Updated with one more q! Home staging q and a realtor WWYD?

[firstbaby]

Thanks for all the replies so far! One more question: We have a piano that's currently in our family room that I would like to move to the living room. The living room is right off of the hallway when you first walk in our house. The wall that the piano would sit on you would see right away. I would move a couple of smaller furniture pieces out so the only things in the room would be small cabinet and the piano with an area rug on the hardwood floor. MIL feels like we should leave the small loveseat that is there with the cabinet because people need to "see" it's a living room and leave the piano in the family room. I don't feel like many people care about having a living room these days, but I would love your thoughts.

We are seriously considering a move this spring and wanted to get the BBB wisdom on some staging questions:

1) If you have bought a resale home over the last year or two, what "sold" you on the interior of the home besides layout?

2) How much did home staging influence your decision to pick the house you picked? Please be specific in what type of staging.

3) Were there "signs" of kids in the house - toys, etc - when you went through it?

I believe strongly in staging a home and am slowly changing paint colors, etc. I have a list of things I would like to do and feel we need to do, but DH is not in agreement with me. Would love some opinions of recent buyers of resale homes. Our house is on a really nice lot with a good size yard (for our community) and the layout is pretty good. But I want to do whatever I can to stack the deck in our favor of selling quickly.

For my realtor WWYD, we had two realtors look at our home and give us opinions on what should be done to have it ready to sell. Neither one was drastically different from the other. My issue is that one of the realtors seems much more savvy and seems to have a stronger presence - from what we've heard they are a great negotiator. The second realtor is more gentle in their approach and offered upfront a discount if we handled both transactions through them. But, the savings on their commission might not be anything if the negotiations aren't as advantageous to us as they could be. My biggest flag with the first - and this may be silly - but they totally engaged my kids and asked them specifically about something they like - let's say their favorite candy bar - and promised to bring that by for them. Which never happened. When we saw them out and about later, they specifically mentioned that they hadn't brought the candy by for them which makes me wonder about follow through. Issue or non-issue?

ETA - the second realtor has consistently followed up with me, offered to take us out to look at homes, etc. Nothing else from the first since meeting.

[vonfirmath]

We bought our home despite the interior (two families renting the house. Stuff ALL over the place, including floor to ceiling in the garage, so couldn't see the walls/carpet. We had some surprises when we took over the house, but nothing worth squelching the deal over)

I think the house sat for a month so we could look at it because of the mess of the interior. It was more sq feet than generally available, laid out well (not a lot of room lost to interior hallways). One big room for living room/dining room and open to the kitchen. In a good neighborhood. In our price range.

I'd go with the second realtor just because of the following up with you/being there to answer your questions, etc.

[ncat]

I don't think staging influenced our 'yes' decisions, but a lack of staging certainly turned us off for several houses. Specific issues:

(1) So much clutter that Sellers did not look like they were serious about moving.
(2) Home was filthy and Sellers asked us to remove shoes. If we could not comfortably look at the whole home, including the basement, we just gave up.
(3) Non-standard room usage, e.g. dining room being used as an office or main floor bedroom closet being used as pantry. This highlighted floor plan shortcomings that otherwise would have been far less obvious.

What sold us on the two homes we put offers on (the 1st fell through a few days before closing due to some undisclosed issues that came to light):

(1) Location
(2) Access to utilities (gas, public sewer/water, sidewalks)
(3) Met our needs - 4+ reasonable sized bedrooms all on same floor, master bath, good size kitchen, garage, yard
(4) No obvious issues requiring immediate maintenance

[mackmama]

Staging is critical in our area. A Restoration Hardware type of look is common and is what attracts my eye. No clutter, nothing personal on walls. There are no child toys except maybe one stuffed animal on a chair in the bedroom. I don't think it's necessary to be so strict re toys but that's what's done here.

Re realtor, I would go with the 2nd. It's a red flag that they haven't followed up with you since the initial meeting. However I would follow up with the 2nd and ask more about their negotiating approach and experience. Be direct and tell the 2nd that you want to work with him/her but want to know they will fight for your best interests.

[lhafer]

Just because a realtor doesn't have a strong presence WITH you, doesn't mean they won't fight tooth and nail FOR you. Not being pushy, in your face, etc. describes me precisely as realtor. I hate pushy realtors, or braggart type people. I follow up with my clients. And I listen to them and what they want. I also have a different "presence" when I'm speaking to other realtors, and doing a deal. I don't get pushy, but I don't tolerate being pushed around either! I say the second realtor sounds like they fit you better since you have red flag gut feelings about the first one. If the second realtor does a good job, and you enjoyed how they worked for you - you will refer their business to others. Sometimes realtors get business because they are constantly on billboards, send postcards in the mail, and spend an insane amount of money to be in your face all the time. But that doesn't mean they are great realtors who will do a good job for you.

