Sweet Give Aways

July: Chapter, Realtor, Homeowner....sweet give-away...Saltwater Kisses!

Nothing says "summer" like cotton candy and watermelon kisses...fresh from the shore!

NARdiGras 2010

Stagedhomes.com is proud to announce that Barb Schwarz, CEO and Creator of Staging®, once again will be a featured speaker at the annual convention of the National Association of REALTORS®. NAR’s annual convention, NARdiGras 2010, is scheduled for November 5 through 8, 2010, and Schwarz’ presentation will take place on Sunday Nov 7, 2010, from 3:30 p.m.to 5 p.m.

During her presentation From Staging to Pricing to Getting it Sold!, Schwarz will share hot Staging ideas and tips, listing presentation key points and how to better price a Staged Listing to sell too. She will discuss how REALTORS® can handle sellers’ objections and how to positively educate sellers on what agent and Stagers really do as they work for the seller. “Too many agents assume the sellers know, but the truth is that the public does not know what we do,” said Schwarz. “It has to be verbal and very visual.”

This year, Schwarz celebrates 25 years as Certified Professional Speaker. Since 1972, Schwarz has educated Realtors®, Home Stagers® and the public on Home Staging®.

As a seasoned speaker and top real estate producer, Schwarz has logged over 18,000 hours on the speaker’s platform. To date, over a million REALTORS® have attended her various programs, including her one-day program How to List and Sell Residential Real Estate Successfully. Having traveled 40 weeks each year, she’s been a featured speaker at almost all National Association of Realtors® conventions, state Realtor® conventions as well as all major real estate franchise conventions.

Her gift for speaking and ability to educate, motivate and entertain was recognized by the National Speakers Association in 1990 when they awarded her the coveted designation of Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), earned by less than 250 speakers worldwide. Barb Schwarz is a leader, an innovator, and a truly gifted speaker who shares the wisdom of her personal triumphs. Those who experience Schwarz are always struck by her incredible energy as well as the practical substance of her programs. Schwarz is also the author of seven books, including the recently published Staging To Sell: The Secret To Selling Homes In A Down Market.

Barb is the creator of “Staging To Sell and Staging To Live” ® concepts and she holds the Federally Registered Trademark from the US and Canadian Governments on Stage®. Barb invented the Home Staging concept and industry when she entered the world of real estate as an agent in Bellevue, WA, in the early 70’s. Nearly 40 years later, Schwarz has repeatedly been acknowledged as being among the top 50 most influential women in the real estate industry. To date over 21,000 have participated in the accredited ASP® Course and Designation for Realtors® and Stagers. Schwarz is the Founder and Chairwoman of ‘The International Association of Home Staging Professionals®,” and the Founder and Director of ‘The Staging University®.”

Schwarz is also the founder and CEO of Stagedhomes.com, the internationally recognized leader in the Home Staging Industry because of the Home Staging educational trainings of the ASP® Course and Designation, the Stagedhomes.com Home Staging Directory where the public finds ASP® Real Estate Agents and ASP® Stagers to list and Stage® their homes, and the Stagedhomes.com Staged Homes portal which lists homes that are Staged for sale.

As I reflect on the events of the day, I am humbled on just how blessed I am:

• It was just about a year ago that I was re-introduced to professional Home Staging. I was having lunch with my dear friend, Eleanor. Among other topics of conversation, she asked if I had ever considered a career in Home Staging. I had remembered seeing something about that in the paper years ago. It had caught my eye then, but at the time life circumstances were such that a career was out of the question. But now the time was right!
  
• Jump ahead a year..I am a professional ASP Home Stager. I have been personally trained by Barb Schwarz, the creator of Home Staging. Barb's tireless energy and enthusiasm is nothing less than inspirational.
  
• I am on the Board of the Seattle Chapter of International Association of Home Staging Professionals (IAHSP)...Patty Bonnell, President, and Ede Bookstein, Ethic and Education Chair, have mentored and encouraged me...and I am privileged to call these talented women not only colleagues, but friends.
  
• I am involved in a profession I love! Home Staging completes me in so many areas of my life while providing an opening for hope for the unknowns of tomorrow...Blue Ribbon Staging Auburn, WA .

On so many levels, ASP Home Staging found me just when I needed it most! If you are a realtor, or a home owner in the market to list your home for sale, Home Staging may very well be just what YOU are looking for!

If you want to sell your home for the highest dollar amount possible while being on the market for the shortest amount of time possible, let ASP Home Staging find YOU, just when you need it most!

I welcome the opportunity to ASP Stage your home and help move you closer to your dream:

Visit me : https://www.stagedhomes.com/featured/featured_old.php?asp=27308

"After" Photos

Summer has come to Washington!

