I always focus on the front door and the porch if somebody's going to do nothing else, but if the door is say look at kind of like it needs some fresh paint and the porch needs cleaned up. If I do nothing else on a house, I at least make sure that the front door is clean and presentable with maybe some sort of wreath in a nice clean, fresh doormat and a pot of flowers or something. It can be pretty simple, but that is the first thing people see. So you definitely want it to be appealing.
It is said that there is no second chance to make a good first impression. That might be particularly true when one is making a major investment. This is random acts of knowledge presented by Heartland Community College. I'm your host, Steve fast. Today's guest will tell you that making a good impression is particularly important in selling a house. And that impression can be augmented by some simple tips in staging rooms to accentuate the positives. And downplay the less than positive elements of the house.
I'm Adrian coordinate hoe and I am a real estate agent at Keller Williams in Bloomington. And at Heartland I teach a home staging class for getting your house ready to sell. I also teach a first time homebuyers class in an investment real estate class with Heartland I got into real estate because I started out flipping houses. And a big part of that was the staging. When we were done with it, I would go in and stage the house as well. I have a bachelor's in design and business. And so it just all the pieces kind of worked. And I love that part of my job.
Talk a little bit about what you mean by home staging. And when you say it needs to be staged, is that the seller that should be doing it? Or do you have a role in that tell us what you have to do.
Staging in general is a little different than decorating the purpose of staging is, it's actually designing the home in a way to draw your attention to what you want it to within the home or distract it from what you don't want your it to go to within the home. In a nutshell, that's the job of staging. Oftentimes the seller is responsible for doing that, that's one of the things that we do that's a lot different is that we actually do provide that to our clients because I feel it is so important for getting the house sold. The reason I teach the class is you know somebody might be doing for sale by owner or other things and just want that information or knowledge or maybe they flip houses. And that's why they want to learn about it. I've had other agents take the class at Heartland so that they could learn, you know, at least some tips and tricks. There's a lot of agents that do a little bit here. And there. We do full on staging. So we have storage sheds full of stuff and go in and and kind of do that. So I think it just depends on the situation who's doing the actual staging, do sellers
often not have a good idea of what the prospective buyers, I might be like that the things that they have in their home, they don't know what to stage, they don't know what to highlight, they don't know what to downplay,
I think when people live in the house, especially if they've lived there for a while, they get comfortable, and they don't even notice some of the stuff that's around that. It's just where it goes to them. It's where it's always been. And so it's it's easy as for an objective eye to kind of spot things, I even talk in class about that somehow, it's a good idea to get some feedback from an independent person, if you're doing it yourself. A seller bought the house because they love certain things about it. And so I kind of directs people to figure out what those things are that they love, because that's probably what somebody else is gonna love. But a lot of times, it's a lot more scaled back, you know, when you're living there. So you've got to get out a lot of the things. The main goal is for people to be able to envision themselves living in the home. And so you have to neutralize, which is a lot different than a lot of people think it's more than just taking down your personal pictures as far as depersonalization goes. But yeah, I think sometimes an independent eye is needed or useful in determining which features to kind of distract from or draw your eye to.
So let's talk about that. You mentioned depersonalization. Is that something you recommend that if somebody has a lot of personal pictures up things like that the seller won't picture themselves in the house because they see somebody else's stuff that's very personal there.
They do. And what I see a lot is an agent, even with the photos more than necessarily not being able to picture themselves there which that can play a role. It doesn't look like somebody they'd relate to or something like that. But also you see buyers even us as agents end up looking at all the pictures and you're like, oh, do I know this person or you don't want them focusing on that kind of thing. You want them to focus on the house and buying figuring out if it's the house for them. So it's a distraction. It's a distraction. personal photos are a distraction, for sure.
Are there any other things that are very distracting that you would suggest people kind of put away or downplay, so people can not think about the cool stuff people have, or the weird stuff that people have? Probably?
