Put me in, Coach.

Now that the Christmas holiday season is over, I know that for many people the focus turns to football.  The Super Bowl is quickly approaching and I just heard my husband say that every team is playing today, New Years Day. 

Realtors and Real Estate Agents, are you the "everything" to your listing clients?  Do you hike the ball, defend the line, throw the ball, carry or run with the ball, block the opponents and make the touchdowns? 

Have you considered sharing the load and becoming more of a team?  Team sports coaches know that the teams do their best work, when they work as a TEAM.   

My guess is that you already have a solid team behind you....right?  Your team consists of assistants or colleagues in your office, mortgage lenders, contractors, inspectors, a great title/escrow company and many more to help you "make the sale" or the touchdown. 

Do you have a professional stager on your team? 

A professional stager can help you with blocking issues with your listing clients.  Most people don't take too kindly to being told what needs to be done to their home to make it a house for sale.  Turning what is possibly their most valuable asset into a valued product can be difficult.  Gently letting YOUR clients know what is needed to maximize their selling power can be a touchy subject for agents to take on and can jeopardize a relationship with the sellers.  Why do that? 

As a professional stager I do not sell real estate....I do not carry the ball.  I am a team player and I would like your help with my work.  I need your help establish who the target buyers are for any particular house.  I need your expertise to help me stage it appropriately for that target buyer and I need your insight into handling the personalities in the house.  Just like real estate agents, professional stagers must wear the hat of a psychologist to help transition sellers into making changes to make the sale. 

Professional stagers can block (objections), defend (their work), and their offense is to make the house more appealing to potential buyers. 

Take advantage of our skills.  We will make you (the RE agent) look better and most importantly help SELL THAT HOUSE! 

Here's to a great 2012, great team work AND more touchdowns !!

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 Visit our website at http://www.dreamredesigns.com for more information or call 559-877-2442Dream Interior Redesign and Staging by Ginger Foust is a full service, licensed and insured CSP ® Professional Home Stager, Interior ReDesign/Decorating Specialist, consulting and training company. 

Locally serving the California foothill and mountain communities of: Oakhurst, North Fork, BassLake, Coarsegold, Ahwahnee, Wawona and Mariposa.  Also serving areas of: Fresno, Clovis and Madera, California and Kailua-Kona, Hawaii.

• Professional staging of vacant and occupied properties
• Paint Color and Design Consultations
• Interior Decorating

Click here to see short slideshows with examples of our work. When the first show is over, click on OTHER SHOWS to see more.

When sellers contact our Fresno area home staging company for a home staging consultation, we tell them that they need to: 

MAKE YOUR HOUSE A SHINING STAR

Our staging consultations honestly and gently let sellers know that a house FOR SALE should NOT include any of the following:

Family Photos:

Collections: 

Antique furnishings:

Crystal chandeliers:

Custom made window coverings:

Brass fixtures:

We provide a list of recommended updates and improvements for every consultation and that list is not limited to the categories shown above.

Each of the above photos is from homes that our company was called upon for a consultation.  Those sellers that followed our recommendations SOLD quickly.  Those that did not lingered on the market for long periods of time and some are still on the market today after thousands of dollars in price reductions. 

If you're confused about what should stay and what should go, before you list your property, call a real estate staging professional today to get the answers to get your house SOLD. 

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 Visit our website at http://www.dreamredesigns.com for more information or call 559-877-2442.  Dream Interior Redesign and Staging by Ginger Foust is a full service, licensed and insured CSP ® Professional Home Stager, Interior ReDesign/Decorating Specialist, consulting & training company. 

Locally serving the California foothill and mountain communities of: Oakhurst, North Fork, BassLake, Coarsegold, Ahwahnee, Wawona and Mariposa.  Also serving areas of: Fresno, Clovis and Madera, California and Kailua-Kona, Hawaii.

• Professional staging of vacant and occupied properties
• Color and Design Consultations
• Interior Decorating

Click here to see short slideshows with examples of our work. When the first show is over, click on OTHER SHOWS to see more.

75%- 90% of buyers cannot visualize what a house could be.  Do you believe that?

I'm sure that you've heard it said and seen it written over and over again and I bet that you question those statistics.  Questioning statistics is good, so I thought that I'd share what I have learning about learning styles in my previous 30 year career as an educator. All that I studied and practiced supports that the majority of people (young and old) are visual learners. 