Along with fields of ripe berries, ice cream trucks joyfully ringing the bells as they tour our neighborhood, and the smell of sun tan lotion...it's legitimately sandal season!

Sandal season is so much prettier with a pedicure!

It's Saturday morning, and the first order of my day is a trip to the salon.


On my drive home, I pondered my situation:

In a basket under the sink in my bathroom, I have my own nail care station complete with bottles of polish, cuticle cream, brushes, files and toe separators. I already own everything I need to apply polish to nails...and if polish on the nails is the intent, then why would I choose to spend three hours in a salon on a beautiful Saturday morning to pay someone else to paint my nails?

I have an artistic eye for these kinds of things. I know my way around a color wheel and a beauty counter. I know good work when I see it. In the end I come to the conclusion that I am able to do them "good enough". While they may be "good enough" for me, any one looking at my "polished" nails would have quite a different opinion of my results.

How can I get such drastically different results? It's a basic reality that though I use the same tools, read articles and own books on nail techniques, and even work from the same expert hints...I lack the expertise to gain the same results.

These comments are not so different from the comments we hear from Sellers / Realtors who opt not to have a professional ASP Staging of a home before listing on the market. There seems to often be a wife, sister, or girlfriend who has an "eye" for this kind of thing, afterall they watch all the HGTV shows on home staging. What they are really saying is they believe they can present the house "good enough", but just like my toes..."good enough" isn't necessarily "Good!"

The investment in having your house professionally staged by an ASP Home Staging Professional prior to listing with your agent is always going to be less than the first reduction on your listing when it sits in the market...days, weeks, or months. It may help you to make your decision to Stage or not to Stage when you ask your agent when and how much the initial reduction will be. (Yiikes...How much?)

Since "a picture is worth a thousand words", it's really the "AFTER" photos that will be your Buyers first impression of your house. They don't care what it looked like "before," they are here NOW.

When it comes to making the offer, buyers won't care how much "stuff" you took out, or how much time you spent getting your product ready for sale.

It won't matter to buyers how long this has been your home, or how difficult it may be for you to be selling this chapter of your life.

Buyers are in the market to buy their "home". If your house doesn't capture their hearts, they will move on down the aisle to find one that does.

Price is generally the first filter for the buyer. Price is the ingredient that will get them to your door step. In today's virtual market, that "door step" may very well be a visit to the web listing via a googled address and not through your agent at all.

The buyer's first visual, emotional impression will be the "After" photos on your web listing and posted brochure.

The second emotional impression will be the "feeling" that they get when they tour through the house.

Buying a home is an emotional decision. You want buyers to fall in love with your house and see it as their home.

You will never know how many Would-have-been Buyers walked away from your house without ever opening your front door because "good enough" wasn't "GOOD!"

Give yourself every benefit possible! You are selling every room in your house, be sure to maximize every viewing and ASP Stage EVERY room!

...As for my morning at the salon, yes, I staged all my nails and had a manicure too!

You'll have to trust me on this one, no one wants to see my "before" shots!

Create something extraordinary

I just simply couldn't resist this...not that I have a "Sam" in my life, but I find the "Goodnite" irresistibly sweet.

These simple, every day items interrupted my day and got me to thinking...So much of life is wrapped up in our ability to create.

Writers take letters and create masterpieces of journalism.
Designers take scraps of fabric and create fashion.
Bakers take flour and sugar and create everything delicious.
and...
ASP Home Stagers take bits and pieces of ordinary and create something extraordinary.

Passion and creativity combine in a simply beautiful way as staging changes are orchestrated. We enter a property, not really knowing what we will find...bright and shiny, or tired and dated. Either way, when we walk out, neither we nor the property have remained unchanged.

As property owners, we are connected to our design. We are comfortable with our treasures around us. We are familiar with every stick of furniture, every photo and every memory piece that we see resting in it's place.

When we think of clutter, we think of the junk mail on the counter, the newspaper on the chair, and the shoes that have been left near the back door.

We remove the obvious and consider our property is now staged and ready for an Open House.

But Mr. and Mrs. Buyer realize something quite different.

They don't notice our lovely bay window view of Mt. Rainier...they can't get past the ornate draperies that frame the view.

They don't notice our high ceilings...they get stuck in the photo collages of our annual photo sessions that line the entry walls.

But they are observing, and they do notice.

They notice our collections, our hobbies, our family members, and our accomplishments.

Above all the things that they don't notice is that those things are the very things that have made this property our home, and our home is not for sale, our home is going with us.

They don't realize just how wonderful our property is, or just how perfect it could be for them.

They don't realize it, because our things are creating visual noise that is crowding them out.

