You know the antique furniture guy who hasn't had much business lately?  Not surprisingly, it's a tough economy and maybe folks can live without the pair of gorgeous, French bergere chairs (THAT STILL NEED TO BE RE-UPHOLSTERED) for now! 

So, there's this builder and he needs furniture 'cos his thing's not selling at that price and he can't afford to fire-sale it (yet) and ... oh why not try it?  What have we got to lose?

  South Orange, NJ

We-ll.  What deal did you make with the guy?  Is he set to have a furniture sale every other weekend while you're trying to show the place?  Never know who might be interested in the home when all they thought they wanted was a wobbly Victorian settle!

You might want to set aside only certain hours, and make sure the pricing tags are off when regular showings are taking place...or you'll find people are looking at the crazy furniture not the pleasingly renovated house.  Or you could spend a few hours of time on your stager ($250 - 350) and have them modify the space a bit:-

Over the course of 5 rooms, it makes some sense, no?  But it still looks mismatched, and inexplicably odd.  Plus, now the question might be what do these people have about creepy, tufted armchairs?

Here's another example.  Here, the antique dealer is a relative of the listing agent:-

  Rural Morris County

   What room is this? 

   It's an office/library.  The first room you see when you walk into the home.

This is the formal "away room" (if you read anything by Susan Zuzanka like the Not So Big House)  in an enormous new construction in rural Morris county.  According to the attractively typed price list, the sofa is actually an 1820s settee with vintage barkcloth fabric, offered at $4,200 and those chairs are a "Pair of 1930s Green Painted Arms Chairs" for $1,100.  Wanna close up of that Chess Set...sure?  If you get too close to it, it's yours at an investment of only $15,000:-

   It's a "Tramp Art Table and Chess Set - executed by Paul M. Cunningham, a member of the Hermitage Artists.  Chess pieces are all storage boxes that open!"

Imagine.

Magnificent it is.  In a certain horrific, terrible, kind of way.  It would most likely looks sensational in the right spot and be great fun.  And I'm sure the artist is a highly respeted, hugely talented craftsman.  But context, people!  Where it is now it junking up a $3 million library and scaring little children.

<sigh>

The first time we tried this - it was in a massive home in Short Hills.  We knew we had to accessorize to help, and we teamed up with an art dealer to provide spectacular wall decor of the highest quality. 

  Short Hills, NJ

Here we hit another problem.  Now people were looking at the paintings, not the rooms or the house.  And we still had this bloody awful, mismatched furniture.

In conconclusion, while I always try to make things work, and do honestly believe there are lots of ways to successfully present a home for sale, this free stuff is actually more trouble than it's worth.  It looks bad, and makes the home confusing.  Rarely does it get that job done, which let's recap, is to get 2 seperate folks to love the house so that it sells well, fast and with minimal stress on all sides.  (Why not 1?  Ask any realtor worth their salt and they'll tell you all about looking for a loony needle in a haystack!)

So nut up, folks and spend for proper staging.  It works every time!

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