There are basically three styles of learning:

     1)  VISUAL

2)AUDITORY (Hearing)

       3)KINESTHETIC (Tactile or Touch)

MANY, many years of educational research has proven that the majority of learners are visual learners.  Good instruction is a combination of all 3 learning styles that touch every student in their classroom, with an emphasis on the visual.  This is also supported by the "show it, don't tell it" philosophy. 

Think about it.  If you're at a large meeting, do you learn the information better by lecture style (auditory only) or lecture plus slideshow? 

So, what does this have to do with those statistics and how your prepare and show (stage) your home for sale?  Those visual learners as children are still visual learning adults and unless you SHOW THEM what your house can be, they will likely move on to the next listing that does.  This means that a vacant house gives them very little for their brains to capture and a house jam-packed with a seller's personal items won't either. Most buyers can picture or imagine what isn't right there in front of them and asking them to do that is often futile. 

Visual examples:

First, an occupied listing     

Next, a vacant listing

 If you would like to see more before and after photos of what professional home staging, visit this group: http://activerain.com/groups/beforeandafterpics

Knowing your personal learning style can help you understand yourself.  Although this is a very cursory test and you might questions your results, you can go here and get a glimpse of your learning style:   Learning styles test.  Share with us what the test revealed about you. 

If you want to know more, here's a link to more information: Learning styles information.

Professional real estate home stagers in the surrounding areas of Fresno, Clovis, Oakhurst and everywhere, know how to add just the right amount of visual appeal to help sell that house.  Contact one in your area today and have a chat about their services. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 Dream Interior Redesign and Staging by Ginger Foust is a full service, licensed and insured CSP ® Professional Home Stager, Interior ReDesign/Decorating Specialist, consulting and training company. 

Locally serving the California foothill and mountain communities of: Oakhurst, North Fork, BassLake, Coarsegold, Ahwahnee, Wawona and Mariposa.  Also serving areas of: Fresno, Clovis and Madera, California and Kailua-Kona, Hawaii.

• Professional staging of vacant and occupied properties
• Color and Design Consultations
• Interior Decorating

Click here to see short slideshows with examples of our work. When the first show is over, click on OTHER SHOWS to see more.

 Visit our website at http://www.dreamredesigns.com for more information or call 559-877-2442

Janice makes some great points in this blog post about the difficulty that sellers have leaving their homes and what to do to overcome the issues.  If you would like to comment, please do that on her original post. 

Selling a House with Children...a staged house. 

As professional stagers we frequently have sellers tell us that their family cannot live in a staged home.  Part of the reason that they object is that they cannot imagine convincing their children that "staging" their bedroom is a good idea or that once staged, they will stay that way. 

As a retired classroom teacher I have had many classes and experiences with child psychology and I employ that knowledge with staging.  I know that children, of all ages, will listen more to an outsider (that they trust) than they will their parents.  So, I proceed with caution and enthusiastic anticipation.  Unlike most staging jobs, where we ask the sellers to be absent while we work, I don't do that with children (to include teens). 

First, I get to know the kids and get their feelings about the impending move.  We sit in their rooms and have some heart to heart time without their parents listening in.  With younger children, I first get their permission to touch their stuff and we start the staging process together.  With older children (pre-teen +) I outline what should be done, show them some photos and let them get to work while I'm elsewhere in the house.  I always get them involved in the decisions to move furniture and hide-away the clutter (their valuable stuff).  Buy-in is crucial. 

Here is an example: 

Let's call the owner of this room Darren.  Darren was very OCD about his stuff.  I could not touch his toys but with time he was fine with moving things more out of sight....but ONLY he could do it.  Together we moved furniture and I helped direct where his valuables would work best...always asking first..."do you think that will work?" or "what if we moved this here?"  I don't work fast or push, I prompt and compliment with each move forward. 

Darren's room started out looking like this:

He had always been very concerned about keeping his room neat and organized. 

Here is what we accomplished together, plus his mom decided to buy him new bedding since he was being so cooperative. 

The toys, the shelves and the hamper remain in the room but tucked away, out of immediate view for potential buyers and for the camera. 

With Darren's sister, we'll call her Samantha (age 15), we followed the same process.  Here is her bedroom before:

I played the "more sophisticated and grown up" card with Samantha.  What teen girl doesn't want to be grown-up and impress her friends with her level of sophistication?  She agreed that the purple walls were now too juvenile for her, thus dad could paint them.  Again, mom set up a contract and since Samantha did keep her room tidy, she purchased new bedding that she could use now. 

