Cindy,
I recently started hiring a professional to dry clean carpets before the house gets listed. I also go around the home with a pack a post-its and mark what should stay in the room. Everything else must be packed away for the move or sold at a garage sale. What other ideas do you have?
Thanks.
Kathy
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Kathy has asked a very valid question. Here are a few things that I would recommend for Listing Agents to go over before staging the home:
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Before hiring the stager
Don’t just send unknown stager to your client and let the homeowners “do their things.” I get a earful sometimes about their complaints about their agents and usually kept mum since I have never met the agents myself.
If you have a stager you like, by all means, let the home owners know BEFORE they hire someone else. I am not saying the person your home sellers pick is not good, but the stager may be reputable or experienced and your sellers are not in real estate long enough to know it.
Also *** set reasonable expectations what staging entails and the rough staging investment. While staging helps to sell a house, it’s not a fix-it-all. It doesn’t hide cracks on the foundation nor the bad location of the home. Moreover, most people want champagne taste with beer budget. Sorry, not going to happen. A previous client called me in for a consult at the last minute (TWO days before open house!) and wanted me to do it the next day. I obliged his request and because he was a previous client, even only once, I was willing to go to the extra mile for him, as I do for all my clients. But his client didn’t go for it. The morning of staging I was on the phone back and forth with the agent while he negotiated the staging on the other end. Finally he called me back exasperated, “They decided not to stage because they thought it was only going to cost couple hundred dollars.” Couple hundred dollars?! I screamed in my head. That’s what most people charge for a written consultation!
When you hire the stager
Be there with the client, listen what the stager has to say. Remember, this is YOUR transaction, YOU are the one who holds it together. So YOU should be in the loop of what’s going on. I once staged a house where I had all the contacts with the sellers, and none whatsoever with the agent. The agent basically just told the seller to hire their own stager and they will just do the marketing. On the morning of, while we were unloading the truck, the agent stooped outside and watched us unload quietly. Finally he came up, “Um, what are you going to do with the room next to the kitchen?” I answered him and explained the idea. “Oh, okay,” he walked away looking relieved. Couple minutes later, while I was wrestling with the couch, probably not in a very fashionable way, he came up again “err, how about the room between the dining room and kitchen?” What if I were a stager who was not qualified and inexperienced and wouldn’t know what to do with a tricky floor plan? Or stage not according to the target market? Would you want to find out the morning of staging after everything was signed and paid? So don’t put yourself in a vulnerable spot, know what’s going on.
After you hire the stager
Your professional stager would usually give you a list of things to do before the staging job. I generally ask for these top 7:
*Clean the home throughly, not just sweeping everything under the rug, but clean throughly. Think your mother-in-law-coming-to-visit-clean! I generally recommend professional cleaning if they can. They know the magic ways that we don’t.
*Pack up things that they don’t need and store, donate, or recycle them.
*Clear out 40-60% of things in their closets. Buyers may not open their chests and dressers, but they generally open the closets to see how much storage they have. Someone told me that their stager made them space each shirt 1 inch apart and she actually measured them. Well I think that’s a little bit extreme. As long as everything is done neatly, you are in an okay position.
*Paint if needed. It’s the cheapest investment they can do to get a significant return on their painting investment.
*Don’t forget the exterior. Powerwash if needed. Remove all the dead plants. Add colorful flowers if they can.
*Pack up all the personal & financial papers, as well as valuables and personal medication. Also take out anything that can identify you and especially your children. Open houses can be a hot zone for crime if you are not careful. People do steal things or walk through your house to learn your floor plan, so be mindful what kind of “clues” you are leaving potential thieves.
*De-clutter everything and clear as much things off the floor as possible. We are in the business of selling square footage, so let your buyers see them!
Kathy, I think you already start on something great, hope these few more tips can help you! Let me know if you have other questions 
Cheers,
Cindy*Staged4more