Home staging gets house ready for showtime

USAA Magazine – Spring 2007
“Showtime!,” by Suzanne McAuliffe

Excerpt from USAA Magazine:
Putting up a ‘for sale’ sign turns the spotlight on your home. Experts share ways to pare down, spruce, up, and seal a good deal.

These days, you have to work hard to make your house stand out, or it might sit on the market for months. If you’re selling, you want to captivate buyers so you can sell quickly and for as much money as possible. But there’s a lot to do to get a house ready for the market.

“Your home has to be cleaner for a showing than you would normally require it to be just to live in it,” says Debra Gould, Toronto-based creator of The Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. It communicates care and maintenance of the whole house.”

Though neutral is the norm, stagers often find creative ways to use existing color schemes or elements that homeowners can’t affort to change. In one 1980s-style kitchen, Ms. Gould used black-and-white checkered tile floors as inspiration for a bistro theme. She painted gray cabinets sage-green and changed the white walls to clay-red. She added a chalkboard, a bistro table and chairs, and voila! The kitchen instantly became a warm gathering place. “Staging is very much about romancing the buyer,” Gould says.