[khm]

I think staging is hard to define. I think sellers think it is critical and a huge reason why they sell, and buyers think they see through it and it didn't play into their decision. I feel like on the sell side there is just some magical hope going on - and on the buy side, buyers don't want to cop to being tricked by it. So, it is really hard to be objective about it as it all depends on which side you are on at that time.

I work with a busy realtor. She used to be more "don't worry, you need to live here". But she now admits there is an HGTV effect, to the extent that between very comparable houses it will give a seller an edge in our market. There is a lot to chose from, houses aren't unique here, so you want to be blindingly clean with minimal, minimal, truly minimal decor. Decor that is there is completely neutral and "background". Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware-esque for sure. Don't go nutty with pinteresty-crafty stuff. Kitchen countertops nearly bare. Cabinets and closets hyper organized.

But, all that, it won't "trick" anyone at the end of the day if your house overpriced compared to a similar but lesser staged home, or has issues/problems. But it might make your offer come in faster and beat the very similar house or 2 down the street.

Paint should be a color, but a very neutral "popular" color. If white is a whole theme - decor, furnishings, walls, then white is ok, but that will turn off some buyers who don't have white furnishings. She'd recommend painting and renting staging furnishings.

[123LuckyMom]

I think staging is hard to define. I think sellers think it is critical and a huge reason why they sell, and buyers think they see through it and it didn't play into their decision. I feel like on the sell side there is just some magical hope going on - and on the buy side, buyers don't want to cop to being tricked by it. So, it is really hard to be objective about it as it all depends on which side you are on at that time.

I work with a busy realtor. She used to be more "don't worry, you need to live here". But she now admits there is an HGTV effect, to the extent that between very comparable houses it will give a seller an edge in our market. There is a lot to chose from, houses aren't unique here, so you want to be blindingly clean with minimal, minimal, truly minimal decor. Decor that is there is completely neutral and "background". Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware-esque for sure. Don't go nutty with pinteresty-crafty stuff. Kitchen countertops nearly bare. Cabinets and closets hyper organized.

But, all that, it won't "trick" anyone at the end of the day if your house overpriced compared to a similar but lesser staged home, or has issues/problems. But it might make your offer come in faster and beat the very similar house or 2 down the street.

Paint should be a color, but a very neutral "popular" color. If white is a whole theme - decor, furnishings, walls, then white is ok, but that will turn off some buyers who don't have white furnishings. She'd recommend painting and renting staging furnishings.

This sounds spot on to me. We packed up all the toys that would not fit into our storage ottoman. There were plenty of toys, but they could all go away. It was still clear that kids lived there, but there was no clutter. We did not repaint the walls or refinish the floors, which needed to be done, but we did repaint rust spattered baseboard heaters and our porch and finished up all the little projects we had not yet finished. Making sure there are no unfinished projects is really important!!! We took everything off the kitchen and bathroom counters and kept the house spotlessly clean. We didn't change anything we thought the new owners might want to do themselves, like paint, floors, kitchen or bathroom vanity countertops or fixtures. As we were looking, we saw a lot of homes where it was clear they'd plopped a Home Depot granite counter on a tired kitchen or painted dated wood cabinets, for example. We weren't fooled, and we would have wanted to replace those things anyway, because they weren't our taste. We didn't want to spend money like that when our taste might differ from the buyers'. We only made improvements that would universally be acknowledged as improvements, not expensive stuff that might appeal to us but not to the new owners. We spent quite a bit on the garden. We made sure all the beds were edged, mulched, and weeded and that the garden and landscaping looked nice. And we sprayed unscented fabreeze all over the house before we left for each showing. You never know what you're not smelling!!!

[squimp]

I would definitely listen to the realtor's advice. We have done well when we have done that! Sounds like you have a clear mandate when the realtors agree. Also, decluttering to the point of pain, and yes removing much of the signs of kids and pets can only help. I also think attention to detail, like cleaning the moldings and touching up paint scratches indicates you care about the house.

We bought two houses that were completely empty. We sold a house that was completely empty. I like being able to see the space, and empty often looks bigger. But in houses with weird layouts or where everything is not in perfect condition (blech floors, sad windows), it helps to have some staging to make things look like it has a good floor plan. I also think staging can sway buyers - ooh my house would look this good if I bought all this cool furniture. It gives them ideas. Our realtor worked with a stager on one house (the house we didn't buy because it had such a weird layout) and it really helped her sell it finally. And I agree, there's definitely the HGTV effect.

