Home staging helps show house at its best
New book reveals maximum profit benefits
By Robert Bruss, Tuesday, April 25, 2006.If you want to earn the maximum sales price for your house or condominium, first read Barb Schwarz's new book, "Home Staging." It reveals with words and pictures how to show prospective buyers the potential your home offers with proper presentation.
The author, a professional home decorating stager, shares her secrets for making a home listed for sale show its best. In other words, her goal is to make your ordinary home into a model home.
Purchase Bob Bruss reports online.
Because most home buyers have zero imagination, until a home is staged and professionally presented, most prospective buyers won't be able to spot the potential of a home offered for sale. Schwarz' new book explains the tactics of presenting a home to look its best, even on a limited budget.
Until I read this book, I didn't know there are professional accredited home stagers. Barb Schwarz is the organizer and creator of this new industry, which helps home sellers and their real estate listing agents attain maximum sales prices. In some cases, staging a home makes the difference, especially in a very slow local market, between selling and not selling a home.
Every residential real estate sales agent, most of whom have never met a professional home stager or suggested their home sellers hire a home stager, should read this eye-opening book. In addition, home sellers will benefit from a modest expenditure to buy the book and see what home stagers can accomplish to turn ugly duckling homes into swans.
Having been involved with home sales for many years, I have personally seen what home stagers can accomplish. Years ago, realty agents with a flair for home decorating advised their sellers how to make their homes more attractive. Today, this task has been taken over by professional home stagers who know how to "redo" a home at modest expense to make it more attractive to prospective buyers.
Schwarz claims to be the "inventor" of home staging in 1972. Who can challenge her? She says home staging changes lives. Perhaps a slight exaggeration, but the concept certainly changes wallets, especially for home buyers, sellers, realty agents and stagers.
Although I never staged any of my rental houses, looking back after reading this book, I now realize I probably left many dollars on the table by not making my houses show at their best. Spending a few thousand dollars on staging often results in many times that modest expense in the result of a faster sale (thus saving holding costs) for a higher sales price.
In her new book, Schwarz emphasizes both the visual changes home staging makes, and its resulting dollar benefits in the form of quicker home sales and for more money. She backs up her statements with facts rather than just opinions.
One of Schwarz' most memorable comments in the book is about "other real estate agents" who talk to their prospective buyers about the local houses for sale. She uses the nicknames agents sometimes use to help remember the many houses they inspect.
For example, she recalls the "Pretty Red Door House" and the "Cat-Pee House." Like it or not, that's how realty agents and their buyers remember houses.
"The home staging system is now time-tested. It has helped sell thousands, if not millions, of homes in the U.S. and Canada, and in several other countries as well. As the creator of home staging, I have never seen it not work. Sure, overpriced properties may sit, but it's price that holds them back, not the staging. Two things sell a house: one is price, and the other is home staging," Schwarz modestly explains.
Chapter topics include: "So You're Selling Your Home"; "Ready, Stage, Sell: Home Staging Guidelines That Work"; "Staging Magic: How to Stage Each Room in Your House"; "Take the Staging Magic Outside"; "Getting It Done: It's Commitment Time"; "Tagging on a Dime"; "Showing Your Staged House: Lights, Music, Action"; "What Do You Do When You Need Help?" "Staging Tales from the Trenches"; "How to Work with Your Real Estate Agent"; and "How Home Staging is Changing the Real Estate Industry."
Although parts of this book will bore readers, serious home sellers and their savvy realty agents will love it for its insider tips and before-and-after photos of staged homes. Is it trickery or deceit to stage a home? After reading this unique book, I think staging means showing a house or condo at its very best. On my scale of one to 10, this excellent book rates a solid 10.
"Home Staging," by Barb Schwarz (John Wiley and Sons, Hoboken, NJ), 2006, $19.95, 205 pages; available in stock or by special order at local bookstores, public libraries, and www.Amazon.com.
(For more information on Bob Bruss publications, visit his
Real Estate Center).
All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, in part or in whole, without written permission of Inman News. Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright law.
You must login or register to post a comment.
Submitted by Mel Bailey on March 7, 2008 - 1:02pm.
OH, for the love of GOD, how many times do I have to tell people that this Barb Schwarts character does NOT have an accredited course, did NOT invent home staging, or create the industry. Her course is NOT accredited, there is no regulation of this industry, and you cannot just claim yourself to be accredited. Otherwise, all schools would be so. Therefore, you are not accredited in anything except possibly making yourself sound stupid to people who know better if you pay for her course. She is simply making money. There are an ever-increasing number of people willing to take your money and give you some kind of trumped-up title that is meaningless. Bob, you didn't know there were accredited professional home stagers, because there are not. She uses this scare tactic to elicit businesses from unsuspecting people and get them to buy her course. She didn't invent anything, except maybe the art of screwing people out of their hard-earned money for something they can learn in many other places. Try telling the person who has a REAL college degree in interior design from an ACTUAL accredited college that they can't stage a home if they don't pay some Barb Schwartz lady a bunch of money. They will laugh you off the planet! You should have looked it up in Wikipedia, try it sometime. Look up home staging. This woman is simply taking what many others are doing (taking peoples' money for a course that very well may help them but is otherwise worthless as far as any "professional designation" is concerned)to another level, by trying to claim that everyone else is copying her and doesn't have the authority to bestow a title on them. They have just as much authority as she does. You or I could do the same thing if we felt the desire. That is how much regulation is in that industry. And people like her are clamoring to be the one to fool people into thinking they need their stuff and memberships to do businesses. Perhaps people will start researching b/4 they write articles that promote someone who is essentially committing fraud. That is, after all, what it is. I mean, if I take a course at an online college, pay them money, and then find out after the fact that they are indeed not accredited, and are not a real college, I'm kind of stuck. Well, her course (or anybody else's for that matter), is not accredited by anybody but herself, so maybe that puts it in perspective for people.