This is another blog of our Wednesday Series on: Can [this] sell the house?!

Last blog we talked about if Feng Shui works, some say it works wonders and some say it is a total crock. Continuing in that thread, does St. Joe sell your house?!

Here is a little bit more background to Saint Joseph: “ The custom hearkens back at least to the great St. Teresa of Avila (A.D. 1515 - 1582), foundress of the Disalced Carmelite Order. As her Order spread, a new convent had to be built, and in order for a new convent to be built, land must be had. When the nuns found a particular piece of land that was perfect for their purposes, they also found that their coffers weren’t full enough to purchase it, so they decided to ask the intercession of St. Joseph, burying medals imprinted with his likeness in the ground of the desired property as a sign of their prayers. It worked.

It also worked for Blessed Brother André Bessette, who was able to get the land on which he built the Shrine of St. Joseph of Mount Royal, in Montreal, Canada by praying to St. Joseph and burying a St. Joseph medal on the grounds of the future site as a sign of his prayers.

Now, both of these events deal with acquiring land, not selling it, and they deal with St. Joseph medals, not St. Joseph statues. Nonetheless, over time, the folk custom came to be for sellers of homes to bury a statue of St. Joseph as a sign of prayer asking to find a buyer and hasten the sale.” (http://www.fisheaters.com/stjoestatue.html)

Apparently 2 million statues of Saint Joesph are sold each year, what do you think? Desperate times call for desperate measures?

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This is a continuation of the Wednesday Series: Can [this] sell houses? Read the previous 2 posts here:

• Buy This Home and Get a New TV + Free Trip to Hawaii
• Can Brad Pitt Sell Houses?

I recently spent 2 weeks at home in Taiwan for Taiwanese New Year (Gong Si Fa Tsai to everyone!) and it’s always interesting to go back because the values of both California and Taiwan differ a lot.

There is no staging in Taiwan except for model homes. Agents show homes vacant or cluttered and people are used to it (The houses are tiny there, we all live very cluttered lives). Homes are a lot smaller and storage is always a hot topic in Asian homes. Feng Shui is also big, not only for people who are alive and also with people who are dead. People often jokes that it’s more expensive to live in Taiwan as a dead person than a live one since feng shui is a key ingredient in selecting an appropriate plot for every individual.

Feng Shui, fad or true?

(photo by Room With A View)
Feng Shui has always been sort of trendy. Feng Shui has become a trendy thing to hear about in the staging field. As I progress in the industry, I often encounter people who are on both sides. There are even publications on feng shui for cats, it’s really difficult to take something like so seriously. Some believe in staging with feng shui, some think it’s a sign of desperation.

But does feng shui really sell houses?

Luopan compass used in feng shui
(photo by musicvisionary2000)

Feng Shui expert Carole Provenzale told me that “Feng Shui is literally translated to mean (more…)

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This is the 2nd post of the Wednesday Series: Can [this] sell the house? Today’s “this” is incentives, which is very commonly used by builders and agents.

>>Commission incentives: Many times in order to hold the deal together, agents do compromise on the commissions in order to keep the client’s business and also keep the deal alive.

>>Prize incentives: it is not uncommon, especially in the builder community where they would offer a free flat screen TV, free vacations, free airfares, etc. to encourage buyers to tour the home and make the purchase.

But do they work?

“Back in the ‘80s when I was selling, I did experience that. We had sellers offer a trip for two to Cancun, various things like that,” says Gene Holst, CEO of the Quad City Realtor Association.

Holst says gimmicks usually don’t work. If you want to sell your home, follow three simple rules.

“Pricing it correctly, proper staging, and the third thing is to work with a competent realtor.” (original quote from WQAD)

What do you think?

Feel free to share your thoughts at the Comment area below. I would love to hear about them! Just scroll down and that white blank box is it!

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Wednesday Series: Why Staged Homes Don’t Sell. In the series, I am going to cover:

1. What A Well Staged Home Does for a Sale
2. How Listing Agents Unintentionally Sabotage Their Own Staged Listings
3. What is the Seller’s Problem?!
4. How A Stager Can Potentially Kill Your Deal
5. Other Real Estate Professionals’ Play in the Mud Too

Let’s face it. Sometimes we can get a little bit “forgetful” and “blindsided” and completely forgot there are many other professionals involved in a real estate transactions. We are so tuned into our own jobs, we simply forgot there are the others that hold the sale together, and we stagers, too, just another link in the grand scheme of things.

