Michael Friedes' articles on Staging regularly appear in four East Bay newspapers published by the Hills Newspaper Group. Look for them in the following newspapers:

The Berkeley Voice
The Journal
The Montclarion
The Piedmonter
Article as seen in The Hills Newspapers on 9/19/03
By Michael Friedes/Nest Home Design
Why Home Staging Works
Would you ever consider going to a big important event, perhaps even your own wedding not looking your absolute best? Definitely not. Well, shouldn’t the same be said about your house when it is on the market for sale? After all, that is the time for your house to shine for all to see. The better it looks, the quicker it will sell and for more money. This is what makes home staging so successful.

When a seller stages his house for sale, he is giving potential buyers the absolute best “first impression” they can have of his house. Staging offers a way to present a house so that all of the positive attributes of the house are shown, while any of the negative ones are camaflouged. However, this is not the only reason to stage a house. Just as important is the simple fact that savvy buyers are now expecting to see houses that they tour to look perfect. When a potential buyer sees a house that has not been staged, he generally does not react nearly as well to one that has been staged well. Sometimes this can be a subconscious reaction, while other times it can be a very conscious one.

An experienced stager looks at your house in a different way than the homeowner or realtor does. The stager looks at the house and analyzes what needs to be done to each room to present the entire house in its most positive way. I often tell the homeowners that staging is a suspension of realty. We all know that we live with television sets, clock radios, coffee makers and the kid’s toys stashed in every corner. However, when a buyer walks into a house for sale, he does not need or want to see these things. If a potential buyer is too busy noticing the old photograph of Aunt Bertha at the beach, instead of how big and light the Living Room, visual obstacles and distractions have been created.

Instead a stager with the appropriate design background can offer the homeowners design services specifically geared towards staging their house. If a potential buyer can walk into a house and not see all of the clutter of day-to-day life, but instead see something that looks like the pages out of home magazine, the seller will get a much more positive reaction from that buyer. This could mean the right-scaled furniture, placed in the appropriate arrangement to allow the room to look its best. It is also a well-known fact that contrary to logic, empty rooms simply do not look as large as furnished ones. Successful staging is creating an environment that the buyer responds to emotionally. It is aspirational living. What this means for the seller is that staged houses typically sell quicker than ones that have not been staged. Maybe even more important than this is that they almost certainly sell for more money then if the house had not staged a house at all.

The fee for staging a house varies depending on the size of the house, how many rooms, the size and condition of the rooms and if the house is vacant or occupied. One can expect a minimum fee of $2,000 that can easily go upwards of $10,000. Often, you will see the money back three to four times the amount of the fee. How often can you say that about other investments in such a short amount of time? When all is said and done, invariably what I hear the most from the homeowner is, “My house has never looked this good! I don’t think I want to move now”.