Well, I didn't know that, I'd say, cooler, weird, but as far as depersonalization, two of the other big things other than, like, your photos would be neutralizing colors, not using like a gender specific color. But even when at all possible, like keeping all of like your kids stuff out of the way. I know, it seems strange, but like, there might be people that not everybody moving into the house may be thinking, Oh, I have a family or I have kids, or I'm gonna have kids, maybe they can't have kids, or maybe they've opted not to. And so you don't want those things there. Because they're gonna have a hard time picturing themselves in the house if they're surrounded by baby things or kids things. And that's just not on their radar for whatever reason, or it is on their radar, and it's a sore spot or subject. Also religious things, you know, like your crosses are definitely, you definitely want to depersonalized anything that has any religious ties, because it's very hard for somebody in one religion to picture themselves living in a home with other things around, it doesn't feel like home to them.
What are some other common staging situations? For instance, are there things that you would want to do to make a room look bigger, or maybe look as big as it actually is, because there's some arrangement or furniture or stuff that makes it sort of seem not as open of a space as it could be?
In smaller spaces? Actually, sometimes it's even more important to stage which you think, Oh, the more stuff you put in the smaller it looks. But sometimes people have a hard time envisioning how they could lay their stuff out, you know, they walk in, and it's a smaller spot. And they're like, Oh, how would we make this work? You know, where would I put a table? And how would we do this. And so if you can give them a vision, and a layout of how they can make a smaller space work, sometimes that's useful. And yeah, you don't want it ever to look too crowded or full, though. So sometimes it's a matter of taking out versus putting in furniture, so that you want to be able to freely move around everything in every room. So you should avoid putting a lot of like furniture pushed up against walls, things like that, so that you can freely move around.
So you mentioned earlier, avoiding having rooms be certain colors. To what extent do you suggest people do staging? So would you suggest that people go to the extent of painting, moving things into storage? I guess maybe it depends on how badly you want to sell your house. But when do you get to that point where you say, you know, really need to make some changes, since you're you're leaving here anyway, it's time to invest in staging this place, the way it needs to be to sell.
That's one of the things we talked about in class is weighing what's going in versus what you're going to get out. So a big part of it's a like you said, your your motivation for selling? Is time more important? Is money more important. I mean, obviously, everyone wants to sell their house fast for as much money as they can. That's human nature, really. But what's their motivation? Where do they need to be price wise, or maybe they're just over it, they don't want to mess with anything. And they're okay, taking a hit on the price. So you have to evaluate each situation separately and determine what's best for that particular seller. It's rare that painting, even if you're say, not neutralizing the walls, but you are just doing a fresh coat of paint, it just makes everything look fresher, cleaner. And typically, it sells much faster and shows much better if you have fresh paint in house. But it also depends on the price range of the House who your target market, like who's most likely to be purchasing this home based on location, price condition, there's a lot of factors. So those all have to be evaluated kind of house by house. And so I know when I'm doing the class, I tell people if I try to get feedback from who's in the class, why they're selling timeline for selling why they're in the class, so that we can focus on making a plan that makes sense for them. Because there's not really a straightforward answer to that I guess is because it really just there's so many factors that have to be considered to determine like yet where do we stop or financially what can they do or not do and just having the realization of, you know, like, if we go to list a house, a lot of times we'll look at it and say, Okay, if you do nothing to sell it as is this is kind of the timeframe you're looking at for when it would sell this is the price. If you put this much money into it and you do these things, you know, it's going to take As long as you get the work done, this is the price you would get with that stuff done. This is how much it would cost you to do those things. And ultimately, it has to make sense to the person selling the home.
One of the other things that you hear a lot is the curb appeal aspect is there an element of staging that goes on outside of the home, we talked about inside of the home a lot. And that, you know, there are things that probably need to draw people in, or maybe they would see immediately before they go inside.
