Silly Home Staging Ideas

As many of you who read my blog know, I'm not only realtor in Lexington, KY, I'm also a home stager in Lexington, KY and I work with quite a few sellers throughout the enitre metro area who need help staging their homes to get them sold. So in addition to the information I glean from showing homes for sale in Lexington, KY, I also have the unique experience of having helped many people prepare their homes for sale and seeing what works and what doesn't.

Now some agents think any staging (even bad) is better than no staging at all, and while there's probably a vein of truth in that, there are definitely some silly staging tricks I've either seen in use or heard about in homes for sale in Lexington, KY and the following blog post will cover some of the silliest I've heard of.

The first one I haven't seen personally but have heard about and that is displaying pictures of people who are good looking in your house as opposed to the "normal-looking" people who actually live there. Some sellers leave the manufacturer's phots in the frames or even post photos of celebrities around a room to lead the buyers to dream about the posh, perfect lifestyle the current owners live and thus, by association, they will live if they buy the house. The problem is, buyers are too smart for this and see it as the ploy it is. You're better off finding some decent art to use in the staging of your home that plays up your home's strong  points rather than pretending to be a cast member from "The Bold and the Beautiful".

The next silly idea I've heard is either putting flower petals in the master bathtub or tinting the water to match the decor. Buyers know you don't actually live this way and it gives a feeling of the home being too staged (and yes, there is a thing such as being "too staged"). A well staged home should never broadcast that it's been staged -- it should simply look like well organized people with good taste happen to live in the home. That's the kind of lifestyle that people aspire to and respond to when touring staged homes -- not the over-the-top, fake stuff that's obviously "done" (kind of like a facelift -- you don't want people to know you've had your house worked on, lol).

The final silly staging idea that I've seen several stagers use is that of using a card table with a sheet over it as a dining room table. This just screams "cheap and tacky" to me and it doesn't help you accomplish your utlimate goal, which is to present the house as illustrating the lifestyle that people aspire to -- do you want to come home each night and eat dinner on a card table? Besides looking cheap, it really doesn't give people a true idea of scale, which is another goal of staging. Better off scouring Craigslist or Goodwill for a nice breakfast set that may need a coat of paint (I've used several oak pedastal tables in the past, painted either dark brown or black and they looked positively elegent by the time I was finished with them. Add some chairs I also picked up on Craigslist and maybe a floral arrangement and voila -- you have a well staged dining room.

If you have any questions about staging your home for sale or about the real estate market in Lexington, KY, just comment below or email me from my website, www.LexingtonRealEstateSource.com.