Sell When You’re Ready

There is always a natural slow-down in real estate in the winter, but recently we came across an article in The Washington Post that confirmed what we already knew from the smart Realtors we work with.

“Seasonally more homes sell in spring and early summer than fall and winter. Roughly 21 percent of sales occur from January thru March (the lowest quarter) and 35 percent between May and July (the busiest three months).  However, don’t let the numbers lead you to believe spring/summer is the best time to sell.  It’s just the time more people do.  There is actually no bad time to sell.  Home sales take place every day, 12 months of the year.”

If you are a psychic, then maybe you can wait out the winter, knowing spring flowers will bring a sale. But, if you don’t have the ability to see the future and you’re ready to sell, why wait? Maybe the absolute perfect buyer for your home just got a job transfer and it happens to be December. Maybe interest rates for buyers are better now than they will be in the spring.  Maybe your house will show better in all its holiday glory (can we help you ensure it with Staging?:) Certainly, less competition is always a good thing!

On a personal note, we sincerely thank you for supporting Staged Homes of Indy every season of the year.  Happiness to you and your families, this holiday and into 2013!

Polly (The Ritz)

Kathy (Kat) and Maureen (Mosey)

To Decorate, But Not To Craft?

We love to decorate. We consider ourselves creative. Crafting can be decorating things.

And, yet, none of us love to craft.

That’s what all 3 of us admitted recently when we were asked to stage our first craft room as part of a large Carmel, IN property we worked on (if you are looking for a craft room, as well as a 3-car garage, a gorgeous family room and kitchen, and a guest house, check out our staged listing here).

In order to stage our craft room, we all went home and ravaged some stored bins to bring in anything we thought might have visual appeal in a craft room. Surprisingly, as non-crafters, we brought back a lot of crafting material!

It got us thinking.

Why aren’t we natural crafters? Do we not have enough patience to craft? Is the payoff not as good as a large, finished staged home? Are we too busy with technology to stop and do a hands-on crafting project? And, finally, do people who enjoy crafting not like home decorating???

Maybe this post could be our inspiration to finally do a crafting day of sorts that we always wanted to do at our warehouse! We could spray paint over a taste-specific floral pattern on some garden stools that could be very chic in a sunroom (or next to a claw-foot tub in a master bath or as living room end tables).  We could give the cool, old film reels Kat found at a garage sale the TLC they need so we could place them in a family room with a movie theme. We could give new life to some beautiful prints that either have broken glass or are in broken frames. Now THIS is our kind of crafting!

So, here you go! Our first, staged craft room.

If this was your home, let us know how YOU would use this room. Would it be the craft room the builder intended it to be? A workout room? We decided we’d make it a gift wrapping room, so we could pretend we had as much money as Candy Spelling or Ivana Trump:)

Back to Blogging

What does it mean if you go to write a new blog post and you have to look up your log-in and password? What does it mean if you feel you need to re-introduce yourself? What does it mean if you get into your account and see your last post was… APRIL 20th!!?? (Really?)

In our case, it means you’ve gotten through the extremely busy season (spring through early summer), staging like crazy in 100-degree heat and coming home more spent than inspired to write. It means you had a massive garage sale to purge the puffy, outdated sofa; ugly, ceramic chicken; and every deemed-not-cool-enough pillow. Most excitedly, it means you have completely revamped the Staged Homes of Indy website.

(Oh, and somewhat gracefully gotten your kids back to school, only narrowly avoiding the dreaded comment, “Mom, I’m bored.”)

Check out a few shots from the last few months! And, please forgive us. We promise to keep you posted more often.

Top 10 Signs You Should Stage

From the birthplace of Letterman, we bring you the top 10 signs you should Stage®:

#10 You’re preparing to sell your home (this one submitted by Captain Obvious).

#9 Your neighbor asks you “So, how long has it been on the market?”.

#8 Your neighbor on the other side asks you to chair next year’s block party.

#7 HGTV wants to feature you for a staging show.

#6 It’s spring. You want your home to stand out during the most competitive season.

#5 It’s spring. But you put your house on the market last fall.

#4 You really need to sell quickly (staged homes sell on avg. in 29 days or less compared to 145 days for non-staged).

#3 You’re considering a price reduction (staging almost always costs less than the reduction you’re considering).

#2 Your realtor advises you to stage. Realtors are smart:)

And the #1 sign you should stage- the F.C. Tucker yellow on your for-sale sign has sun-faded to white (College Ave. home in Broad Ripple, call Staged Homes of Indy immediately! 317 823 6026).

That’s Gonna Leave A Mark

Poor Star Stager, Kat, got beat up this week. Like, she bled 4 times. It sort of happens like that. Each property we work on decides to minorly injure someone and as we move furniture in and out, one unfortunate victim takes the brunt all day.

Most of the time you witness it and the guilt pours in to the person who didn’t give the warning soon enough. “WATCH OUT FOR THAT _________!!!!” 

And, DOH! That’s gonna leave a mark.

Or you hear a loud cry of “SHISHKABOB!!!!!” from the other room and you know the corner of an end table is in someone’s shin.

That’s gonna leave a mark.

