This was and article in our local newspaper today. This sounds like a great idea and one that could catch on all over. I thought about us stagers doing this, it may work for consultations, but not on the staging day itself. Does any other city besides Portland do this?

 

  AP Photo/JOHN KLICKER Kirsten Kaufman, foreground, a realtor for Prudential Real Estate, and new home buyer Emily Gardener tour a house in North East Portland in Portland, Ore. Kaufman has a monthly bike tour for people who want an alternative to driving when they look for homes to buy. Gardener, a first-time home buyer, was thrilled with the street access to the garage and bike storage and said it was a major reason for wanting to buy the house.

 

 

Agents pedaling to make the sale

Realtors begin to market to growing bike crowd.

WHITNEY MALKIN
Associated Press Writer

PORTLAND, Ore. - With gas prices high, bicycles flying out of stores and a buyers' market for houses, a handful of real estate agents around the country are touting the two-wheeled appeal of their listings.

Some even show houses exclusively by bike, wheeling through the neighborhood with potential buyers to show off bike lanes and bike-focused businesses and repair shops.

Clad in a purple helmet with plastic flowers dangling from her handlebars, Portland's Kirsten Kaufman is part of a new generation of agents eager to replace the stereotypes

of hauling clients around in fancy sedans or SUVs.

The mother of three started hosting bike tours earlier this summer, doling out energy bars and apricots to a growing trail of clients whose passion for pedaling weighs heavily in their choice of homes. Some are hard-core cyclists. Others are moving into the city to avoid increasingly expensive and onerous commutes.

"It's becoming more common to see families committing to driving less," said Kaufman. "I think it's a part of the market that will continue to grow as gas gets more expensive."

Over the summer, sales of homes dipped by more than 15 percent from last year, according to the National Association of Realtors, leaving Kaufman and other agents looking for ways to spark business.

Bike agents say pedaling with clients is providing that boost. Behind a niche market that represents only a sliver of national sales is a bigger trend - a fundamental shift in the way people think about buying homes.

Real estate agents and industry surveys indicate that home buyers are placing more importance on cutting their gas bills and commute times and that homes near urban centers, and subway, train and bus stops are selling faster than those in the distant suburbs.

In June, a Coldwell Banker survey showed more than 95 percent of agents say rising gas prices are a concern to their clients. More than three-quarters of clients say higher fuel costs are increasing their desire for city living.

"Living out in the suburbs just isn't a big deal anymore," says Matt Kolb, a bike agent who owns Pedal to Properties, a Boulder, Colo., firm. "People want to live, work and go to school within a six block radius - that's changing the way they look at property."

Pedal to Properties has five agents and a fleet of 48 cruiser bikes and big plans for nationwide expansion. Next year, the company will stretch into Oregon and Texas.

"For people who want to drive less, it just makes sense that they'd be looking for different things in a neighborhood," said 35-year-old Emily Gardener, a Portland-woman who has been trolling for a new house with Kaufman on the same bike she uses to pedal into the office each day.

"Kirsten was able to see things about places we were looking that I don't think a normal agent would have noticed," she said.

Circling neighborhoods in northeast Portland, the duo passed on a number of homes. Some were just too far out to ride. Others had no handy place to store the bike or were cut off from easy biking by hostile traffic.

Earlier this month, Bikes Belong, a cycling advocacy group, conducted a 40-state survey that showed more than a third of stores are selling more bikes, and more than 95 percent of shops say customers are citing high gas prices as a reason for transportation-related purchases.

Portland State University urban planning professor Jennifer Dill has studied how neighborhood planning affects cycling habits, and advises home buyers to look for homes in areas with gridded street patterns and to avoid cul-de-sacs.

"On a bike, you want to minimize stopping," she said. "You're going to want to look at streets with low traffic volume."

But most important, says Dill, is proximity.

Commuters in her Portland-based study rode an average of four miles into the office each day.

