Home Staging Austin
One of the services that our real estate company provides to its home seller clients is home staging services. For those that don’t know, a home stager is a person that will go through the home, room by room and give the seller a plan for organizing the furniture, decluttering the room and depersonalizing it so that when a potential buyer comes into the home, they can see it in its best possible light. In some cases, a renovation will need to occur and we’ve worked on these in the past with our clients, by offering coordination with our team of trusted vendors.
Below are examples of some of the staging jobs we have helped our clients with as well as some of the homes we’ve helped our clients renovate.
Top 5 DIY Staging Tips from a Home Stager
Decluttering and Organizing
These steps get you closer to being presentation and moving ready. Take things one room at a time and organize furnishings and items into KEEP, DONATE, and TRASH. Remember that closet space left open on the floor is most coveted. If you can create floor space in the closets, it gives the illusion of bigger closets!
Pre-Inspection and Common Inspection Items
Having a pre-inspection by a certified home inspector would be recommended so you can start to tackle any disparities before a buyer's inspection catches them.
Deep Cleaning
This is something that can be easily done overtime and on your own. Magic erasers make a huge difference in walls, cabinets, and baseboards. Dusting ceiling fans and air vents. Thoroughly cleaning ovens and appliances. Don't forget outside cleaning!
Neutralizing Paint Colors
Neutralizing paint colors is one of the FIRST things stagers like to point out. BUT WAIT, before you go to Home Depot and buy the first greige that you see, TALK TO A STAGER! They can quickly and virtually (even just by photos sometimes) recommend a paint color that will complement the other elements of your room (i.e. flooring and natural light).
Light Fixtures and Hardware
Light fixtures and hardware are often easier to replace than people think, usually just requiring a screwdriver, and can make a huge impact. If you need recommendations, we can connect you with our staging team for suggestions.
Here is our interview with our in-house certified stager, Angél Rodenbeck, on the importance of staging a home for sale in Austin’s hot real estate climate.
We wanted to showcase why we do a video walkthrough on a seller's home. It's not just so that the potential buyer has a virtual tour of the home. It's a lot more than that. But before we do that, I am joined here by my wife, co-owner, and certified stager with Spyglass Realty, Angél Rodenbeck. I'm going to go over a few questions about the process with her. So, honestly, tell me your process for home staging Austin once we get a signed listing agreement from a seller.
The Process for Home Staging Austin
Once we get a signed listing agreement from the seller, I'll reach out to them and schedule a staging consultation and that just depends on the amount of work that they're wanting to put into the home, the amount of, the amount of work that's needed. It can be anywhere from an hour where I just walked through the home and go room by room and detail out exactly the items that we need to pull out, things that spyglass needs to bring, repairs that need to be made. From that kind of basic home staging Austin appointment, all the way to, if they have a budget for renovations, then we'll go over, improvements that will be made that will make the most bang for the buck. Replacing countertops, floors, any number of things.
It's basically a plan for the salary, get their house ready so they don't have to do any guesswork.
What are the things you look at on the exterior of the home?
As soon as I pull up to the house, I am making mental notes of things because I am basically looking at it as a buyer. I'm pulling up to the house and I'm looking at the condition of the exterior. Is it attractive? What's the curb appeal like? Do they need to have a fresh coat of paint on their front door? New exterior lights? What's their landscaping like? I'm taking all those mental notes and then I'm documenting it in our staging consultation form that's provided to the client.
When you get into the inside, what do you look at?
It's pretty much the same thing. I'm going room by room. At first, when you enter the room, you're looking at all the rooms that you could see from the entrance point because those are the most important rooms for staging. You've got about 10 seconds to make a good impression on a buyer. We really want to make sure that any other rooms that you can see right from the front door look amazing. So basically just going room by room, taking those notes, seeing like what furniture works. I'm known for like pulling furniture from other rooms and switching things around to make it look better. I'm making all those notes and then documenting it so I can give it to the client and we can go through it together.
What's interesting about that is that, you know, as a, have you shown thousands of homes, that first 10 seconds is really big because what I've found is a consumer, a potential buy or knows in the first 10 seconds if they don't want the home. So it's really important and I can't tell you how many times I've walked into a home and then have seen the face of my buyers. And sometimes they're just polite and say, well, let's just hang out. You know, let's just go through the rest of the house. But sometimes it's like, let's get outta here. So that's really important.
