Staging for the sale is key in a slow housing market

Your house might be the cutest on the block, with all your friends saying the living room is to die for. But if you want to sell it in this real estate climate, you need the practiced eye of a good stager, says Lynne Fusco, Prudential Elite Realtors in Naperville.

Fusco brings in Jennifer Olah, also of Naperville, for a consultation on every listing.

“Even this house, (which) I just listed, is adorable,” Fusco said. “When you walk in, it doesn’t feel quite right. (Olah) will move furniture around and maybe bring in additional props, pictures, towels.”

Maybe the pictures over the fireplace are too small or maybe they are family photos, which is a no-no.

Olah will replace those pictures that don’t work with a landscape of the right proportions, said Fusco.

Let’s face it, when a home’s for sale in the suburbs, it has to be “Pottery Barned.”

And yes, that still means neutral colors and as up to date as possible.

Claudia Starck of Baird & Warner’s Northwest Suburban office in Arlington Heights agrees.

“Today’s buyers want homes that have very little work to be done. Even though the market affords them a much larger home than it did years ago, they still choose condition over size.”

Your Victorian furniture might be lovely, or your country look very expensive, but that’s not the look young buyers prefer.

You don’t want them saying, “This reminds me of my Grandma’s house,” Fusco warns.

While it is important that people like the house when they walk in and can imagine themselves living there, another thing to consider is how well the rooms photograph because 85 percent of buyers start their search on the Internet, the Naperville Realtor said.

When you hear what Olah has to say, you will understand why Fusco prefers her clients hear the verdict from a stager.

“The most important thing is cleanliness. Clean sells,” says the stager.

And her next bit of advice is declutter.

“We all collect a lot more living in a home,” said Olah. “You need to turn it into a product and not a home. Declutter and depersonalize. Personal photos need to come down.”

And you might need to change the colors, too. Even though you love blue, most of the house should be more neutral.

In a child’s bedroom, Olah added a striped bedspread to tone down a dinosaur mural she considered “cool but taste specific.”

Olah might recommend you rent furniture or buy slipcovers and learn how to make sure they stay neat looking. And of course, she has a stock of accessories.

Olah’s consultation, which consists of a walk through and a report, costs about $100. Then other charges depend on what work gets done or what is rented.

“A few hundred to a few thousand dollars can change how quickly the home sells and how much it sells for,” says Olah, whose company is Home Enhancements. She can be reached at jbolah@yahoo.com.

“Good listings are selling,” said Fusco. “And staging is a critical piece.”

And the seller who does not want to go to the effort and expense to update a home will notice it in the price and time on the market, warns Starck.