Even people who don't bike often are finding bike realty to have advantages.

After months of searching, Gardener and Kaufman found similar success - a two story fixer-upper with a sprawling backyard and turquoise trim - surrounded by safe streets and easy access.

"I saw the yard and the garage and I said, ‘I have to buy this house,"' Gardener said.

But not all agents and clients are cut out for this, cautions Eric Rojas, a Chicago agent who pedals to showings and plans to start urging customers to ride along with him.

"This is a hard job to do on a bike," he said. "You have to get the right people, and the day has to be nice - you have to be looking at property in the same couple mile location."

For some real estate agents the idea of biking with clients is just too casual.

"Anything client-involved should exclude a bicycle," said Portland real estate agent Charles Turner. "If you're meeting someone on location, you're not exactly business-presentable when you show up dripping with sweat."

But Rojas says his clients have learned to accept it.

"If they don't want a sweaty Realtor, then maybe they want someone else," he said. "Most people don't care - the last clients I took out bought an $800,000 house - they aren't exactly poor people living off the earth."

As the real estate market continues to slump, Rutgers urban planning professor John Putcher says more agents will turn to niche markets, but that bike agents have tapped into a potentially booming business.

As the popularity of bike commuting continues to rise, Kaufman says she's eager to see how far the wheels of her dark green Trek will take her.

"Ultimately I want to help people find a home that's going to work for them," she said. "This isn't about trying to green-wash real estate or profit from a niche market - it's about helping people make smart decisions, both for themselves and for the planet."

I just had a thought. You know the NAR has its own magazine for the real estate agents? Well, how about a magazine for home stagers? My reasoning is this. There are a lot of staging groups on active rain. All the groups have great ideas. If I read from them everyday I would never get any work done because there are just too many.

I have five particular staging group blogs that I read on a daily basis. Why don't we find out the top five staging group sites are on AR and put together a magazine from those five sites. For instance, I always read the Stage it forward group blogs. If the vast majority of readers reads that blog that could be one of the contributors to the group.

This is just an idea. I can't read all the great blogs because like I said I would never get any work done. Maybe the magazine could contain staging forms that we could all use and benefit from. Or we could do a section on Midwest stagers and what is going on and the trends in staging. These are just ideas. What are your thoughts on a this?

Thanks. Sheila

This week I was feeling sorry for myself because business has been at a stand still staging wise. I am the decorating editor for our local moms website. I was checking to see if I had any messages on my account there when I came across a topic that jumped out at me. The subject line said,"Help me." I read what the writer had to say and my heart melted and it got me to thinking that there are people in the world way worse off than me.

This person, LeeAnn is 27 and she has many kids. Her ID on the website is momofmanykids. I don't know how many she has but I assume it is a lot. Anyway, she has breast cancer, and she found out 2 weeks ago she has an enlarged heart. On top of this, she is trying to bury her daughter but is short $570 to pay for the grave. The funeral parlor doesn't pay for the grave. I didn't ask her how her daughter died or when, but the daughter can't be buried until LeeAnn gets the money.

After reading her message I emailed her and told her my heart went out to her. I was so upset the rest of the day. My problems are minisucle compared to hers. I can't even imagine getting cancer and then on top of that having to bury my child. She said she is selling off some of her stuff so she can raise money. Some of the moms on the website offered to do a bake sale. I don't personally know Lee Ann, but I have been thinking about her.

I know this topic has nothing to do with staging but since I am a stager and was feeling sorry for myself, I decided to write this blog because I realize that maybe others out there think they have it bad also. There will always be people who are worse off. It just got me thinking that things I thought really stunk in my life at that moment pale in comparison with what LeeAnn is going through.

I don't know her last name. She is just LeeAnn from Mishawaka, IN. a 27 year old mom who needs our prayers.

