Q Realty Can Help You - 9 of the Worst Staging Decisions Ever Made

At the end of every year, my mind naturally drifts to what did and didn’t work this year, in an effort to double down on my successes and avoid repeating my mistakes. Occasionally,I’ll take a look back at my whole lifetime in this same way, reflecting on poor past decisions ranging from old high school sweethearts to bad fashion choices, misguided career moves to things I said and wished, instantly, I could take back.

Rather than letting them fester into regrets, it’s best to look at our mistakes as holding lessons - pitfall avoiding, action-inspiring material we can draw on as we move forward in life. In fact, I actually call my painful past mistakes “tuition”: the price I’ve paid to learn a valuable lesson. The keyword here is valuable. In school, tuition is worth paying because the learning you get in return holds economic value or is otherwise worthwhile.

Tuition is a lot like staging, really: they’re both up-front investments with the potential to make or save you money, in your life, your career, or the sale of your home.

As we grow older and wiser, the goal should be to learn not just from the mistakes we’ve committed - but from those that others have committed, as well. Think of them as tuition-free lessons. I say we should try to do the same with staging - let’s take these ten shockingly bad staging decisions that other home owners have made and continue to make every single day, and boil them down into lessons every home seller can use to drive their own home staging success.

1.  Bizarre collection overload. Let’s face facts: it is very difficult for almost any collection to look orderly and neutral, two high-level aims of home stagin. Unless you have attractive, high-end built-in cases for your collections and target buyers are share your affinity for the objects, even your cool clock collection or the dolls your grandmother gave you can come off as a pile of space-consuming clutter.

via trulia.com

You've seen it on HGTV, House Hunters, and all the other real estate reality TV shows, but is the hype true? Do you really need to stage your home in order to get it sold. The answer isn't as simple as "Yes" or "No".

Whereas one seller's family portraits may be overwhelming and distract the buyer from being able to see the potential of the home, another seller's family pictures may not be so distracting.

Several things are universally true. Clutter is bad. Collections on display usually are not helpful, but rather distracting. Orientation of your furniture IS important, as we want to make sure your rooms appear as open and spacious as possible. Finally, those closets that are jam packed full of clothes, towels, toilet paper, or food, demonstrates to the buyer that there might not be enough storage in the home.

Q Realty, Inc. and our experienced Brokers will help you get your home ready for photos, marketing, and most importantly for the buyers who visit and consider your home for purchase.

Call us today to discuss what we can do to help stage your home for a quick sale!

Posted on Albuquerque Real Estate-Albuquerque Homes For Sale

Stage Your Albuquerque Home - Call Homes In Transition

Among the most insidious impacts of the recession is “foreclosure stripping.”

When homes sit empty, vandals frequently invade. The damage they do runs an ugly gamut, from spray painting cabinets to removing everything but the studs.

To combat the problem, Homes in Transition was created in February 2009. Its caretakers house-sit about 10 percent of the more than 2,000 empty homes in the Duke City. The concept has been so successful that the company will open a second office in Phoenix in May, where there is a much larger vacant home inventory. Phoenix has 140,000 empty homes, said Tom Schmidt, the company’s founder, a veteran builder who ran Teko Custom Home Builders LLC for a decade.

“I saw the economy heading south and realized it was going to crush all of us. We all love this business we created, but know it’s built on the back of hard economic times and people’s troubles, and that’s the catch-22 of it,” said Schmidt, who describes himself as a religious man who has a sense of guilt as the business has grown.

Homes in Transition isn’t a private security service. It’s more of a staging company that keeps homes occupied until they are sold. The key to the business is recruiting “caretakers” to live in the homes until a sale. These caretakers are in transition themselves, as some have lost their homes to foreclosure.

via bizjournals.com

This is a great article about a great Albuquerque Real Estate related company. I have shown many of the homes Homes in Transition caretakers occupy. Often these homes show better than vacant homes or homes where the owner still lives. Homes in Transition is a great asset especially to sellers who can no longer live in their Albuquerque home, perhaps because they've purchased another home or have been relocated out of the area. The side benefit to having a caretaker in the home besides it showing nicely, is that it shows the home as being occupied which will help prevent the buyer from getting the impression that the seller is overly motivated, which then leads to a very low offer that doesn't have a chance of reaching a contract. If you have an Albuquerque home for sale, and you're no longer able to occupy it, I would strongly consider calling Homes in Transition

Posted on Albuquerque Real Estate-Albuquerque Homes For Sale