Oh, sure, you definitely want to have where you see the outside of the house, cleaned up and looking presentable, you're actually required, at least in this area, the first picture that has to be on every site that goes out. So even more than the drive by I mean anymore, let's face it, most people do their shopping for homes online, before they ever even schedule an appointment to look at a house. It is required that at least us as agents, if we list the house, it is required that the first picture be the exterior front of the house. So the inside of the house can be as gorgeous as it wants to you know, but if you've got to kind of catch them with the outside, that's the first thing they're going to see whether it's online or because they drove by the house and they see the sign out front, I always focus on the front door and the porch, if somebody's going to do nothing else. But if the door is say look at kind of like it needs some fresh paint and the porch needs cleaned up. If I do nothing else on a house, I at least make sure that the front door is clean and presentable. with maybe some sort of wreath and a nice, clean, fresh doormat and a pot of flowers or something, it can be pretty simple. But that is the first thing people see. So you definitely want it to be appealing. And that's the other thing was staging, if you're not going to stay the whole house, I always focus on the front of the house and the first room or two that you walk into. Because if they walk into those, and they can see themselves living there, then a lot of times as they get further into the house, then it's easier for them to say, Oh, it's just paint, or it's just this because they've already been able to kind of picture themselves there. But if the first room they walk into as a disaster, or the outside of the house is a disaster that's kind of going to stick with them the whole time they're looking through the house.
Are there different things that people should be concerned about, depending on the season, depending on how they want the house to look or other things you need to worry about depending on the time you're selling it?
Yes, a lot of people's house look nice, say what we're coming into, you know, fall and winter. So a lot of people decorate for Christmas or the holidays. Like I said, I'd still avoid those kind of religious type holiday decor. But you know, greens and lights and things that are pretty still considered neutral even though they're festive and holiday. You know, things like that are are fine to put up and around as long as it's done tastefully. But I would I would still just avoid those very specific holiday type things. Or religious type decor.
Keep it secular?
Keep it secular? That's a good way to put it. Yeah. So yeah, I definitely am not opposed to holiday decor as a whole though I think most houses look really pretty when they've got that kind of stuff.
Are there any other staging tips are big areas that you think we haven't talked about yet.
You know, staging can be a lot more than just what you put in the house or take out of the house or what you're drawing it I too, I also give out a checklist in the class that has kind of a room by room deep cleaning slash tidy up guide of things that you want to make sure are done. Like for example, here's one example. Nobody ever wants to buy a house where the bathroom feels dirty. I mean a bathroom needs to feel sparkling clean. And so one of the tips is, you always want to put kind of fresh caulk everywhere because it's nice, it's bright, it's clean. No matter how much you clean the bathroom. If you have old dingy caulk, it's just gonna feel like a dirty bathroom to somebody that's in there looking with a you know, critical eye because somebody's looking at a home to purchase it. They're looking with a critical eye. And so if you can do some things like that, in prepping your house room by room, lighting is super, super, super important. I talked about what kind of bulbs to use. How to do the lighting before showings, that kind of thing, because lighting is huge for a house and your personal preference when you're living there may be totally different from what type of bulbs and stuff. So there's some things like that, that really don't necessarily cost a whole lot. It's more of just going through room by room and saying okay, here's a checklist of things that I need to look through. You know, what kind of bald is in what kind of condition is my cock in, or my grout and that kind of thing and it goes through room by room. And you can go through and it's a pretty extensive list. So Even if you're doing it yourself, because that's not the kind of thing that even agents that stage would really do. They might give you a list of things to do. But those are things you really are going to do yourself. Now there are occasions where we have done those for people because they're, you know, we just sold the house for somebody, they left with the pandemic to go to their condo in Colorado, and then the pandemic hit, and they called and said, We're not coming back. Can you sell our house, so we went in and did a garage sale and emptied out their house and did all of the things that we would tell somebody else to do, because they weren't coming back with the pandemic. So I'm not saying we never do those things. But they're things that typically, the seller would do themselves, or it's something they could do themselves to save money from paying somebody else to do those things. A lot of them are more of cleaning and basic house type things that aren't. I'm not telling you to go out and buy whatever. I mean, it's minor stuff.
