staging your home in Overland Park Archives - Overland Park Home Staging

Best Red Carpet Look for Your Home

Whether you realize it or not, there is the best red carpet look for your home. After all, the whole purpose of home staging is for your home to stand out from your competition.

Just like the stars walking the red carpet at the Grammys, it’s a process for the stars to look that way. From choosing the right gown and accessories, to their hair, make-up, and nails, they will tell you it takes a village to create their red carpet look.

First of all, the stars know they will be judged and the consensus will either be good, outstanding, or bad. It’s the same when selling your home. You, too, have one chance to make a first impression. If you knock it out of the park, you may sell your home for more money than you imagined. And if you don’t?

The best red carpet look for your home

The best red carpet look for your home comes from using a professional home staging stylist. It only makes sense when your home’s reputation is on the line. A star wouldn’t walk the red carpet without her team behind her. When selling your home, your money is on the line. The faster your house sells, the more money you will make. Your professional home stager or stylist will be responsible to create the best red carpet look for your home. And when the buyers fall in love, it’s money in the bank from there!

What’s the alternative? Sell your house as it is and see what that gets you. I call that selling by default…you get what you get. Your money comes down to the Realtor you hire. They might sell a lot of houses but at what price? And how fast does it happen?

There are a lot of skills necessary to sell houses for top dollar. Likewise, the number one skill agents don’t have is home staging. And yet many agents will attempt to stage your home themselves. Why? All the extras in real estate cost money. Many agents don’t want to spend money to make money. They probably had a bad experience of spending their own money on a home they didn’t get sold.

On the other hand, some agents will bring their home stager in for an hour-long home staging consultation. That is not home staging. That’s advising you on what to do. That’s like a hair stylist telling you what style will look good on you versus doing it. And have you ever had a bad hairstylist? Case closed.

The art of home staging

Perhaps unknown to the average Realtor, above all else, there is an art to home staging. After all, there’s a whole giant industry based around it. It’s so much more than clearing the countertops. It’s creating your best first impression look, so buyers are drawn into your home, sweeping them off their feet, causing them to fall in love with it, to the point they have to have it, and will gladly pay you extra money to get it.

That’s what I do as your home stylist. You can declutter and put your family photos away but you need a professional stylist to create the best red carpet look for your home that will sweep your buyers off their feet. Your job is to find that person with the right broom.

Remember, the way you live in your home and the way you sell your house are two different ways. Consequently, selling your home is a beauty pageant and a competition. You need to be ready. There will always be another house that looks better than yours if you don’t create your best red carpet look for your home. I’ve seen your competition and I’m in it to win it. Game on!

Want to know your home’s current, local value, not some computer-generated Zestimate? Click here!

If you’re thinking of selling your home, allow me to create your best red carpet look. Call me at (913) 515-3250 or contact me here to schedule your FREE home selling consultation and let’s see if what I do will work for you!

Home Staging for Occupied Homes

Home staging for occupied homes is a concept that was created in 1973 by a woman named Barb Schwarz. The whole idea behind the concept was it was designed for homes that people lived in that didn’t show well. After all, what home shows well as it is? Every home needs a little extra something to help bring out its best.

My mantra has always been…

“The way you live in your home is your business but the way you sell your house is my business”
Melinda Bartling

Home staging and the Red Carpet look

Just like celebrities on the Red Carpet who spend hours and sometimes days or months preparing for an event, your home should go through the same detailing process. After all, people always detail their cars before selling them. Don’t you think your home deserves a little sprucing up?

Home buying is not only very personal, it’s extremely emotional. It’s a known fact that home buyers will make a decision about your home within 10 seconds of opening your front door. They either “feel” your house or they don’t. If your house doesn’t speak to them and if they don’t feel themselves living there, they will move on.

Well-prepared and well-staged homes not only show better they sell for more money! You do want more money, don’t you? So, get busy and create your best Red Carpet look for your home.

Home Staging for occupied homes versus vacant homes

The whole concept of home staging in 1973 was never created for vacant homes. The main idea was to make a lived-in home stand out from the other houses on the market through the art of home staging. I learned the concept in 2006 and actually staged homes in Chicago with the creator herself. I was fortunate to learn not only her home staging techniques but I was able to get inside her head to better understand her thoughts about the process.

Staging for vacant homes became more prevalent with HGTV where the stagers would bring in a truck full of new furniture and accessories and furnish an empty house in order to flip a house for sale.

That’s a very different process than working with what a typical seller already has in their house. I’ll be honest, not every seller has great furniture and accessories like what you see when you furnish a vacant home. That’s what makes staging occupied homes very challenging – but so much fun!

Overland Park Home Staging

After working in Chicago and learning home staging with Barb, I returned to Kansas City and started my own home staging business. I had been in real estate for 19 years. It was 2006 and home staging had not yet caught on at that time. But as a Realtor, I knew houses were not selling and competition was fierce. Interest rates were over 6% and we were headed towards a real estate bubble. So, if you were selling your home, you needed to look better than any other home on the market because buyers were few. I knew home staging was about to blow up big time!

