Set stage for a sale.

Byline: Randi Bjornstad The Register-Guard

A tool for selling houses called home staging has been gaining popularity in larger real estate markets for years - there are even television shows on the topic. Now, practitioners of the craft say it's catching on in smaller arenas such as Lane County.

"People need to realize that when they decide to sell their home, it becomes a house, and when they put it on the market, it becomes a product," said Barb Schwarz, a Seattle entrepreneur who calls herself the "creator of home staging."

If it's done right - and depending on the house, "right" can run the gamut from clearing away clutter to rearranging existing furniture to refurbishing entire rooms - sellers often can close deals for up to 20 percent more than they might receive otherwise, Schwarz said.

Local real estate agent Kathie Robidou of Coldwell Banker Curtis Irving Realty agrees that staging a home can hasten a sale and enhance the price.

"A lot of people have trouble figuring out how to arrange a room - they just think of the standard couch-against-the-wall and can't see any other possibilities," Robidou said. "If they don't have an idea in front of them, they can't see it, and staging can help that."

Stagers have been working in the Lane County market for at least three years, she said, "but I think it's really caught on in the last 18 months or so."

Even if the sellers she represents don't want to hire a home staging professional, she encourages them to follow some of the suggestions - especially decluttering - that the pros would do, Robidou said.

"I don't have statistics on how much staging affects the sale price, but I think if you can make a person feel good about a house, you can bring it up a notch or two on price," she said.

Schwarz said she first came up with the idea of home staging more than 30 years ago, when she worked as a real estate agent in Seattle.

"I had a lot of trouble getting people who wanted to sell their homes to do things that would make them more appealing to buyers," she said.

"I had done a lot of performing, as well as design and real estate, and I suddenly realized that a house for sale was like a stage, where every room is a set that will be seen by an audience of potential buyers."

She began refining her idea, advising home sellers how to show their homes better, from eliminating clutter to rearranging furniture to refurnishing some rooms in their homes.

Within a few years, she said she prospered in Seattle real estate sales. After a few more years, she had not only "created the home staging industry" but also gotten full swing into a speaking career she says by now has reached more than a million real estate agents and would-be home stagers.

The cost of home staging varies by region, the size of the house, the amount of clutter and how much home sellers do themselves, she said.

A two-hour consultation that yields a report with suggestions for do-it-yourself sellers can cost $250. A full staging on the West Coast can cost up to $2,800, compared with $1,500 in the Midwest and $3,200 on the East Coast.

Many home stagers maintain storage units full of furniture and accessories they can bring into a home; others rent furniture to create the image they want to convey.

She said the core elements of staging are "rearrange, declutter and clean." Schwarz added, "Most rooms have twice as much stuff in them as people need."

Seven years ago, she decided it was time "to raise the bar on the industry." Schwarz developed a three-day curriculum for certifying "accredited staging professionals," an eight-day course for advanced training, and a two-day course for interested real estate agents.

Since then, her company, StagedHomes.com, has certified 4,000 stagers and trained 10,000 real estate agents. Stagers pay about $2,000 for the three-day course; the sessions for agents run about $350. Annual renewals cost $180 for stagers, $79 for real estate agents.

To provide a network for home stagers, Schwarz created the International Association of Home Staging Professionals, which now has more than 100 chapters throughout the United States and Canada. The Oregon chapter, in Portland, has 45 members, according to the association's Web site.

The association's annual convention, which took place earlier this week in Chicago, drew nearly 300 home stagers and real estate agents.

Schwarz derives her income from seminar, speaking and renewal fees, spending 40 weeks a year on the road. She has 38 employees, including nine trainers.

"I don't franchise this business; I want the people who are doing the staging to have all the income from their work," she said.

Janis Gaines, who worked for two years as a stager in Seattle after becoming accredited through Schwarz's program, StagedHomes.com., moved to Eugene in January to start a home staging business here.

She's said she's finding business surprisingly brisk. Besides dealing with individual homes, she recently staged two model homes in a manufactured home subdivision on Terry Street in west Eugene. She says the number of customers and home stagers is growing.

"When I came back to Eugene, there was only one other person with the same home staging certification I have, and a couple of others in the business who didn't go through the same program," said Gaines, who calls her business The Notably Well-Dressed Home. "Now, just a few months later, there are at least six of us with the ASP certification."

Several of them converged a week ago at the condominium conversion project at Westmoreland Village in west Eugene, to help Gaines with her task of turning empty rooms into spaces calculated to turn open-house lookers into eager home buyers.

"That's one of the best things about staging through Barb Schwarz's program - it's very collaborative," Gaines said. "There's a lot of mentoring, and people will go on other people's jobs two or three times to help them get started. We also work with each other on projects - some days, you're in charge, and some days you're working for someone else."

At Westmoreland Village, four sets of stagers under Gaines' direction placed pieces of furniture and accessories in four model condos, each with a different theme to appeal to a different segment of the market: traditional, urban professional, Asian and color splash.

They fully furnished living rooms and main bedrooms and created "vignettes" in other rooms, using just enough furnishings - in one, a round hassock with a big floppy teddy bear sitting on it - to suggest a child's room.

"It doesn't take a lot of stuff, just enough to give people an idea," said Sue Gabriel, who runs Gabriel Staging and Redesign. When staging a house that's still lived in, "often, you use people's own furnishings, just in a different way.'

Don't confuse home stagers with interior decorators, because the two skills are opposite, Gaines said. "In interior design, you personalize a home, to make it reflect the taste of whoever lives there," she said.

But in staging, you depersonalize it, so potential buyers can see themselves living there. Staging creates focal points to draw people into a room and give them a sense of what is possible - to help them see not what is, but what can be."

QUICK TIPS FOR HOME STAGING

Inside the home:

Clear away clutter; keep decorative objects to a minimum.

Remove excess furniture to make rooms seem larger.

Keep kitchen counters clear; remove clutter from refrigerator doors.

Put away cosmetics, hairbrushes and bathing items neatly in bathroom cupboards; hang coordinated towels in one or two colors.

Don't overload walls with artwork; take down excess pictures and patch and paint nail holes.

Clean carpets, drapes and windows; everything should be spotless.

Box up unneeded possessions neatly; give them away or store them in the garage or a storage unit.

Go through the house room by room, trying to see it as a stranger would.

Outside the home:

Clean the property of wood scraps and other building materials; store out of sight or take to the dump.

Check gutters and roof for dry rot and moss; clean and repair as necessary.

Keep sidewalks, driveway and steps neatly swept.

Prune bushes and trees, especially around windows.

Remove dead plants; spread fresh mulch.

Keep lawn freshly mowed, edged and fertilized.

Clear patios and decks of little planters, flower pots, charcoal, barbecue equipment and toys.

Check and repair paint on outside surfaces, especially the front door and trim.

- `Home Staging: The Winning Way to Sell Your House for More Money,' by Barb Schwarz with Mary Seehafer Sears (John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2006)

FINDING HOME STAGERS

WITH "ACCREDITED

STAGING PROFESSIONAL" CERTIFICATION

The International Association of Home Staging Professionals is a membership group for small businesses providing consulting to enhance the appeal of occupied, vacant or new houses for sale.

On the Internet, go to: www.stagedhomes.com

Click on: Find an ASP home stager

Search by: City name, state or ZIP code; or click on map

Or call: [phone]