What is a Home Staging Consultation?

Not to be confused with a visit to the home simply to gather the info needed to provide a quote, a home staging consultation is a paid service in which a professional home staging consultant provides the home sellers with a visual marketing plan for the home in the form of valuable, custom recommendations that will increase the home's perceived value in the eyes of potential buyers. This consultation is usually provided for homes that will remain occupied while on the market. In other words, the homeowners will continue to live in the home after it's listed. However, a consultation for vacant listings is also very useful, particularly for older homes that need some cosmetics updates.

I give away a lot of free home staging tips to both agents and sellers, but I can only provide very generic, one-size-fits-all advice in this type of format. To provide recommendations tailored to a specific home and help the sellers pull maximum equity out of their investment, I need to spend a couple hours viewing the specific house in question.

Here's what you should expect every good home staging consultant to address during a custom pre-listing consultation:

CURB APPEAL  - The front exterior of the house is almost always the buyers' first impression of the home, because it's usually both the first image (or "cover" image) in the online listing, as well as the first view they'll see of the home if and when they see it in person. Notice I said "if" they see it in person. If the home doesn't appeal to them in the photos, there's a good chance they won't bother to look at the other photos, let alone schedule a showing with their agent.

A good home stager will start the consultation in front of the home and begin addressing everything that can and should be done to increase curb appeal. How extensive my recommendations are will depend on the current state of the market, and how the home compares to others in the same neighborhood. In a seller's market, I'm unlikely to advise the homeowners to do anything as costly as repainting the entire exterior, but I may recommend they paint the trim, the garage door, and/or the front door. I will also share my recommendations for any improvements needed to the house numbers, fence, gate, mailbox, landscaping, driveway, sidewalk, porch, and lighting. 

THE "SECOND IMPRESSION" - At the entrance of the home, or foyer, I will put myself in the shoes of a home buyer and assess the first rooms I see as I enter the home. I call this the "second impression". If the exterior of the home had enough appeal to get the buyers to swipe through the rest of the online photos, and maybe even visit the home, this will be what they see next. And it's from this vantage point that they'll decide if it's worth their time to continue their tour of the home. The more time you can get buyers to remain in the home during a showing, the more likely it will be that they'll submit an offer. The rooms I'll see from the entrance of the home will be the priority rooms, so I'll will want to address those before moving on to the other rooms.

COSMETIC UPDATES - In addition to any recommendations I may have had for painting or replacing fixtures on the exterior of the home, I'll specify any minor comsmetic updates that will help elevate the perceived value of the interior of the property, as well. This may include paint, light fixtures, plumbing fixtures, countertops, cabinets, tile, flooring, door and/or cabinet hardware. Just as with the curb appeal, how extensive my recommendations will be depends on the market and the comps in the neighborhood. Sellers don't need to spend as much time and money on updates in a sellers' market, but less expensive and easy updates can go a long way toward getting the home sold for a higher percentage of the asking price.

HOW THE HOME WILL PHOTOGRAPH - As I move from room to room during the staging consultation, I'm not only viewing it from the perspective of buyers who will be visiting the home in person, but also the same angles from which the real estate photographer will be shooting the marketing photos. The perspective we see in a photo often differs from what we see when we're standing in the room. Since the marketing photos are nearly always what a buyer will see first, we must make the camera's perspective a priority. This means I might recommend rearranging some of the furnishings. I may also recommend certain art and decor be removed from the room, or relocated to another room in the house, if I predict any aspect of that item won't photograph well. For example, the color red.

CLUTTER - In the context of staging a home to sell, we're not defining clutter in the colloquial sense. That's to say, we're not just referring to the piles of mail sitting on the kitchen counter. "Clutter" in a house that's for sale is not just anything that makes the home look messy and disorganized, but also...

• Anything that is going to distract the buyers and hinder their ability to focus on the selling features of the home (I call this "visual chaos", and it's not always the number of items in a room causing this. It might even be too many clashing colors or patterns.)
• Anything that is eating up too much perceived square footage and making the home feel smaller
  
• Anything that is outdated and/or showing excessive signs of wear and tear, which will reflect on the house itself, making the whole home feel outdated and poorly maintained.
  

A good home stager isn't just going to stand in the middle of a room and simply say, "declutter". They're going to indicate specifically what needs to be removed from the room (or at least hidden). 

PERSONAL EFFECTS - A home needs to be depersonalized before it's photographed and shown to buyers. But like the decluttering process, most homeowers (and even real estate agents) don't fully comprehend what depersonalizing means in this context. We are finally at a point where most agents know to tell their home sellers to remove their family photos, but that's usually where their advice ends. A proper home staging consultation involves identifying every item in the home that is going to remind potential buyers that a specific family is currently living there. Those personal effects are like a dog marking it's territory, and will make the home feel "unavailable".