And just that quickly, the first impression has been made, and just that quickly, they have moved on.

An ASP Home Stager will help us to see the big picture, to see through the eye of the buyer. After all, our goal is that Mr. and Mrs. Buyer will fall in love with our property...not our home.

Let's not let the opportunity to realize the greatest return on our investment pass us by.

Remember, we only get one opportunity to make a first impression...let's make it an excellent one!

Visual Markets

I love the Jetsons...homes in the sky, cars that fly, dogs that talk and picture phones. It's the perfect world that we were all going to live in when we entered the space age.

I don't know about your home, but mine is still grounded on earth, my car still runs on tires touching asphalt, my dog barks, and the picture phones ...well, c'mom, those are pretty cool!

Every week we SKYPE a visit with our family living 3,000 miles away...have you heard of it? From our computer in Washington we are transported to a living room in Ohio. We watch as songs are sung, castles are built, presents are opened and memories are made. What an amazing time to be alive.

It's not just picture phones that have changed...every corner of our life has changed. Technology has opened doors we never before had access to...information, entertainment, necessities, and frivolities.

You may have heard the familiar saying, "You never get a second chance to make a first impression."

When we are in the market for a home, we realize this is very likely the single biggest investment we will make. We may not all have investments in the stock market, 401K accounts, or bundles of cash in a vault somewhere, but we tend to buy into the American Dream to own our home. Housing markets rise and fall. Furnishings go in and out of style...but the constant remains, we are all looking for shelter, a place to call "HOME".

When we are in the market for a home, the access to technology gives us new avenues to access to the multiple listings of properties that will entice us to a closer look. "Back in the day", and not so many years ago, home buying was quite a different process.

We used to take our weekends scouring through the Sunday Classifieds, driving from property to property, touring through Open Houses, all the while trying to remember the pros and cons of each property...and taking notes, pages and pages of notes, to help us remember the details of each address.

Times have certainly changed!

Today we can get an advance first glance of the property our realtor will show us. We can google the address, find the directions, look at the satellite view and check out the neighborhood! We can even take a visual tour of the property...inside and out, in the middle of the night, from the comfort of our computer! Pretty amazing, don't you think?

On the other hand, when we are selling the property, we may not always know who is visiting our listing. Mr. and Mrs. Buyer's first look at our property, may not require so much as a knock on our door...all they may use is a click of a mouse.

Visual marketing is a busy Buyer's first introduction to our property.

What does your on-line listing say about your property?

• "These rooms are empty, this space is lifeless."
  ...a vacant home can present like an empty cave.
  
• "Watch where you walk, we have life happening here."
  ...a cluttered home may be the sign of a happy life, but it leaves the imagination no place to dream.
  
• "A family lives here, but the place isn't much fun."
  ...don't confuse bare walls and clean counters with a staged property.

or does your ASP Staged property say:

• "This property is warm and welcoming."
• "This property is clean and cared for."
• "This property is our new home."

When buyers like what they see, they set the appointment, visit the property, and if everything "feels" right, an offer is made, papers are signed, a new key is made...and a house becomes a home.

Don't give up your edge by presenting an awkward first impression...it may be the only chance you get!

Have your property staged with an ASP Home Stager...don't confuse decorating or emptying a room as staging...the camera can be your listing's best friend or worst enemy...which will it be for yours?

Your Wonderful Family

I caught myself thinking today about my adorable grandson...here he is at three months old, and in a few short weeks he will be blowing out TWO candles on his birthday cake.

In the past two years I have seen him only a handful of times. They live in Ohio...we live in Washington. I purchase a new photo card every time I am going to see him. And every photo card ends up with HUNDREDS of pictures of him...smiling, running, eating, sleeping...well you get the idea, I am a proud Grammy :)

But...as cute as he is, and he IS cute....and as adorable as he is, and he IS adorable...how many of those pictures would you really want to see when you tour through my house for sale?

That's what I thought...not so much, right?!

Your buyers are no different than you are. They don't really want to see the pictures you took last Christmas, the photo shoots from graduation, or the sweet little girl getting on the bus for the first day of school.

When we stage your property, we will ask you to pack your treasured memories away, not because your pictures aren't wonderful...quite the opposite, it's because they are so wonderful, so personal...too personal, actually.

Rooms that are shown filled with YOUR memories, don't leave visual room for Mr. and Mrs. Buyer's memories. You don't need to sell anyone on your wonderful memories...your memories are not for sale :)

Let an ASP Home Stager help you prepare your property for sale. We will remove the decorations that make your home personal, and set the staging that will make your property warm and inviting.

Remember, it's nothing "personal"...it's staging :)