I spent some time yesterday afternoon browsing some open houses just for kicks—a first for me. While some of the homes I looked at were set up quite nicely (this one in particular—sweet retro styling), others left me wondering: What were they thinking?
By “they” I mean both the home seller and the seller’s agent, whose alleged job is to advise the seller on how best to sell their house. You would think that in today’s market, with inventory near peak levels and buyers already in winter hibernation, making your home look the best it can would be a no-brainer, especially if you’re going to put on an open house.
Unfortunately, as you can see below, apparently not all sellers see things that way.
Agent: “Buyers like to see nice kitchen upgrades, like granite countertops.”
Seller: “Granite countertops? No problem!”
Agent: “A fresh coat of paint can go a long way toward making your home shine for buyers.”
Seller: “Paint over everything. Got it.”
Agent: “Buyer’s want to be able to imagine themselves living in the home.”
Seller: “Good, because they’re going to have to use their imaginations if they want to know what the bedroom hiding under all this crap actually looks like.”
Agent: “The unfinished basement is a little dark and uninviting, see what you can do about that before we list.”
Seller: “Lamp: check. Chair: check. That was easy!”
All of the photos in the “Real Actual Home Staging” series were shot by The Tim at real actual open houses around Seattle.
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The last picture of the chair and the table with the light looks like it should be the room in a horror flick or maybe a scene from No Country for Old Men or ScarFace before the bullets begin to fly.
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What? No bathroom pics?
Whoooooh left the seat up? (who . . . who-who-whooh)
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What about fresh cookies and the requisite sandlewood candle?
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Tim, your ability to digitally capture the essence of the scene is quite good. in particular, the switch panel, and the table and lamp. All joking aside, it is apparent you have a flair for photography.
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It would be awesome if they had left a copy of “Make Money in Real Estate” or “It’s a Great Time to Buy!” on the granite countertop.
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It Reminded Me of Universal Studios Stages
They look OK and almost real up close, until you get the background focused in too, then realize it’s all Hollywood fake.
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I just staged my former Maryland home for sale and had an open house yesterday. See
http://www.redfin.com/MD/Silver-Spring/1712-Nordic-Hill-Cir-20906/home/11128908. It was a lot of work. I had to fix every thing, clean it like it hadn’t been cleaned in 23 years, move furniture in to stage it, pay for professional Mouse on House photopgrapy, and, yes, bake cookies on the open house day. Most people selling have either moved away, or are in place with all their junk, or are just too lazy or incapable of doing it right. And the agents–don’t get me going about them…. Many of the homes for sale in my zip code either look like the TV show hoarders or are empty and neglected (gardens with 6 foot tall weeds, foyers filled with bugs, and foreclosures with god knows what on the carpets). The good stuff sells if priced right and the bad stuff stays in the damaged goods/remainder bin unsold. The simple fact is that there really aren’t that many clean and attractively maintained homes for sale.
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Love the “interrogation room” tag.
My wife and I were looking for open houses the other day and I told her I don’t know what’s worse:
– An agent who takes a half ass photo of an unkempt room with a cell phone and doesn’t even move the trash can out of frame.
or
- An agent who uses professional grade lighting, a Canon D5 with a fish eye lens, and still edits it in photoshop.
At least one is trying.
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Then there’s the professionally staged homes where they don’t stage everything and leave certain rooms out of the photos.
I showed a house in West Seattle that had meat hooks hanging from the basement ceiling. That room didn’t make it into the listing photos. But what could they have said?
” Looking for a place to hang your steer?” or ” Jeffrey Dahmer lived here.”?
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When paint over everything don’t forget, it’s VERY important to paint over hinges.
:( :( :(
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Hopefully when painting they at least painted over the electrical outlets to help “babyproof” the room for expecting parents.
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So, The Tim is actively browsing for open houses. I guess the big moment is coming sometime soon when Tim will be living in a house? ;)
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I know staging is generally important, but honestly I don’t really care. I find it pretty easy to see through the clutter, ugly furniture, dirty dishes, meat hooks, and interrogation stations. I guess you could say I prefer it when a home is poorly staged because it keeps the emotional buyers away – the exact type who end up offering too much for a place and ruining a perfectly good low-ball offer.
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Thanks for the information shared on this site. I’ve been following the site even before relocating to the area. My company provided me a good relocation program, which included assistance to find a house by a great agent. I preferred to select houses from Redfin or Zillow, and would provide the MLS numbers to him. He would take me to the houses and point out any issues he could see as a problem, which at times I couldn’t perceive myself. Nevertheless, I found it was interesting to see some open houses, and had a similar experience to that reported by Tim.
For some of the open houses, I could only imagine that the owner just wanted to “test the market” instead of really selling the house. There wasn’t any effort on presentation. The house I’m currently in the process of buying was an order of magnitude better staged than most others, and it has a family living on it, proving it shouldn’t be that impossible to prepare a house (it didn’t even have an open house, and was under offer in little more than a week). After making a list of about 40 houses, and sorting by my personal criteria, I can report that all the top 10 in my list are already with sales pending, which proves that other buyers probably also saw things in the same way I did. I can only imagine that some real estate agents really have no clue about their profession.
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RE: David McManus @ 5 – OMG, you have a wicked sense of humor…I am still laughing!
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We worked with a stager for a couple of years. It’s kind of a drain on resources, but effective for some homes.
The conclusion that I came to was that for the kind of money you spend on a stager you can fix a lot of stuff, well, in a home to make it more livable.
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By HappyRenter @ 12:
OMG! I had no idea Tim was homeless. Good thing he got that job at Redfin! The KW Cares funds are running pretty low, and probably couldn’t offer much help.
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RE: wreckingbull @ 13 – I view staging as being sort of like sheet rock. Some people can walk through a house under construction and envision to rooms. Some can’t until the sheet rock goes up. So staging helps some, does nothing for others.
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What?! No one noticed the disgustingly dirty light switch?! Or am I just a germaphobe?
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RE: ray pepper @ 1 –
…or the scene in Goodfellas, when Joe Pesci is being ‘made’.
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Very much agree with Ray, the basement pic is very unsettling. You can almost hear in the background.. “It rubs the lotion on its skin…..”…. :-)
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By Leigh @ 19:
Some kinds of dirt bleed right through paint, especially cheap paint used to fix up a dump before it goes on the market. I’ve been looking at houses for 4 years now, and it’s especially disgusting to walk through a house where all the walls/doors/etc. have obviously been cheaply painted to hide the dirt (unsuccessfully), instead of at least being cleaned first.
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