I understand that in occupied listings, it's impossible to hide the fact that someone is living there. But, the home needs to look and feel as if any family could be living there. Nobody viewing the home online or in person should be able to create a profile of the current residents. That's to say, they shouldn't be able to determine the sellers' political ideaology, religion, occupation, favorite sports teams, or hobbies. While it's helpful to target the buying demographic that will be most attracted to the house based on location and size, we don't want to alienate any buyers based on factors that wouldn't normally have anything to do with the home itself. We want them to be able to imagine themselves living in the home no matter who they are.  

Depersonalizing is also important for the seller's safety and the safety of their family and other occupants of the home. After my first walk-through of a home during a recent consultation, I began addressing the young daughter of my client by name. Both the little girl and her mother were alarmed that I knew the child's name, since neither had told me what it was. I pointed out that the girl's name was spelled out in bold, wooden letters on her bedroom wall. I then reminded my client that even though most buyers who will visit the home for a showing are pre-qualified as actually being in the market for a home, that doesn't mean they can all be trusted. Sadly, not even all buyers' agents can be trusted. Furthermore, everyone with an internet connection-not just potential buyers and their agents-will be able to view the photos of this child's room on sites like Zillow and Redfin. It's a prime resource for predators to learn about the occupants of a home, as well as the home's layout.

REPAIRS & MAINTENANCE - I'm not a licensed home inspector, and it's not my role or responsibility during a consulation to identify every necessary repair, but I will point out the obvious. These are usually simple things that, even though obvious to anyone not living there, we tend to stop noticing ourselves when we're the occupants of the home.

CLEANLINESS - We're not talking about the "mother-in-law-tidy" (as one of my mentor's calls it). This goes beyond wiping down the kitchen counters and vacuuming the floors before the in-laws come to visit. The house must be thoroughly deep cleaned before being shown. I go into detail on everything that needs to be cleaned during a consultation, as well as share some cleaning tips and links to my favorite cleaning products. This includes odors. If you're an agent who doesn't want to have the hard conversation with your sellers about the offensive odor in their property, send me in to do it.

FURNITURE LAYOUTS - I mentioned earlier that sometimes the furniture needs to be rearranged for photographs, but there may be additional reasons for this. Some rooms may have too much furniture, while others don't have enough. Some rooms may have furniture in them that doesn't belong there (such as a recliner in a kitchen). During the staging consultation, I'll advise how the furniture should be rearranged, which pieces should be relocated to another area in the house, and which pieces should be removed from the home altogether (sold, donated, or put into storage). If my company is hired to return to the home for photo styling (also known as "occupied staging"), my team and I will be happy to rearrange the furniture ourselves.

DECOR - During the staging consultation, I'll indicate which decor accents (art, vases, floral arrangements, etc) can be repurposed for staging the home before it's photographed and shown. I'll recommend all other items be prepacked and put into storage (or sold, donated... whatever the homeowner chooses). The clients will have the option of hiring me to return to the home to style it using the remaining decor before the marketing photos are taken. I may also offer a proposal for a rental package that includes additional decor from my company's inventory, if they don't already have enough or don't have the right pieces. However, in case my team and I won't be returning to the home for photo styling, I'll also provide them with some DIY styling tips.

BEDDING - The bedding in the primary bedroom (formerly known as the master bedroom) needs to be replaced more often than not. The other bedrooms may need new bedding, as well, but even sellers who are on a tight budget really need to make the primary bedroom a priority, because this room is a huge priority to home buyers. During a staging consultation, I'll let the homeowners know if they need to replace some or all of the bedding, as well as provide them with links to the bedding I use most often when I'm staging vacant homes. I'll also provide them with instructions for styling a bed to make it feel more luxurious (aka "expensive", which elevates the perceived value of the entire home).

Below is a "before" image I took of a primary bedroom during a home staging consultation. Take a long look at this and see if you can identify everything that should be done to prepare this room for market. Unless you're a trained home staging consultant yourself, I'm betting you're going to miss some things.

After providing a consultation to a home seller, most home staging consultants can also offer additional services such as shopping for any new fixtures, furniture, bedding, and decor they recommended be replaced or added. Most consultants, myself included, also own or work for a staging company that stocks items that home sellers can rent. Then the staging company will deliver these items and put everything into place. This service is known by most as "occupied home staging". Personally, I prefer "photo styling" since that's essentailly what we're doing for occupied homes. We're styling the home in preparation for the all-important marketing photos.

For the home featured in the photos above and below, I provided the initial consultation, plus shopping guidance, a rental package, and photo styling. This client purchased a new light fixture for the dining room, some new furniture pieces, and new bedding. All purchases (except for the headboard) were from links I provided or were chosen during a day of shopping together at local stores. He rented the art and decor accents needed to complete the visual merchandising process from my own inventory. He also hired me to update the fireplace in his living room. He accepted an offer the first day this home hit the market.

I hope after explaining the process, and showing you some before and after photos, you have a better understanding of the value of investing in a professional home staging consultation. Book your consultation and get your visual marketing plan as early as possible so you have the time needed to implement the recomendations provided before putting the home on the market.