Helping sellers detach from their homes

The last time Nancy Bell had put her house on the market, it had attracted some serious attention but not exactly the type she was looking for.

Each of the four offers on the six-bedroom house in Tewksbury, Mass., last summer came with contingencies that the buyers had to first sell their own house. In a sagging housing market, none of them did, and the offers evaporated.

“This time, we wanted to make sure we did everything we could to make sure the house sells,” said Bell, who owns the Colonial-style home with her daughter and son-in-law. “We wanted to take every opportunity to make the house as appealing to the greatest number of people.”

So she has decided to give home staging a try.

Looking for any advantage in this down-in-the-dumps housing market, a growing number of home sellers or their real estate agents are hiring people with the expertise to make a home look bigger, brighter, cleaner and warmer – usually by rearranging things already in the house.

Bell had cleaned out a lot of the clutter before the first attempt at selling her house, but she learned that she didn’t go far enough when she hired Mary Harrington, a South Kingstown-based home stager and redesigner.

“Mary came through, and she took out a whole lot more stuff,” Bell said.

Harrington also assembled a detailed report of simple, inexpensive tweaks to make the house more attractive to potential buyers: Put a shorter lamp on the bedroom dresser, for example, or place lemons in a bowl on the kitchen counter. There were recommendations on changing wall colors and on how to arrange furniture.

Bell is still a month away from listing the house again (asking price: $599,000), but she likes what she sees so far. “It’s really been opened up,” Bell said.

The concept of staging a home for sale has been around for decades, particularly on the West Coast. But the trend is picking up in the East, and the number of people offering the service is growing, too.

Although she’s been doing this work informally for friends and relatives for years, Harrington said she launched At Home Redesigns in earnest late last year.

Diane Bretanha, owner of Home Appeal in Glocester, was one of the first locally to open a business exclusively for staging and redesign two years ago. Now she figures there are about a dozen such businesses locally.

“It was slow when I first started but, in the last several months especially, there’s been a big swing in business,” Bretanha said.

It’s no wonder, after hearing the statistics quoted by Bretanha and Harrington: They claim studies show houses that are staged sell up to two times faster than a comparable staged or vacant home, and can sell for a price as much as 10 to 15 percent higher.

Harrington staged her sister-in-law’s home recently. It sold in a day.

Still, Bretanha said she finds a hesitance among some homeowners. “They’ll cut $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 off the price before hiring a stager who costs less than $1,000,” she said. “Because it’s on paper, they don’t feel the pain.”

In many ways, the industry is still young: There are no industry standards, no accrediting or licenses required.

Home stagers generally look to remove excesses – too much furniture, too much clutter – then they rearrange what’s left to make a home look its best to the masses. Paint or wallpaper changes might be recommended, or maybe items will be changed to divert attention from unattractive features.

“It’s not necessarily how you would live, but it’s not about living in the house, it’s about selling the house,” said Harrington, who was certified by the School of Interior Redesign in Milford, Conn., after a week of courses.

Collections should be packed away, as should family photos and religious items. “Depersonalize,” said Bretanha, a former real estate agent who is certified through Home Staging Resource, a Vista, Calif., organization. “Make it into a model home with neutral space.”

Harrington had one client who collected vintage beer signs and steins. It had to be put in storage while the home was for sale. “You want to take away as much of that as possible so people don’t have anything to react to,” Harrington said.

And a home stager doesn’t deal with just the interiors. Is the front door painted? Does the door bell work? Has the porch been washed lately? Is there a clean welcome mat? Are there flowers outside?

“People make judgments on a house within seconds,” Harrington said. “It’s really important that the outside, the porch, the entry way and the first rooms are attractive, clean and make me want to see more.”

Harrington offers inspections of homes – everything from the yard to the attic and basement — that typically last an hour and a half and are followed up with a report of recommendations and suggestions for staging, minor repairs and other changes. The charge: $150.

She charges $75 an hour if a client wants her to perform additional work rearranging furniture and items. She doesn’t paint or pack away stuff.

Bretanha offers a similar report for $200. Then she charges clients $35 an hour for additional work, such as helping to clean and declutter, wallpaper removal and painting.

She finds that clients will do most of the things she suggests because she’s diplomatic about it. She’s frequently called in by real estate agents who are having difficultly convincing a homeowner to make changes.

“They turn to me to give [the homeowner] the bad news, which is fine,” Bretanha said. •