Staging is not a true guarantee of a home sale, as I have covered in the past few Wednesdays since there are many variables that can play into the sale, causing the success rate to be unsteady. ONLY when all parties work together, a sale can be successful.

And when I say party, I mean it’s a party. In a real estate transaction, many people come into the play, not just sellers, agents and stagers. There are loan officers, mortgage companies, inspectors, title companies, appraisers, photographers, virtual assistants, insurance brokers, builders, attorneys, mortgage processors, lenders, property managers, escrow companies, financial planners, and sometimes even tenants.

Here is a flow chart of home selling process courtesy of Brian Block — Northern Virginia & D.C. Real Estate from his blog Selling a Home in Northern Virgina & D.C.: Step by Step Flowchart. Your process may slightly differ in different states, but generally it’s about the same roughly. You still have to go through so many sets of hands. (more…)

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Wednesday Series: Why Staged Homes Don’t Sell. In the series, I am going to cover:

1. What A Well Staged Home Does for a Sale
2. How Listing Agents Unintentionally Sabotage Their Own Staged Listings
3. What is the Seller’s Problem?!
4. How A Stager Can Potentially Kill Your Deal
5. Other Real Estate Professionals’ Play in the Mud Too

A staged home can be the answer to selling houses. BUT It’s only a marketing tool that is as effective as how someone uses it, or if it’s fundamentally a sound solution to begin with. There are 3 causes that a stager can potentially kill the sale by providing inappropriate staging to the home. They are: unqualified, inexperience, and have really no clue what staging is.

1. Unqualified: My good friend Linda R once said “Not all stagers are created equal” and she really nailed it on the head. Everyone had different training and backgrounds, and sad to say that some even don’t have trainings nor backgrounds. I receive emails or calls all the time from budding stagers. It generally goes as (more…)
   

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Wednesday Series: Why Staged Homes Don’t Sell. In the series, we are going to cover:

1. What A Well Staged Home Does for a Sale
2. How Listing Agents Unintentionally Sabotage Their Own Staged Listings
3. What is the Seller’s Problem?!
4. How A Stager Can Potentially Kill Your Deal
5. Other Real Estate Professionals’ Play in the Mud Too

It’s very common. We often want to reach across the table and strangle our clients alive or shake them violently because we can’t seem to convince our clients to come to their senses. They are turning down something that can benefit and help them make significant return on their biggest investment in their life — staging to sell their homes.

We all know that staging can help to move the homes off the market sooner, whether it’s in hot or cold markets. A staged home can also sell for more. The return on the staging investment is also far greater than the investment itself. SO WHY IS THE SELLER SAYING NO?!

There are often a few underlying issues:

1. The Seller has been burnt before by bad staging/stager. Unfortunately there are no ethnics nor regulations in the industry. Essentially anyone can (more…)
   

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Wednesday Series: Why Staged Homes Don’t Sell. In the series, we are going to cover:

2. What A Well Staged Home Does for a Sale
3. How Listing Agents Unintentionally Sabotage Their Own Staged Listings
4. What is the Seller’s Problem?!
5. How A Stager Can Potentially Kill Your Deal
6. Other Real Estate Professionals’ Play in the Mud Too

A common problem that I see why staged homes don’t sell is THE AGENT. It’s not the agents don’t do any work to market the listing. Sure, they put the listing up on MLS and run the flyers and ads for the staged homes. They host open houses and try to get people into the door. But what they don’t realize is that they had done something terrible, unthinkable (at least to a stager anyway) and something that has hurt their own commission dollars & their sellers’ equity — market it poorly to counter the staged home effects, which is to SHOW THE HOME WELL and attract foot traffic to the open house.

Deadly mistake #1: The home was shown before it was staged. Would you go on a date BEFORE you showered and put on your best outfit? I think not. Same with marketing your house. Put your best foot forward. I cannot say this enough! In my post, Making the Blink Count, I talked about the power of first impression and how it can help to sell the listings. Case in point, celebs without makeup:

Deadly mistake #2: The agent doesn’t market the home as a staged home. We all know that staged homes shows better to non-staged homes, therefore, staged homes are easier for buyers’ agents to show since buyers are more likely to buy when the homes are properly staged, and therefore adding to the agents’ commissions. Here is a real life example of my recent staged home (staged just today!), a lot of de-cluttering can do a LOT for the home! Also shiny furniture can help too:

Another great idea that I have seen agents done (more…)

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