Make a Smilebox greeting

Thanks to Connie T. for the great smilebox.com website. Thanks to everyone who emailed and sent me great advice. If you guys don't know about smilebox.com you should go there. I had a lot of fun making postcards and you can send these as emails, or print them, or send them to a blog. I feel much better after getting everyone's feedback. I will try the suggestions everyone gave. The smilebox.com is a lot easier to use than making a newsletter. It only took 5 minutes to make my postcard compared with my newsletter which takes a week or more to put together.

     I was listening to a radio program this morning on the topic of moving and how it affects men and women differently. The guest was saying that people move on the average 11 times during their lifetime. I have moved half of that and most of it was moving to and from college. The guest speaker went on to say that moving affects women and men differently. She said that men have new co-workers there to meet him and he is looking forward to the change, while a woman may feel uprooted or she may feel like her identity is lost. The speaker said that women "feel" the move.

      I got to thinking about it and it sounded like they go through the same emotions as grieving from the death of a loved on. First there is the element of surprise and disbelief. The news was sprung on her and she still can not believe that they are to move out of state. She thinks that this is the house they will stay in until they die, but surprise! Her husband announces they are to move.

      The next emotion is anger. She is angry at her husband for having to leave maybe the only home they have known and the friends she has made. Women take a long time to develop deep and lasting friendships but once these friendships are made, they are very deep. Having to move makes the woman feel like part of her is being ripped away.

      She may go through anxiety and depression. She is thinking about all what must be done in preparation for the move itself like canceling the newspaper and transferring her children's school records. The man is looking forward to this new adventure and he does look at it that way. Women by nature are nurturerers and caregivers. The bond they have with their female relatives and coworkers is very strong. We are the glue that holds the family together. I don't know about other women but I for one hate change. I like the routine and the mundane. I like to know where I will be and how long I will be there. Uprooting a tree that has been in one place for many years may cause damage to the tree but unlike the tree, we can recover.

     Women may go through a period of acceptance and adjustment for the upcoming move. She may finally realize it is beyond her control and she starts getting the kids readjusted to a new school and having them meet new friends. It is not unusual for a woman to grieve for a year or more after the move. Men have a hard time understanding this. Women are more in touch with their feelings so other women know this feeling of grief and why the woman is upset. Men need to be shown by example of how she is feeling and even then there is no assurance that they completely understand. Men have those feeling of sadness but I don't think they are in tune with those. They don't express their feelings like women do. A woman's outlet is crying whereas a man very rarely cries and especially not in the company of other men. Our makeup is dfferent and we were wired differently.

      A woman may not have co workers who are there to greet them at a new job. Especially if she is a stay at home mom, this is extremely stressful. I know when I moved to a new state for 1 1/2 years after I got married, I felt like I didn't belong there and I was extremly home sick. I never did really fit in. Only when my husband and I moved back to Indiana did I feel much much better. I got reconnected to my family and friends and the roots started to grow once again.

     Being a stager, I found this topic to be insightful. It helped me to be more sensitive to the plight of the sellers and better able to empathize with them. I understand the feelings I had and why I had them. I think I learned a great deal from this half hour radio show and I hope that you the readers have learned something also. Understanding where the sellers are coming from emotionally will hopefully make my staging job easier and make me a better person.

There was an article in our local paper today about a realtor who got attacked as she was showing a house. It was a one time incident and nothing like this has happened in our city before. Luckily she was able to get away and call for help.

Is this a new way for criminals to rob and attack people now? This is really scary especially since we live in a city with about 150,000 people. Police are telling realtors to not show houses for now until this person is caught. Police also adviced realtors to show houses in pairs.

Maybe we should start carrying mace with us now. The realtor was attacked in a corner of the basement and she said she felt uneasy about showing the basement and the man told her his wife would be along but that was a lie.

Is anyone safe anymore? I know this is scary and thank goodness it was a one time thing, but this should not deter anyone from doing their job. Just take precautions. It is a sad state of affairs when we women now need to work in pairs so we don't get attacked.