Our current house sold itself though, it was a great layout for us, great bones, lots of the amenities we wanted. The buyers hid a bunch of surficial flaws with nice furnishings. (*Note to self, always factor in carpet replacement in houses with dogs. Ugh!) We didn't care because we were able to fix most everything, and we knew the market well enough to know that this was the best house we'd seen in many years of looking.

[echoesofspring]

We bought about a year ago. They had spent some time/money decorating but it was really NMS, although it probably would have appealed to a lot of other people. In some ways I had to 'see past' it b/c it was so so different from anything we would do. They did a great job of clearing out the clutter in the rooms, but you couldn't open any closet jammed pack, and our inspector noted that he couldn't really inspect the garage since it was so full of stuff....and it's a 3 car garage with a little bonus room. To me, that was a big turnoff, it felt like the curtain had been pulled back. I know there's a certain amount of that that happens before each showing, but this felt more like they had a lot of junk and trash hanging around, not just hiding 'daily life'. It made you wonder about regular maintenance upkeep, etc. and we have had to repair some of their neglect. (In the end the deal almost fell through b/c they couldn't get all their stuff out before our rate lock expired (2 weeks after we were supposed to close, nearly 2 months after they accepted our offer...))

We were the first showing and made an offer immediately knowing we would have to repaint everything and replace almost all the flooring. Because despite the issues the price was fair, the lot was the biggest in the tract, larger house, desirable neighborhood, etc. It wasn't going be on the market long. Even with a hot pink bedroom ceiling and zebra trim. Or the kids room that was painted a different color on every wall.

When I think back on the houses we looked at I definitely remember the vibe the overall color/decorating scheme gave - was the house warm and inviting, lots of natural light or darker, etc. But mostly whether it was clean/decluttered.

[ExcitedMamma]

We moved about 6 months ago and actively looked at homes for about two years before we found the one and put ours up for sale. We ended up buying an overly cluttered dirty mess of a house, but even though we could see past it others couldn't which worked for us because it's the only way we could get into such a great area. For our house it was very much cleaned and prepared for staging so we could do everything we could to have it ready for a quick sale. If you haven't considered it check out professional carpet and window cleaning. It made a huge difference in making the house look amazing. It was pricey and DH didn't think it was worth it until it was actually done and turned into a big wow factor. Also worked out great when buyers tried to add in cleaning the house and carpet cleaning and we said no because it had just been done. So doing it ahead of time helped get people in when we might have ended up paying for it anyway.
We planned a trip to get out of the house while it looked great, two weekends and the work week in the middle, so the realtor could do back to back open houses on the weekends and could take people through at anytime. So the house stayed looking great and maximized people coming through.

We really minimized the inside by putting a ton of stuff and furniture in the garage. We got ride of an armoire in our bedroom, most of the toys, some bookshelves and end tables. I figured no one would not buy the house if we had a cluttered garage. The photos looked great with less stuff and showed so much better. Also cleaned out all of the cabinets, drawers and closets. We had two of the room dividers from Costco and bought a third so we made a U shape in the entry way, looked like a fancy built in, and bought a huge framed picture from Bed Bath to put in the center and it made a great first impression when you walked in. I wanted to maximize first impressions to get people in and make them happy as soon as they walked in and from there keep them interested. Also planted some flowers in the front and back. Bought some new patio chairs for the front outside entrance to make it look inviting. Scoured the kitchen and bathrooms.
I definitely saw a lot of houses that were not clean and inviting. A lot of sellers didn't make an effort. I didn't like the ones that looked like the sellers had just left after a quick clean up with their overflowing toy bins. Again those houses were cleaner than what my house normally looked like but not as inviting. We hid all the toys, most in the garage, with a few left in kid closets and hidden bins. The kids rooms stayed decorated for kids but no sight of their stuff anywhere else to appeal to more people and our buyers were older newly married and had no kids. Our old house was in a neighborhood with houses that had sat on the market for months but we had an offer by the time we were heading home so it worked and really only cost a little bit, except for the windows and carpet, and some time planning it out and moving things. But that helped us get packed and ready to move too which was good because it just got moved out from the garage quickly and the realtor could tell interested buyers it could be a quick close.
I think you can and should do a lot to make it look appealing. People are weird and can't look past things. The more interested parties you have the faster and more money you could make. Also make sure to hide away all pictures and personal things so people can picture themselves there. The realtor kept telling us how much the buyers loved our house, especially the wife, which also helped us in negotiations because we felt we could hold firm. You want interested and dedicated buyers.
I think you need to go with a realtor you can trust. It's a stressful process and you don't want to be second guessing who you are relying on.
Good luck!