Maybe staging would help

Imagine you are the past president of the National Association of Realtors, and you put your house on the market at the tail end of the housing boom for $1.45 million. More than two years later, you've knocked $165,000 off the asking price and it still hasn't sold. Would you be the least bit surprised if just about every blogger in the universe, from Direct Current to Paper Economy and Sellsius -- not to mention news outlets including the Washington Post, Business Week and MSNBC -- revels in your plight? (Check out the spat today between Sellsius and Zillow's David G over how many bedrooms the home really has). 

Watching the virtual tour of the home creates the illusion that the tinkly piano music accompanying the slide show is bouncing off the wooden floors in the home's empty rooms. If I were former NAR president Thomas M. Stevens -- a guy who seems reluctant to follow his own realtor's advice about how to price to sell  -- I'd at least think about staging this home.

Because while the motion-activated lighting and pet door in the garage ARE nice touches, nobody who's looked at the house in the last couple years has been THAT impressed with them. At least not at this price.

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