Staging is a beautiful thing...
The purpose of home staging is to maximize a seller's sales price and to shorten the time a home is on the market by creating excitement and interest in the buying audience.
Understanding the importance of home staging is essential in planning the sale of your home in the Greater Cleveland marketplace. As Owner/Broker of Brown Dog Real Estate, I am also an Accredited Staging Professional (ASP). I am acutely aware of the importance of presenting an appealing home to buyers.
While some Realtors will talk about preparing your home for sale, and may even mention the word "staging," you should always evaluate the following: 1) actual homes staged and sold, 2) a before and after portfolio, 3) market statistics for their staged homes, 4) references from home sellers, and 5) ability and resources to bring in other high-powered staging professionals, as well as competent tradespeople, to stage your home in a short amount of time with exceptional and cost-effective results.
Our goal is to educate our clients about the entire process of home staging. Because we have the most competent and cost-effective resources at our fingertips, our capabilities range from a little "sprucing up," to furnishing a vacant home, to complete renovation work. While staging is an optional service we provide, we have found it to be a critical piece in selling a home.
Home staging, oftentimes, does not cost much in terms of dollars. It is usually an investment in labor which many clients take on themselves under our guidance. If you decide you want to stage your home, we will conduct an extensive evalulation at no cost to you, and provide a FREE staging report. We will walk through your home with you, room by room, using the report, so you will know exactly what the recommendations are and how to implement them.
Every single aspect of Brown Dog Real Estate is designed to maximize your financial bottom line, not ours! And by doing so, you will gladly refer us to your family friends and colleagues. We welcome the opportunity to work with you.
We invite you to view a sample of the homes we have staged.
Twinsburg, Ohio - Fall 2007
Sold in 23 days for 98.5% of agent recommended list price while the other homes in the neighborhood were sitting on the market!
Cleveland Heights, Ohio - Spring 2007
Sold in 57 days on a major commuter road in the strongest buyer's market on record! An interior designer co-owned this home and understood the value of staging!
Westlake, Ohio - January 2007
Sold in 9 days for full price in an exceptionally strong buyer's market in January 2007 (the slowest month of the year)!
Shaker Heights, Ohio - May 2008
Extreme makeover in Shaker Heights! This stately home on one of Shaker's finest streets was on the market previously for six months with another top Realtor afiliated with a large real estate brokerage. The owner approached us and asked for a second opinion on why this home hadn't sold, nor had any offers in the previous six months. After touring the home, it quickly became apparent that there were many issues to address, typical issues such as outdated carpeting over hardwood floors, dated paint and wallpaper, and unappealing decor, all of which were easily changed. The main problem was an inherently bad kitchen design that suffered from a huge kitchen peninsula that impeded flow, and an extreme lack of natural light that made the kitchen seem dark and claustrophobic. We removed the peninsula, created a pass-through to the breakfast room which allowed for lots of light, and repainted the pumpkin-colored walls a light color to open up the room. In addition, the master bedroom had a shared entrance with another bedroom that was very awkward, and did not allow for a true master bath, which is expected in a home of this price range. We removed the second entrance to this bath and removed two closets which adjoined the two bedrooms, the second of which was too small to be a true bedroom. This created both a true master bath AND a guest-suite with it's own private bath. Many other updates made this home a showpiece, and, in addition to competitively pricing it in a very strong buyer's market, resulted in a sale in no time. Access to quality and extremely cost-efficient contractors made this project doable. This cost would easily have been doubled had a retail consumer attempted this scope of work, let alone take this project from the first meeting the the seller to project completion, on-time, on-budget in 9 weeks.
Richmond Heights, Ohio - April 2008
This home sold in 16 days for 98% of list price when only 11% of the competing homes were under contract! This was accomplished by thorough and creative home staging, competitive pricing and innovative Internet marketing! This home was in great shape to start with, and was 98% of the way there before we even walked through the door. This home was already decluttered and clean as a whistle. This home simply needed some minor rearranging of furniture and accessories, removal of some furniture to allow better flow, removal of some accessories, the addition of sheers in one room and a few maintenance suggestions and this home outshined it's competition!
University Heights - September 2006
This home was vacant, the owners had already moved. The outside was well-maintained, but on the inside, the hardwood floors were well worn, the paint was dated and tired, and some fixtures needed replacing. Vacant houses are cold and uninviting and don't allow most buyers to emotionally connect with them. I partnered with a staging professional who owns an inventory of furniture. She came in and furnished the home to add visual interest, create warmth, and allow a buyer to envision how the home could look. I also brought in the most cost-effective painter and hardwood floor refinisher. The owners had to borrow the staging/renovation money in order to make the changes, which added to the stress of already having double payments. Moreover, this home was competing with 78 other homes in a narrow 20K price band and only 3 were under contract; one of the three was a foreclosure. We were also up against the Fall season, which is a slower time of the year, in a very, very strong buyer's market. However, it sold for 97% of list price in 101 days. Without renovations, staging and competitive pricing from Day 1, this home would have sold for at least three times less than the investment in preparing it for sale, plus it would have been on the market for an indeterminate amount of time, and the owners would have continued with double payments.