Staging

A living room before and after staging. The staged room has better lighting, and warm and inviting furniture that can help a potential buyer see themselves using the space.

As demand surges for homes in the Jericho/Syosset area, brokers and sellers are implementing creative strategies to market homes more successfully.

Increasingly, “home staging” is becoming more important in helping attract new buyers to upscale properties and increase their saleability. Staging entails rearranging furniture, eliminating clutter, refreshing decor that shows its age, and, in effect, beautifying a home to make it more attractive and appealing to buyers Staging became the rage in California in the early 2000s, says Karen Hunter of Staging Magic, a home staging agency in Jericho. “We try to eliminate ‘taste-specific’ decorative items that might not appeal to a prospective buyer,” says Hunter. She aims to make a home appealing to the widest variety of buyers.

Hunter says homeowners selling their home need to remember, “The way you live in your home is not the way you sell your home.” It’s often difficult, she says, for a homeowner to look at their home of many years objectively. “This is where the stager works with both the real estate agent and the homeowner. Together, they can make a valuable contribution to positioning the home as saleable as possible to as wide an audience as possible.” Real estate brokers Drini and Alida Dema, who works as The Dema Team with Keller Williams Realty of Nassau County, cite the National Association of Realtors in recommending that the living room, master bedroom, and kitchen are the most important rooms to stage.

“Keeping the room clean, free of clutter, making repairs, eliminating odors, and keeping rooms brightly lit are basic things to do when preparing a home for showing,” says Alida. “And homeowners need to pay attention to the curb appeal of a home as well. How does the property look when the prospective buyer approaches it for the first time.” Drini says that “virtual staging” has become increasingly important today when showing homes. “The first impression these days is when the buyer clicks on the images of the home on the internet. If they don’t like what they see right away, they will never get to the actual home.”

The Dema Team uses professional stagers, including NYLI Homs Media to do the virtual staging of homes they are representing, and Staging and Accent Home Staging and Organizing for staging the home itself. “A staged home can usually command t least ten percent more than an unstaged one,” says Alida. “And it sells in fewer days on the market,” says Drini.

Michelle Zhao, a real estate agent with Berkshire Hathaway who, like The Dema Team, lives in Jericho, says a staged home can command as much as “thirty percent more than an unstaged one.” And, she says, “the staged home can sell noticeably quicker”. She cites one Jericho home that was listed with another broker for six months and generated no offers.

“It was not staged,” Zhao recalls, “and the seller gave the listing to another agent.” The house was staged and subsequently sold within two months–“at a higher asking price,” Zhao says she is not a fan of virtual staging. “A potential buyer may become disappointed when they visit the actual home and see none of the attractive stagings. That may have been what made this home desirable to them in the first place.”