 4 times faster. Here's another: In a survey by Staged Homes of 1000 homes sold between November 2008 and May 2009, unstaged houses spent 182 days on market on average vs 37 days for houses that had been professionally staged. Staging works!

Calculate the cost of an unsold house

What is the cost in real money of a house sitting unsold month after month? Mortgage interest. Property taxes. Utilities. Maintenance and repairs. Add up the monthly expenses for your own house and then compare those costs with professional staging: A professional staging evaluation takes about 2 hours, gives you specific recommendations to make your house more appealing and more saleable, and costs less than $300.

Use RESA's Staging Calculator to calculate how much you can reduce your outflow of cash by if you stage your home before you list it.

Find out from an expert what you will need to do to gain a competitive advantage over other houses in your area. Our goal is the same as yours: to get your house sold quickly. Call or email us.

Already on the market? Home staging costs less than a price drop -- and may be more effective

If your home is already on the market, priced competitively but not drawing offers, call us with all deliberate speed. We will identify barriers to sale and recommend changes to overcome them. A house that remains unsold is perceived by potential buyers as being worth less and less as time passes. It doesn’t have to stay that way. As you have seen in the cable tv shows, your house can be made to look exciting, desirable and appealing to potential buyers.

Our services

The Staging Prince is a full-service staging firm and can take the hassle out of preparing to move, from start to finish.. Following the home evaluation, we offer these services to homeowners:

• We can make repairs and updates using reliable, insured and licensed contractors;
• We can help with packing and decluttering, arrange for off-site storage, even manage a garage sale or arrange for charitable gifts;
• We will professionally stage your home so that a potential buyer can see it as his or her new dream house;
• If your house is vacant, we can arrange to rent furniture and provide accessories;
• We can photograph your staged home so it appeals to buyers searching on the web.
• We can recommend a savvy listing agent who is good at marketing houses in today's competitive market;

Staging is more than decluttering

Home staging is often misunderstood to be the same as decluttering and removing excess furniture. But it’s more than that. It especially involves highlighting a home’s best features to make it attractive to a buyer whose tastes are unknown (but not likely the same as yours).

Learn about staging through before and after photos

In this section you can see some of the essential elements of home staging from before and after photos of staged rooms.

The Foyer: The foyer or entryway to your home is the first room that buyers will see when they enter, so it is particularly important. In addition, several other parts of the house are visible from this room. Even if you don't have a foyer, the entryway where your front door opens has the same effect of making a first impression. It must be a good one or you risk losing the buyer before he takes one step into your home.

Before:


After:

Several simple changes were made in this foyer: A cluttered bookcase was replaced by a colorful urn that the client had in her living room, and a bushy fern was purchased to put in it; a side chair was brought in; personal photos were removed; art works (nicely framed woodcuts and a landscape photo from elsewhere) were rehung at a more comfortable viewing height; and clutter was removed. The room appears more spacious and more inviting after staging. Accessories cost was $20 for a plant.

Living Room: The living room is typically a somewhat formal room where you entertain your friends, which buyers consider an important function. (Entertaining can also be done in a family room or great room.) The key to showing that your entertainment room is spacious and useful is to keep it uncluttered, maintain wide access routes, use harmonious color choices, and provide a cosy seating area.

Before:


After:

Not only was there too much furniture, but it obstructed traffic, interfering with the way prospective buyers would move through the room. The piano on the left was moved to a corner to open traffic flow, the loveseat with its back to the entry was removed, and the remaining loveseat was turned toward the window to highlight the view. The carpet was turned to provide space on it for the two chairs. Also removed were the coffee table, one of two occasional tables with a lamp, and the two etageres. Two prints from elsewhere were hung on the far wall, and a large print with a white frame (from elsewhere; not seen here) replaced a very large painting that hung over the piano. Live plants were added to blend the various greens and leaven the dark loveseat, and the curtains were raised to let in more light. With the piano and side chair repositioned, the room has better traffic access and appears more spacious after staging. Accessories cost was $50 for plants. We recommended that the dated window treatment be replaced with shear curtains to let in more light.

Bedroom: Bedrooms tend to accumulate floor clutter, extra furniture, exercise equipment. . . and tvs, all of which should be removed and packed away. As private rooms they may also be decorated in ways that reflect the unvarnished taste of the homeowner. Neutralizing will make a bedroom appeal more universally. Religious icons and political statements should be removed from walls, not only in bedrooms but thoughout the house.

Before:


After:

Wallpaper was the problem in the bedroom above, and the solution was removing it and painting a warm neutral. Some bedrooms have painted walls but wallpaper borders that should be removed. If you saved your paint, you will not need to repaint the entire room.

Before:


After:

This hand-painted mural was a bigger problem than the wallpaper in the previous photo because the paint was applied thickly and formed ridges. Generous spackling would solve this, though the expanse was so large that a professional was needed to prepare the wall properly. The room looks larger without the obtrusive mural.

Spare room: A spare room (this one in a finished basement) can add value if buyers can see it as space they can use. Some buyers look for a safe place for kids to play, a workshop, an office, a home theater, even space for organized storage on shelves or racks. If your home has a spare room, it can be staged to show it as an asset, not a place that requires extra effort to clean and maintain.

Before:


After:

Here we rescued a finished basement room that had exercise equipment and assorted stuff stored in it. We staged it as an extra bedroom/guest room and added a desk to show that it can be used as an office. The seller borrowed the bed, moved the desk in from the master bedroom, and moved in an extra chair from the kitchen. Cost was $0.

Closet: There are many types of closets, of course, such as linen closets, clothes closets, utility closets. They have one thing in common: They are used to store things. Buyers want to make sure that the house they buy has enough space to store their stuff, so the spaciousness of closets is important. In staging a closet, you can maximize its spaciousness by removing everything from the floor and about half of everything else, and then arrange the remaining stuff neatly.

Before:


After:

The problem with this kitchen pantry closet was clear: it needed to be thoroughly cleaned because no one wants to buy a dirty house. The easiest way to spruce up this closet was to paint it (the color of the room's walls), making it fresh and clean.

Curb appeal: The impression that prospective buyers form when they first see your house and walk up to the front door affects the way they see the interior.

Before:


After:

This garden bed needed a drastic cleaning, weeding and pruning, followed by mulching. What a difference a few hours of cleanup work makes!

More Before and After Comparisons

Here are several more before and after comparisons. You will see that some rooms can be staged easily just by rearranging furniture, while others require some supplemental furnishings.

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