So one final thing I want to ask, you know, you mentioned that you started out by flipping houses. Usually that's the case where people aren't living there. So it's an empty house, and they're probably different concerns versus a furnished house compared to an unfurnished house. If you have an unfurnished house, and you've already moved, everybody's moved in, you need to sell what are some of the big staging areas other than the front door that you mentioned, and making sure everything looks neat and tidy, when you come in? Do you actually move any things back in or put things in place in an unfurnished house to make it look staged a little bit?
We do if we're the listing agent, we never leave a house vacant when we list it for sale ever. It just never shows as well. And when I first got into real estate, you know you always hear oh, staging makes a difference. I personally love design. That's why that's an area that is fun to me, having a background in it to me, I can walk in and I just kind of see things a certain way. And I think, oh, let's let's do this. But when I first got into real estate, because I can walk in and I have a vision, some of the time, I didn't do that. And I'd say Oh, it's fine. We don't need to do this, and then the House wouldn't be selling. And I'd say, Okay, what what can I do to get this house sold, we need to do something, say let's, let's try getting it staged and see what happens. And I would bring stuff in and get it staged or say I'd call the seller and say let's get this front room painted. Let me at least stage this front room. And I could see the feedback difference, because every time somebody goes and shows a house, you know, I asked for feedback. What's your thoughts? What's your opinion, what's your clients thoughts and opinion. And some of these ones that weren't selling it was like some of this feedback was I don't want to say brutal, but I mean, agents are pretty blunt with other agents. That's one of the benefits of not being for sale by owner, you are never going to get honest feedback. And I'm not saying that people can't sell a house for sale by owner, by all means if they can do it, and they save the money, I don't blame them. But you will not get honest feedback, a buyer is not going to come in and look at your home and then turn around and email you or call you and say I'm not buying your house because it felt dirty or it smelled like cat pee or they just won't tell you those things. And so with the agents is the buffer agents are sometimes brutally honest. And so and their clients are honest with them. So they go through and the clients like yeah, I could I can't picture myself living there because of xy and z. So we get this feedback after every showing. And these houses that weren't selling, you know, needless to say there was feedback, sometimes things that you think, Oh, I can't necessarily change that. Sometimes it's just something about the house that you can't change, or it's the price, but it was like these houses all would have not great feedback. And then I would go in and stage them because that was kind of like one of the things that I would think, Okay, other than price, what can we do to you know, we've been doing marketing, it's not working, what can we do to get this household. And I would go in and start staging it. And it was like, instantly, the feedback, you could hold it side by side. And the feedback instantly got better when all that changed was bringing stuff in. So it got to the point that I just I don't like to leave a house vacant when I list it for sale, unless it's immaculate. And even then they still usually stage I mean, new home builders still usually do at least minor staging on a model home. In a vacant house, your eye has no choice but to go towards anything that could possibly not be ideal. And all houses have things that can't be ideal. So it's not that you're tricking somebody, nobody's going to live there in a completely vacant home. So once you buy the house, you're going to be moving furniture in and making it homey and distracting from things that maybe aren't your favorite feature. I mean, that's just what happens at the house but when you're selling it for it to sit completely vacant. The buyer is going to come in and they're going to notice all of these things. It feels kind of cold. You know, it's hard for somebody to picture house, living in a house when it just feels cold. And so even oftentimes new construction is staged, at least slightly.
Well, Adrian, thanks so much for taking some time to talk to us today and giving us a few of your insights and letting us know a bit about the importance of staging.
Thanks for having me.
Adrian Cornell is a real estate agent and she is continuing education instructor at Heartland Community College. She teaches home staging tips to get your home sold. If you're interested in other personal enrichment interviews, or interviews about art, history, health and more, subscribe to random acts of knowledge on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you found this one. Thanks for listening