Who knows how long the realtors won't be able to show houses is anyone's guess. I'm not a realtor but a stager and we need to take precautions now too. What gets me mad is that on top of all the business details we need to remember like if we brought the stepstool or if we have enough business cards with us, we have to remember to be cautious about some yahoo attacking women.

I know being cautious is a good thing and this incident taught me to be more aware of my surroundings, but it just ticks me off to no end when we need to worry about whether or not we will be attacked on the job. Criminals are getting more and more clever. We need to think one step ahead of them.

As the captain on Hill Street Blues always said, "Let's becareful out there".  

Every Saturday our local newspaper has one sectiond devoted to homes and gardens. Today there was an article on Propsmart.com. This is an independent real estate search engine. You can sign up for an account to put your own listings on it or you can look at the top 25 US metropolitan areas.

This search engine compunds more than a million property listings from online sources and private sellers and makes them searchable with a google map based visual interface. The site also has an online community of buyers, sellers, and service providers that share their information which then in turn gives them more exposure and increases traffic to the site.

You can also sign up to get rss feeds in order to get updates of new listings. It is relatively easy to sign up with a free account. It looks like an interesting site and coud be a help for agents and we stagers. I thought maybe you guys could check it out. I had never heard of them until I read today's paper.

 

I thought you guys might like this article I got today in an email. Some seller's are getting really creative or (desparate) it sounds like

By FrontDoor.com | Published: 7/08/2008

Say goodbye to the days when baking a batch of cookies and putting out fresh flowers before an open house would be enough to sell your home. In today's market, it takes more than that to attract buyers, and frustrated home sellers are resorting to some unusual methods to get their homes noticed. From clever to downright bizarre, here are our top 10 unique home-selling tactics.

1. Hold an open house party.
   Open houses are the norm when selling a home, but some sellers are upping the ante on the open house by offering wine, catered food, live music and prizes. A fancy shindig could start a buzz on your property and make your home memorable.
   
   
   
2. Take home staging to the extreme.
   It's well known that staging your home can help it sell faster, but some sellers are taking staging a step further with an ancient Chinese philosophy. Feng shui stagers rearrange the elements of a home to improve its chi, or energy. Good chi makes potential buyers feel more welcome.
   
   
   
3. Help serious buyers with financing.
   Many people who want to buy a home can't qualify for a standard mortgage right now, so sellers are offering a helping hand. Sellers have a few options when it comes to assisting buyers with financing, including offering lease-to-own deals, offering financing themselves, paying for closing costs or paying for points to lower the interest rate.
   
   
   
4. Have a little faith.
   Burying statues or medals of St. Joseph in the earth is a tradition that dates back hundreds of years. Most recently, home sellers have been burying the patron saint of family and household needs in their yards to help their homes sell faster. Thousands of sellers swear that a little divine intervention helped get a sale.
   
   
5. Throw in some extravagant extras.
   In the past, a free big-screen TV was enough of an incentive to get your home noticed. Times have changed, and incentives are becoming more and more substantial. Sellers are throwing in all kinds of goodies, like free cars, vacations, pricey home upgrades and monetary incentives like a year's mortgage or a furniture stipend. One woman in Florida is even offering herself as an incentive -- she hopes to marry the man who buys her home.
   
   
   
6. Make your home a grand prize.
   After conventional methods fall short, some sellers are holding raffles and essay contests and giving their homes to the winners. This method is sure to draw attention, but beware: Home lotteries are illegal in many states, so find out your state's regulations.
   
   
   
7. Get Web savvy.
   If the traditional method of selling your home through a real estate agent doesn't appeal to you, you may find an alternative process on the Web. Some sellers are auctioning off their homes on eBay, while others are swapping properties through sites like Pad4Pad.com and DomuSwap.com.
   