Here are the results for Sam's room:

Where did all of her personal items go?  Honestly, I do not know.  I showed her photos of nicely staged bedrooms and I asked her to find places for her things.  I know that she purged and donated many items.  You can still see her hamper but at least it's tucked behind the bookshelf and not in plain sight. 

Next came the Jack and Jill bathroom that Samantha and Darren shared.  Their mom just couldn't imagine how this room could stay neat and tidy. 

Well, we dug up some baskets and tubs.  We purged the excess of product in the cupboards and tucked away the items that they used daily.  They did the work together and the psychology here was to make their bathroom look better than their parents bathroom. 

Here is what they accomplished with just a bit of help. 

Did this bathroom and their bedrooms stay this way...you bet they did.  Each week I called the house and I checked-in with the kids.  We kept the competitive spirit going and I kept promoting the "self-pride", especially with Samantha. (By the way I did get Darren's permission to put floral items in his bathroom.)

Mom and Dad were thrilled at what we were able to accomplish together, as a team, to get their house SOLD. 

Besides getting the house SOLD, our Fresno area staging and interior decorating company is now helping this family transition into their new home.   

Children can help sell a house, it just takes some thought and persuasion skills to make it happen and perhaps a professional stager, outsider, to get the ball rolling. 

Call a professional stager, in your area to see how they can help.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Dream Interior Redesign and Staging by Ginger Foust is a full service, licensed and insured CSP ® Professional Home Stager, Interior ReDesign/Decorating Specialist, consulting and training company. 

Locally serving the California foothill and mountain communities of: Oakhurst, North Fork, BassLake, Coarsegold, Ahwahnee, Wawona and Mariposa.  Also serving areas of: Fresno, Clovis and Madera, California and Kailua-Kona, Hawaii.

• Professional staging of vacant and occupied properties
• Color and Design Consultations
• Interior Decorating
• Virtual and Conceptual Staging Worldwide 

Click here to see short slideshows with examples of our work. When the first show is over, click on OTHER SHOWS to see more. 

 Visit our website at http://www.dreamredesigns.com for more information or call 559-877-2442

Realtors, inspiration and rescue found here. 

On one of my recent blogs I had a Realtor comment "I really think a lot of agents just don't know the value of staging because they've never really seen the end result", and it inspired this post. 

If that's true, or even if it's not, we stagers would like you to join (or lurk) this group.  Staging "Before" and "After" Pictures:  

   http://activerain.com/groups/beforeandafterpics     

We would love to hear your comments and thoughts, plus help you gain valuable information about our industry. 

Thanks to group founder Kathy Nielsen for starting and moderating this group. 

 In Fresno and Madera counties our staging company can provide you with similar results.  Contact us: Dream Interior Redesign and Staging for more information. 

I've never had a listing that needed staging...really???

Time and time again I read stagers blogs where Realtor and agents comment that they have never used a professional stager because their listings have never needed staging.  I am not surprised because I've heard local agents say pretty much the same...they will call me when they have a listing that NEEDS staging.   

When I see this, my initial reaction is REALLY, but I know that this is just a case of misinformation and more education is needed on what professional staging really is and what types of listings need staging. 

Most professional stagers would say, all houses could use some level of staging. To clarify that, stagers think of "staging" in broad terms.  To most of us staging means the preparation of a home for sale.  That preparation includes:

Decluttering

Repairs and replacement

Depersonalizing/Neutralizing

Updating

Curb Appeal

Cleaning

When the above issues are addressed and resolved, then a professional stager returns for SHOWCASING.  All of this is part of a process. 

The first step in the process (after the initial contact) is a staging consultation/evaluation.  Generally, the stager visits the house and makes recommendations, based on education and experience, as to the most budget friendly steps that the seller should take in getting their house prepped for SHOWCASING. Completing the consultation is a review those needs and a priority list to get started.  If hand-holding is necessary the stager can provide that.  

Professional stagers are trained to gently but honestly let sellers know what needs to be done AND WHY.  Unfortunately, some television programs on staging have tainted that perception.  Stagers are NOT about belittling sellers and telling them that their house may never sell or making statements like "what were you thinking".  As with real estate agents, professional stagers truly want to help sell houses.   

If sellers are unwilling to do the preparation then a stager may not recommend SHOWCASING.  Linda Barnett addresses that in her blog, "I would rather turn you down, than let you down because staging shouldn't be your 1st choice." 

Home staging means presenting a house, as a complete package, ready for the market. 

So, what does the stager do for SHOWCASING?  I can guarantee you that most stagers have plans swirling in their heads when they are at the consultation.  This is why they are able to be specific about what to pack, what to repair, what to paint, what to store, what to keep in a house and much more. 

