In the Media

The Philadelphia Inquirer HOME & DESIGN MAGAZINE Staging: The art of creating your home’s un-personality By Susan Pevaroff-Berschler Curtain up — make sure those windows are sparkling. Light the lights — the brighter the better. The scene is set for your very own un-production, high-lighting your home’s un personality. Cue Julie Pelly, the, um, un decorator. Her mission: To transform your home back into a house—one that will sell. Pelly and Susan Brown are co-owners of Creative Staging LLC (www.creative-staging.com), one of a growing number of area firms dedicated to the premise that one person’s comfy customized surroundings can be another’s turnoff. It’s the old tomato/tomahto principle. “When that sale sign goes up, the deer head with the antlers has got to come down,” she quips. Pelly defines the staging concept as the art of disengaging sellers from their personal environment, neutralizing décor to create a marketable product with mass appeal. “I have to convince clients they are not selling their stuff. The photos of their grandson are adorable but for our purposes he is a visual distraction,” she explains. Suitable for a wide audience Even in this, real estate’s typically cooler season, Pelly’s business is hot. “With the glut of houses for sale, there is no off season for us these days,” she is happy to share, adding that outdoor staging, though always critical, can be a deal maker or breaker in these summer months. A less than pristine front yard may motivate your drivers to keep driving, while an enticing backyard might just push an ambivalent house hunter over the fence. “We try to set up the backyard like an entertainment area. We’ll set the table, make sure there are plenty of flowers and just generally create an area that invites family relaxation.” If the furniture has seen better days, Pelly suggests springing for new cushions—not necessarily new furniture. The idea, she says, is to spruce up while keeping costs down. “Our job is to work with what’s there and accentuate the positive,” she explains. “Divert the eye from the lime green carpet and orange walls by playing up the magnificent fireplace, Enhance with greenery.” And remember, she says, less is more — especially if it’s furniture that impedes traffic flow. As she told a recent client, “It may be okay for you to climb over the microwave cart to get to the dining room, but it’s a sure-fire buyer repellent.” And suffice to say a pile of clutter large enough to hide a sleeping person may also hurt your prospects. “We were sorting through the junk on a client’s bed for half an hour before we realized there was somebody in it,” she laughs. Special effects Pelly’s list of tricks is endless: A coat of paint on the trim gives the illusion of an overall facelift. Turn an unsightly packed bookcase into a visually attractive display unit by arranging items in groups of three. Add a few designer towels to an older bathroom and voila—upscale chic. Or pick up and inexpensive bed-in-a-bag set to freshen up a tired bedroom. “All of these small touches can change the feel of your house instantly,” assures Pelly. “It’s this little bit of attention to detail that gives you a leg up on the competition.” Not to mention, claims Pelly, a potential 15-percent increase in your home’s sale price. Set the stage and wait for the rave review from that special buyer who will walk in and envision their own production: turning your house into their home. The Bucks County Courier Times Setting the Scene for a Speedy Sale By: Crissa Shoemaker Debree September was one of the more sluggish months for home sales in recent memory. But Susan Brown and Julie Pelly haven’t been busier. The pair, owners of Creative Staging Inc. in Upper Southampton, said their jobs Staging homes for sale has exploded as the housing market has cooled. “The market is extremely sluggish,” said Brown. “Sellers often have so much competition even in their own neighborhoods – often with numerous houses for sale on the same street. Staging makes your home stand above the competition.” Home Staging, which originated in California 30 years ago, is gaining popularity on the East Coast as sellers try to make their homes more appealing to potential buyers. “Home Staging is used very commonly in almost all real estate transactions in California,” said Jane Johnson, a Realtor with Prudential Fox & Roach in Yardley. “You have your mortgage lender, your Realtor and your Home Stager.” This is now becoming the norm locally in order to ensure your home for sale looks its absolute best. Brown said, “The Home Stagers’ job is to make a home more appealing to prospective buyers by removing clutter, redecorating and making the house look like a model home.” That means removing family photos, cleaning rugs and cabinets and moving furniture to maximize a room’s space. Buyers want to imagine their own possessions in a house, not what belongs to the homeowner, according to Pelly. “People are trying to be more competitive on the market; they have to Stage.” A Web site for the Home Staging industry, estimates that Staged homes sell twice as quickly — 11 days on the market vs. 22 days for a non-staged home — and for an average of 6.9 percent more money. “Only 10 percent of buyers can see a home’s potential,” Brown said. “You have to show off and showcase your home’s potential. Buyers can’t imagine it.” Andy Donohue, president of the Bucks County Association of Realtors, said spending a little extra money on Staging can make the home more competitive. “The marketplace is more conducive to doing anything that’s going to help market a home other than putting in a listing and waiting for offers to come in,” said Donohue, a Realtor with RE/MAX Centre Realtors in Jamison. “You have to market a home. The Home Stager have a definite purpose. They do an excellent job.” Pelly said Creative Staging recently worked on a home that had been on the market for 84 days. It sold the day after they Staged it, she said. Pelly and Brown said homeowners should see their Staging services as an investment. Creative Staging offers a free Initial Staging Consultation; if you hire them to professionally do the Staging work, you then pay a fee. However, this investment is going to