What Britney Spears Taught Me About Staging to Sell A Home

(Photo courtesy of idon’tlikeyouinthatway.com)

1. Do your due diligence as a seller/agent to prep the home for sale: You don’t want to have this frown face when there are no offers on the table after 90 days on market. Britney drank every night before the performance and didn’t rehearse at all. And IT SHOWED. Her fans were more than disappointed, they turned on her on the blogging platform. Similarly, it shows when you didn’t prep the home for sale, it’s not going to bring your ideal open house traffic. Stage the house, power wash, clean it throughly, landscape it, do whatever you need to to get the home in top showing status. Let it be that shiny penny that the agents want to show, not the bottom feeder that every agent uses as the bad comp.

(Photo courtesy of idon’tlikeyouinthatway.com)

2.Don’t overhype yourself. The week before Britney’s big comeback performance, the media kept talking about it, hyping it up: How great it’s going to be, Criss Angel is working with her on it, yada yada yada. Come the big show time, we see Britney flopping around in a less than attractive outfit, dancing like a zombie on screen. That’s why creating reasonable expectations for your buyers is very important. It’s very easy to be happy about something when it exceeds your expectations, at the same time, it will be harder to recover if you had a high expectation of something and it didn’t live up to its promise.

Case in point: Put yourself in your buyers’ shoes, what if this is the photo you saw online and it looks decent enough that you want to see it in person:

And this is what happened when you show up at the house?

It’s hard to recover from bright green carpet and an empty house.

(photo courtesy of Daily Mail UK)

3. Listen to your people: You paid for the expert advice, so LISTEN TO THEM! There is a reason why they tell you what they tell you. They don’t talk for their health. If a stager suggests about trimming the bushes, there is a reason behind that. We are all creatures of doing less work as much as possible. We are not in the business of creating more work for everyone. Stagers’ suggestions are meant to help you sell faster and potentially for more money. We don’t talk because we like to listen to ourselves talking.

(Photo courtesy of idon’tlikeyouinthatway.com)

4. Don’t be the train wreck waiting to happen: When I was teaching public classes, I learned that it was MY responsibility to hold the class together and set the tone for the session. Similarly, the same with a sale. As an agent or owner who is selling your own home by yourself, it’s YOUR responsibility to hold the sale together. Staging is not meant to hide flaws of the home. If your location is less than ideal, wonderful staging won’t hide that. Buyers are not stupid, they will see through your deceptions. Either now before they signed on the dotted line, and they negotiate for more money off, or they sue you on the back end when you failed to disclose a cracked foundation. Once the buyers sense something is off, or they start freaking out about the sale, your dream of putting out the sold sign will be fading away quicker than Britney having the next public meltdown.

(Photo courtesy of idon’tlikeyouinthatway.com)

5. Don’t air out your dirty laundry, most importantly, put on underwear before you go out.. Do shower & a makeover before you go out. Real estate industry is an image-driven business. This photo above was the “ewwww” heard around the world, don’t let that happen to your listing. It is extremely important to prep and clean before the open house. It is NOT okay to leave dirty socks or underwear around for the world to see. The buyers won’t look pass that. They also won’t see the upgrades in your kitchen while they are too distracted by your sky-high pile of dirty dishes. Your home may also need a shower on the exterior. Power wash can do wonders and make a huge difference with little investment. Put on some foundation (neutral color paint), then define the bone structure (well-place furniture) and make it pop with eye & lips colors (home accessories). It’s going to take a little bit of work. None of us wake up and look like a Cindy Crawford, Cindy Crawford doesn’t wake up looking like Cindy Crawford. It’s a team of specialists that can perform magic and really bring out the potential of her facial features.

(Photo courtesy of idon’tlikeyouinthatway.com)

6. Think what would photograph well. 80%+ of home buyers now start their internet searches online prior to actually setting foot into the doors of open houses. Several of my friends are starting to look at homes, and none of them went to see homes in person until they liked what they saw on the web. It’s a fast-paced world now, gas is more expensive and our time is much more fragmented. I lean toward doing things online as much as I can, even holding “meetings” with potential new vendors, because I can a) do it in the freedom of my own home b) control my time c) do something in 10-15 minutes instead of sitting 60 minutes in someone’s meeting space after spending 30-45 minutes driving to it. Online visual is now incredibly important. So choose good photographers and videographers. Because staging would only work if it is paired with the right visual representations.

This video clip below was sent to me by someone who said this is the better way of marketing a home. I personally don’t think the Blair Witch method works, but see for yourself and add your comments below. I am curious to see what you think.

vs.
7. Classic & Tasteful always show a million times better than individuality. Individuality is individuality. It is only going to appeal to an individual, not an entire group. Classic and tasteful can withstand the time, but strong-colored accent walls or non-traditional decor, such as leather whips, stripper poles, sex toys, nude photos, ethnic paintings, religious items, etc. may not always appeal to the general public.

Oh, I miss the old Britney!!!

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