Getting the idea of home staging across to Realtors was challenging and home sellers just thought it was silly. Those were the days of sellers saying, “they can take the house the way it is or not buy it. I’m not changing anything.” With that attitude, no wonder houses weren’t selling. I remember telling some sellers they needed to repaint their sponge-painted kitchen cabinets. Needless to say, that didn’t go over well.

After getting fired from that listing, I spent the next couple of years promoting the concept of home staging to my fellow Realtors and learning how to sell the idea. At one point, we were the busiest home staging company in Overland Park. Then once home staging became a “thing,” everyone started doing it – and not always well, as you can imagine. New stagers would offer next to nothing prices to Realtors to get their foot in the door with a busy agent and there the industry went.

To this day, I follow Barb’s techniques that I learned from her, and more than that, I have never divulged her best-kept little secrets that she shared with me. She took me under her wing and saw that I had a natural talent and a great sense of style.

The average home stager

Even though everybody thinks they can stage a home, we all know that’s just not right. Realtors are not home stagers. Just because you have a real estate license or take a home staging course, that doesn’t give you a sense of style that makes you a great home stager. The number one thing a home stager must have is knowing whether or not the end result looks good. If you can’t make a decision or have to ask someone else’s opinion, you probably don’t have confidence in your style.

There are lots of home stagers that don’t have the eye that it takes to be a great home stager. You’ve got to take what you have to the next level when you’re selling and give it that model home look.

What you need to know before staging your home

If you are selling your house and your Realtor says they will bring their stager in, which usually means a home stager will stop by, consult with you and provide you with some tips for selling. That’s probably better than doing nothing but they also won’t come back and rearrange your furniture or accessories. A true home staging is about decluttering and depersonalizing your home. Once that’s completed, the final step is the rearrangement of your furniture and accessories that welcomes buyers into your home. You always want to create the model home look as much as possible if you want top dollar when selling. The right home staging will always make you more money than not.

I would suggest you hire your own home stager so you have control over the process. My home staging is always a two-step process. I will come out and provide you with a list of things to do and when you’re done, I come back and tweak things. Simple! There is a fee but if you list your home with me, I stage your home for FREE! Either way, I AM A HOME STAGER! And since 2016, I’ve been doing home staging for occupied homes!

How to get started with your home staging

Please call or text (913) 515-3250 or contact me here to talk about staging and selling your home and making lots of money doing it.

5 Ways to Create Spring Curb Appeal

From recent freezing temperatures, warmer weather is just around the corner, and here are my best tips to create spring curb appeal if you are selling your home in Overland Park.

While shopping over the weekend for fresh, new spring curb appeal accessories for my new listings, I went into Home Goods to see what they were featuring this spring.

First of all, I love the feeling I get when I walk into Home Goods. They know how to get you in the mood to shop. It’s the same trick I use for all of my new listings. Home Goods and I both know we’ve got a short time to grab the buyer while they are present and either they’ll buy or they’ll move on. I call it the 10 second rule. It’s based on grabbing the buyer within 10 seconds of entering a house.

Home Goods is bright, full of happy music, and the colors throughout the store are outstanding. Furthermore, it’s such a pick-me-up and an incredible feeling. I love their bright cheery dishes, pillows, springtime furniture and outdoor cushions. It makes me want to buy everything in the store and give my own home a spring makeover.

I also love Home Goods for doormats and front door wreaths. They are bright, colorful, and full of life. The spring season is the best time for a change. It’s like starting over new again. In addition, you get a new lease on life and your home deserves this as much as anything. For that very reason, you will reap the benefits from your spring curb appeal makeover.

How to Stand Out

This week while working on a couple of houses, I thought about what would make us stand out from our competition. Both houses had substantial front porches so I decided with the new season and the energy in the air, I wanted to focus on the porch and really hone in on the spring curb appeal to draw people inside.

As a result, at one of the houses, I added a new spring doormat, a fresh wreath and added new outdoor pillows to the homeowner’s glider. Adding large, colorful planters to each side of the front door was a plus.

Here are My 5 Best Ways to Create Your Spring Curb Appeal

Paint your front door
Add an expensive pot or planters filled with colorful flowers next to the front door
Find a pretty new wreath and hang it on the door
Get some new, large house numbers
Change out your mailbox (if it’s on the house) or paint it to match the color of your door

Do these 5 things to create your spring curb appeal and while the buyer’s agent is busy getting the key out of the lockbox, the buyers are quickly falling in love with your house.

We had a cold winter in Kansas City. The spring real estate market is here and creating the model home look starts with your curb appeal. Zing your home into the spring market by calling or texting me at (913) 515-3250 or get started here.