   
   
8. Let your house do the talking.
   After taking the traditional route of putting a For Sale sign in your front yard and placing an ad in the newspaper, try some hi-tech advertising. Some sellers and agents are using the Talking House radio transmitter, which allows you to record a customized message about the features of your home. Buyers can tune into a radio station to hear this message as they drive by your house.
   
   
   
9. Put your house on the auction block.
   Auctions are no longer just for homes that have been foreclosed on. Sellers looking to sell their homes quickly are choosing the auction route. Keep in mind that the total costs of auctioning off a home are often the same or more than the costs of selling a home through an agent.
   
   
   
10. Let buyers sleep on it.
    For serious potential buyers who are on the fence about buying your home, let them sleep on it -- literally. By letting buyers spend the night in your home, you're allowing them to get the full experience of living there. A trial run could be just what they need to sign on the dotted line. Be sure to consult with your real estate agent or attorney first.
    

 

 

I thought you guys might like this article I got in an email today. Seller's and agents are resorting to some really weird tatics to sell a house. Enjoy!

By Douglas Trattner, FrontDoor.com | Published: 1/14/2008

• Save
• Share
• Print

Roberta Murphy's realty office was having an impossible time selling a breathtaking five-bedroom, five-bath Mediterranean in Encinitas, Calif. Despite sweeping vistas of the Pacific, not to mention a guest suite, five fireplaces and over 5,000 square feet of living space, no buyer was prepared to pony up the $2 million asking price.

That is, until the seller decided to toss in a shiny red Ferrari.

"In the current housing market, home sellers are resorting to more creative sales tactics because buyers are sitting on the fence," Murphy says.

As an agent with Villa Sotheby's International Realty in San Diego, Murphy has witnessed a rise in creative tactics sellers are employing to attract buyers. But not everyone can afford to toss in a sports car, trip to Hawaii or fancy furniture. Sellers desperate to unload slow movers should re-evaluate their listing price and consider these strategies.

1. Upgrade

"When you have a glut of inventory, your house really has to shine above the competition," says Adam Kaufman, a Cleveland-based agent with over $400 million in real estate sales. Buyers in today's market know they can be very particular. As a seller, Kaufman explains, you have to make a stellar first impression.

Kaufman strongly advises that sellers replace dated carpeting, strip wallpaper, install granite countertops and upgrade to stainless steel appliances.

"If a buyer walks through the front door and is dissatisfied in any way, he or she is off to the next house," Kaufman warns.

2. Stage That Home

"Sellers need to understand that the way we live in our home is not the way we sell our home," says Karen Hirschberg, a home stager in Chagrin Falls, Ohio.

When Hirschberg is called in to help sell a house, she tells her clients to emulate a model home. With a model home, she says, everything from the landscaping to the interior is picture perfect and designed to attract the widest pool of buyers.

The first step in any home-staging is a thorough de-cluttering. Sellers should purge the house of all personal belongings, family photos and countertop appliances. Furniture should be rearranged so as to make the room appear larger. "Space sells," she says.

If the family has already moved -- and taken the furniture with them -- Hirschberg suggests calling in a stager to furnish the home. "People have trouble connecting with an empty house," she says.

3. Curb Appeal

"People make assumptions about the interior of a house based on the exterior," Hirschberg says.

Try these easy strategies for enhanced curb appeal:

• Power wash the house
• Lay a fresh cover of mulch in the flower beds
• Paint the front door
• Replace the address numbers

4. Ancient Chinese Secret

"Feng shui is something that sellers are beginning to appreciate more and more as a technique to sell their home. Especially within the Asian community," says Beverly Hills-based agent Joyce Rey.

If a house isn't selling, some believe the fault lies in a shortage of Qi (chee), or energy flow. Bringing in a feng shui expert to evaluate the home and make modifications to the placement and arrangement of items within is said to improve the odds of a speedy sale.

5. Going, Going, Gone

"Home auctions were all but nonexistent a few years ago, but they are more widely available now," says Roberta Murphy.