Just today, we were showing off our staging war scars.  NOT pretty (which, btw, was in stark contrast to the house we staged!).

We think The Ritz has little angels watching over us because no one has ever been injured really badly.  But, now that we said it, we think we’ll end this post.

So we can go knock on wood (probably with our shins).

Special note to Kat: Mosey is so sorry about laughing at you that 2^nd to last injury.

Now go, my people….and stage!

If you are selling your home, the power of staging is undeniable. And in our admittedly biased opinion you MUST Stage^® BEFORE you put it on the market.

If you don’t believe us and A) you’re a masochist who wants your home to be on the market for a longer period of time and/or B) You own a money tree and it wouldn’t matter if your home sold for less money, well, that is your right.

BUT, if you’re akin to most people who have gone through selling their home, the quick, painless, and profitable way might just be the better route to take:)

So, stage you must.

If you can’t hire professional stagers for whatever reason, there are many tips and things you can do to stage yourself (google it).  Plants, more lighting, clean, clean, clean!

But if you CAN hire professional stagers and you live in Indianapolis, then it is widely known that Staged Homes of Indy is the stager to hire:)  You know that staged-look that feels so cold and still empty when you walk into a home?  The one where you walk in and say, “Oh, this house is staged.”? Yeah, well, we don’t do that.

We do that staging where clients walk in and usually say one word, “Wow!” “I’ll take it”.  That staging-look that still has the “perfect” feel, but hits you in a warm, welcoming, aspirational way. The one that makes your home look better and more attractive then it has ever looked, and makes you want to scrap the whole “got a new job that is paying me 100x more than I make now, in a beautiful part of the country, with great schools and near my family” and just stay in your same gorgeous home and forget selling it all together.

But enough of the self-promotion (Hire us! Hire us!).

And back to why you should stage your home.

We’re not ones for boring lists of statistics (94% of staged homes sell on average in 29 days vs. 145 days for non-staged homes). So let’s just start by giving credit to the founder of staging, Barb Schwartz of stagedhomes.com* (staged homes spend 83% less time on the market than non-staged homes). The Ritz even knows Barb, because she’s cool like that (home staging is 2^nd only to “clean and declutter” for ROI according to a survey of sellers’ home improvements).  In fact, we think Barb says it best on why you should stage: “The investment IN staging your home will always be less than a price reduction ON your home”.

It’s true. Staging’s worth it. Trust us. (And hire us! Shoot, we can’t make it stop!)

*All credit belongs to stagedhomes.com for our (non) list of stats

Confessions of Middle-aged Stageaholics

We go ga-ga for bling (some of us more than others. Mosey.)

We’re not matchy-matchy Stagers.

We’re kind of loving gold over silver lately.

Huge, wall-to-wall bookcase to stage? YES! That’s what we’re talking about. (Kat).

We get punchy and slap-happy around 3pm. OK, maybe earlier. Like all day.

We’re absolutely sick of losing our coffee (The Ritz/Mosey) and tea (Kat) mugs in the warehouse. [“Do we have that console in stock?” and go look and, poof, mug is gone forever! Eaten up by the big warehouse monster.] Can someone please make an alarm that goes on your to-go mug?

We wear back support belts like professional movers and lifting gloves like body-builders at the gym.

2/3 of us have fake plants in our own homes. 0/3 of us display fake fruit.

.00001% of our beds in properties might collapse if you sit on them.

No matter how many lists we make, 50% of the time we forget something and The Ritz has to bring it back to the property. “Seriously? We’re missing one lamp finial?” (note to clients: we do not charge for these extra trips)

We don’t mind the unglamorous parts of our jobs. We would do this any day over sitting behind a desk somewhere!

Girl Power

Welcome to Staged Homes of Indy’s blog! We are a female-owned, female-staffed business and have been staging homes here in Indianapolis and surrounding areas for 6 years!

Meet:

The Ritz (our boss, “Polly wants a (Ritz) cracker”)

Kat (The Enforcer)

Mosey (As in Maureen Z.)

As many small business owners know so well, we do everything ourselves! What makes SHOI unique is that we are one of a few Indianapolis staging companies that own our inventory (2,000 sq. ft warehouse stacked to the rafters!).  Because we don’t need to rent furniture, we can pass those savings on to you.

That also means, when we Stage® a property, we design the home in our warehouse, pack up the inventory, load up Nelly*, drive to the property, unload, move everything in, and Stage®! Of course, when it sells, we also do the opposite trip.

Here are some sample comments we’ve heard on said trips:

“Are you that all-female moving company?” Uh, no, but we’d sure like to meet them. And, wait, isn’t that an urban myth?

“Whoa, can you handle that?” Uh, yes, we do this all the time. Check out our guns!

“Wow, do you need help with that?” Well, we usually don’t accept help from our clients but you have no idea how thankful we are that you offered!

And the facial expressions/comments we can’t hear when men see 3 (attractive, if we do say so ourselves:) women driving a box truck on 465.

Finally, the comment we hear the most:

“You guys should hire movers.”  Someday, maybe, but until then we’ll rely on Girl Power!

*Our vanilla-hued box truck, “Nelly Vanilly”