On showcasing day the stager will likely rearrange furniture.  It's not that the furniture placement for the sellers was necessarily wrong for dwelling, but it might not be right for selling.  They will display artwork, accessories and other special touches that make buyers remember and want that house. 

SHOWCASING is done to highlight the features of a house and the rooms within.  Focus is on the house, not on the stuff.  Thus, sellers and agents are frequently surprised at the sense of "minimalism" with neutralized personality that occurs with showcasing. 

Stagers work with vacant properties and with occupied properties.  The seller's budget is always a top consideration.   

So, if you've never had a listing that looks like any of  these: 

 then I wonder what your listings look like and why staging isn't a consideration...seriously, I want to know. 

If you want to know specifically why the homes in the collage were staged, I'd be happy to reply to your questions and I can provide after photos for most.   

By the way, if I were to list my home today, it would have to be staged because it is right for dwelling but not for selling. 

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 Dream Interior Redesign and Staging by Ginger Foust is a full service, licensed and insured CSP ® Professional Home Stager, Interior ReDesign/Decorating Specialist, consulting and training company. 

Locally serving the California foothill and mountain communities of: Oakhurst, North Fork, BassLake, Coarsegold, Ahwahnee, Wawona and Mariposa.  Also serving areas of: Fresno, Clovis and Madera, California and Kailua-Kona, Hawaii.

• Professional staging of vacant and occupied properties
• Color and Design Consultations
• Interior Decorating
• Virtual and Conceptual Staging Worldwide 

Click here to see short slideshows with examples of our work. When the first show is over, click on OTHER SHOWS to see more. 

 Visit our website at http://www.dreamredesigns.com for more information or call 559-877-2442

Linda's blog is here to help realtor and sellers understand the goals of professional staging.  We, professional stagers are here to help sell houses, not just collect a paycheck.  I am going to turn off commenting here...please leave your comment on Linda's original post. (Sorry that I didn't do it sooner).  Thanks for reading.....

A List that Might Help Sell that House. 

This blog post was inspired by Kathy Streib's recent featured post on post-it notes and from my personal experiences with selling many homes and as a professional home stager in Oakhurst, California. 

Recently, I did a blog post on the use of seasonal photos to be shown at a listing for potential buyers to see and this list should be there beside the photos...with enough copies for all potential buyers to take with them.  

Suggestions for what might be included on this list could be, (but not limited to):  

I would further suggest that it would be best to include a photo of the exterior of the house at the top of this list, the address and the listing agent contact information.  When potential buyers get home and start looking through the papers that they've collected at a multitude of homes, this list could be a real selling feature that they might not get from others. 

I know that most MLS listings do not include these features and for many they are important items.  I'm sure that you could think of many more to add, particularly energy saving but "hidden" features. 

What would you add? 

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Dream Interior Redesign and Staging by Ginger Foust is a full service, licensed and insured CSP ® Professional Home Stager , Interior ReDesign/Decorating Specialist, consulting and training company. 

Locally serving the California foothill and mountain communities of: Oakhurst, North Fork, BassLake, Coarsegold, Ahwahnee, Wawona and Mariposa.  Also serving areas of: Fresno, Clovis and Madera, California and Kailua-Kona, Hawaii.

• Professional staging of vacant and occupied properties
• Color and Design Consultations
• Virtual and Conceptual Staging Worldwide 
•  (Continuing Education Units) forCalifornia Real Estate Agents as an approved RESA instructor (Real Estate Staging Association).

Click here to see short slideshows with examples of our work. When the first show is over, click on OTHER SHOWS to see more. 

 Visit our website at http://www.dreamredesigns.com for more information or call 559-877-2442

Facebook Business Page...do you do this?        

When I am reading a post on Facebook from a business page, I am frequently frustrated.  The fact that the post shows up in my news feeds means that I have "liked" that business  and that's often because I know the person behind the business. 

However, I am noticing that many people are not putting their names on the info. section of their business pages.  Is that for privacy reasons? 

Sorry, but I find it nearly impossible to remember the names of all of my colleagues and favorite businesses but I do remember the people.  If this is a relationship building game, then doesn't your name need to be listed with your business?  When I have connected with only a few businesses, in a particular category, I can remember who the owner is, but when I'm connected to hundreds of stagers and real estate agents, I just cannot always put a personal name with that business name.

Can you help me out and put your name with your business information or can you help me understand why you would not do that? 

Thanks!