be much less than the amount of your first price reduction should you reduce your home’s listing price. Instead, put this money to work for you. Get your home professionally Staged and you will reap the rewards. The Bucks County Courier Times Set Up To Sell By: Crissa Shoemaker Those precious family photos, all the appliances on the kitchen counter the hairspray in the bathroom, all that excessive furniture— it all needs to go if you want to sell your home. So say Julie Pelly and Susan Brown, owners of Creative Staging, a business that makes it easier to sell your home while helping you pack in the process. Pelly and Brown, who both have marketing and interior design backgrounds, professionally “stage” homes, removing furniture, pictures and all manner of clutter to make a house look a little less lived-in. “Our specialty is making a home look like a model home,” Brown said. “It appeals most to the average buyer.” They offer free assessments to homeowners, but if you want them to do the job, their fees can be a few hundred dollars. The money is worth it, though. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, professionally staged homes can sell twice as fast for 15 percent more money than non-staged homes. Staging your home means getting rid of all those photos of your family trip to Disney World and that antique chair that everyone else thinks is ugly. Those things make your home more comfortable for you, but it’s far less attractive to homebuyers, Pelly and Brown said. “Buyers make their decision within seconds of walking into a home,” Brown said. Buyers must be able to imagine their possessions in your space. If you have contemporary furniture and they’re antique lovers, they might not even look upstairs. “Our goal is to have the buyer walk in and imagine themselves in the home,” Pelly said. Sometimes the job is as simple as moving a flowerpot which they do and there is, of course, no charge. Other times a home can call for moving a baby grand piano. (Brown and Pelly will do that, by themselves, to make your home look better.) Their goal is to draw attention to a room’s best features. “You’re selling space,” Brown said. “It’s no longer your home.” That might be a hard thing for some homeowners to accept. Brown and Pelly try to make it as easy as possible, helping homeowners pack and never, ever, insulting their décor. After all, their own homes are just as cluttered and personal, they said. “How you live and how you sell your home are different,” Pelly said. “I live in the before pictures. Everyone does.” But when it comes to potential homebuyers, the before doesn’t always sell. They want [a potential home] as neutral as possible, as updated as possible,” said Robert Ricchetti, an agent with Weidel Realtors in Newtown. “If it’s not updated, they’re willing to make concessions if the home is the right size, in the right area. The closer you get to a space where someone can imagine themselves in there, imagine their personal items, you’re definitely on the right track.” Pelly and Brown generally use only what’s in the house, but they can bring in props if a home really needs the extra help. Their traveling orchid has done wonders in numerous homes, they said. When they’re finished, they say, your house is going to look dramatically different and a lot better than homes that haven’t been staged. And that might make a potential buyer a lot happier. “It’s more difficult for people today to accept anything less than what they expect, neutral and fresh, everything up to their standards,” Ricchetti said. “With the addition of all these home shows and decorating shows, everybody is really savvy now. That’s what they expect when they walk into a home. The Daily Intelligencer Making a Home a House By: John Anastasi The family photos, the menus taped to the refrigerator, the rock 'n' roll posters in the teenager's bedroom and that ugly old recliner in the cluttered family room are the things that give a home character. They can also distract or scare off potential homebuyers. Tapping one of the latest trends in real estate, a new class of professionals is getting paid to strip houses of their personalities - or at least the personalities their owners gave them - and "stage" them for sale. People who live in a house every day do not see what visitors see when they arrive. That is where Creative Staging comes in. "You want buyers to be able to envision themselves living in your home," said Julie Pelly, co-owner of Creative Staging LLC. "When a buyer walks in, we want them to see the house they want to buy and it's a house that is neutral and uncluttered." Pelly and her partner Susan Brown have backgrounds in marketing and interior design and have been Staging homes for almost two years. Charging either $600 for a half day or $1,200 for a full day, Pelly and Brown depersonalize lived-in homes to make them look like model homes. They rearrange furniture if it blocks or obscures anything that would help sell the house, and remove furniture altogether if it makes the room look small. "Some places will have a beautiful fireplace that is blocked by a couch," said Brown. "We want to highlight the focal points of the room by working with what we have." Sometimes they even buy items to place in rooms, then sell them to the homeowners at cost but purchasing items is always a last resort, they prefer to use items the seller already has in the home. They remove carpets that hide attractive floors, color-coordinate rooms, change lighting to accent the positive and "de-clutter" counter spaces. "People want to see how much counter space there is," said Pelly. "Countertops sell." When people live somewhere, family photos, odd trinkets and collectibles make the place feel comfortable. But when the house is being shown for sale, they can distract the buyer from the house. Pelly said removing those items prevents them from becoming a topic of conversation and keeps the buyers focused their mission - to buy a house. The pair said business has been good lately and that their efforts often help sellers move homes quicker and get better prices. The key for sellers is to stop thinking about their house as their home. It's no longer a home, it's a house and a house is a product.