While a house auction is indeed a reliable way to sell a house quickly, there is no guarantee the seller will be pleased with the price. Also, warns Murphy, buyers are subject to home auction fees that can be as high as 8 percent of the sale price. And limited disclosure statements can be potentially disastrous.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to Home Staging News Behind the Stage July 15, 2008 Vol 1 Issue 1 Dear Friends,

 It is now mid July and many people are enjoying sailing on the water. Summer home sales are in full swing. Are your clients "sailing" towards a new or existing home? StageStruck can be that rudder that steers your clients to that home. Staging and Redesign in a nutshell. Let me define these two terms for those who don't know what staging and redesign are. Staging has been described as a "defluffing" of a home that is going on the market. In other words, stagers take the best features of the home and repackage them in a way that will appeal to the broadest range of buyers.

Redesign is taking what the owner already has and rearranging it to fit the use of the room and the lifestyle of the owner. We"shop" in the owner's home looking for things to be used in the reconfigured room.

Benefits of Staging for Agents Home Staging has many benefits for both the seller and the real estate agent. For the home seller the benefits are: faster sale of the home, more money from the sale of the home, homes that are staged can sell for 6% more than non staged homes. According the the International Association of Home Staging Professionals, about a quarter of homes nationwide were sold last year after being staged by a professional stager. This is up from 10% five years ago. A nonstaged home will help to outsell the competition. For agents, staging can lead to more commission. National statistics imdicate that staged homes net 3% to 10% more on average than non staged homes. Staging is a value added service. For example, if the median price of a home is $241,00 and you the agent sell it for 3-10% more, this equateds to a $7,230-$24,000 equity gain or an average of $15,665 (based on a statistical study from 2004-2005 of staged properties nationwide). An investment in staging the home or listing it is less than a price reduction on the home or listing. This gives more money to the agent and the client. Also, the average real estate agent has 5 seconds to sell a home and 5 seconds to make an impact on the buyers when they first walk in the door. Staging ensures that the impact is a good and lasting one.

 Home Trends for fall According to Maison & Objet, the salon of home decor, some of the trends we will see this fall are: 1. Bursting Roses everywhere. The bigger and redder the better. 2. Purple is out and Fuchsia is in. 3. Text Messaging words are in. They are on everything from pillows, wall lights, and candles. 4. See through structures. Steel wire chairs and furniture that look like bicycle baskets, and furniture made of cane weave with port holes are the new trends. I don't know about you, but if you sit on these in the summer, your back side will look like a belgin waffle from the imprint. 5.Strong yellow. Yellow anything as long as it exudes and screams, "Not pale yellow." The deeper the color the better. 6. Fractures. These are geometric shapes in an irregular pattern. Something like a honeycomb. These fractures are made into vases, tables, etc. Some of the patterns look like they are diamond shape or made to look like they are shattered. The texture emerges from the ridged pattern and not the material. 7.Ibride. This is part portrait and part furniture. They are married together to form one piece. 8. Aquatic themes; especially in lighting. These don't actually scream starfish, or plant. They are subtle images but you know they are supposed to be starfish. 9.Missoni. This is comic book style, over the top, and graphic. This fabric can be used as a sofa slipcover. To see any of the pictures of the above items, click on pointclickhome.com and type in fall trends in the search box. It will bring up a slideshow of the trends.

I hope you enjoyed this first edition of our newsletter. Continue to look for it around the 15th of every month. Sincerely, Sheila Swanson StageStruck

 

www.mystagestruck.com (574) 674-9764 Cell: (574) 252-1480. The owner of StageStruck, Sheila Swanson has been decorating for 20 years. She attended the Sheffield School of Interior Design and is also a graduate of the Staging Diva's online staging course.

 Save 10% off the price of a consultation for your client when you set up their appointment. Agents, if make an appointment for yourself, you get 25% off the price of your consultation. Offer Expires: Sept. 15, 2008