What about bedrooms and bathrooms?
The master bedroom is really important. You want to have a nice bed, two matching nightstands, two matching lamps, ideally, a nice neutral bedspread, and a pop with the pillow. If it's a large bedroom, we like to have like a reading nook with the, a chair and a lamp and make it cozy and inviting. And then the master bathroom, of course, is important too. You want to have nice towels out, you want to have a clear countertop, a clear shower, all your personal items, and toiletries have to be put away, no bath mat, that sort of thing. And then just the condition of it. All the paint, the lighting, the countertop, the faucets, all those things I'm making notes of and we have a conversation about it within your budget to update. Sometimes you don't have any money and that's fine. I can make it look the best that it can ever look with just my time and paying attention to the details. Or if you've got a budget, then we can make some updates.
And do you use your own furniture or the owner's furniture?
The furnishings are strictly a case by case basis. If the family is living in the home, then I try my best to use their items because they're still living their lives, even though they're trying to sell their house. I try to pull the nicest things that they have and make the most out of them. But if we need anything, then spyglass brings that. As far as furniture, art, accessories, bedding, any of that stuff. We have a warehouse full of items and we use all those things for home staging Austin for the clients.
So we're here doing a video at this home. We're gonna list this home in the next week or two. What did you do as far as, besides the staging, what did you do? We went over that. What did you do as far as any renovations in this at home
When I came into the home, I noticed that they have a really pretty dining room right off the entry, but it was painted it really dark green. In home staging Austin, you want everything to be as light and bright as possible. I recommended to them that they paint the dining room, the nice beige color. That's the main body of the home is. And then also they had a bedroom that was painted, a little dated peach color, and they agreed and they were anxious to have that painted. So we did that. We changed some lighting. We actually changed this countertop, this beautiful ports countertop.
They were totally on board with updating it. And a one on updated or not, older style, ran it here and you made the recommendation, let's modernize as the house is obviously beautiful. Let's modernize this with nice quartz that would match the backsplash. Getting back to those first 10 seconds, this slab is right. As soon as you walk through the door, you see it. So we wanted this to be bright, updated, nice. And we picked something that matched well with the existing flooring and splash because we didn't want to disrupt their lives that much and we wanted to stay within a budget. So we picked this. I think it works out great.
Other things that I recommended, we're trimming that some of their trees because they have an amazing greenbelt view. In order to maximize that from their home and from their balcony, we cut some trees down or trim some branches. We also power wash the stone, exterior on the, on the fireplace to brighten it up.
We have a team of workers that we've used for 10 plus years. So our contractors are basically on call for us, give us priority pricing and service. And so, the client we, we met are the contractors here for the granite or for the courts and for all the other items in the client was very impressed and selected our vendors.
And do you typically oversee all of this?
Yes, I will schedule the appointments. I will come and meet the vendors, meet the client. I help them make the choice as much input as they want or as they want me to have. I will be there. This is what I do every day so I'm used to it.
What do we charge for the service?
All of these services that we provide are completely complimentary. They are all included in the listing service that we provide our clients. There's no extra charges for me. Managing renovations, making recommendations, coming to stage. We had myself and a helper here for three hours staging as completely complimentary. Any furnishings that I bring in, any of that stuff is all covered by spyglass realty.
So it's absolutely zero is the cost. And you know, if the same thing with the video, we have a production crew that comes in, it's very talented. We don't charge anything for that. And what I told you before is that we were doing more than just the virtual walkthrough on the home. What we want to do, we want to tell a story about this home. We want to know what are the three things about this home, what are the five things about this home or what are the seven things about this home and this neighborhood that makes it different than other homes that are on the market right now. And this is a prime example of why we want to have that story. It's a 3,000 square foot home. It has five bedrooms, it's a block from the greenbelt. It's three or four blocks to the gush root entrance, eight.
There have been five homes sold in Barton Hills in the last two years that, that meet these criteria. So we want to tell that story and we want the consumer to know that. And then the other reason why we do this video is because we are trying to first capture a wide audience of potential buyers, through Facebook and Google.
And then what we do is the buyers that watch half of a video walkthrough, I think you'd agree that they are going to have some level of interest, right If you watch go through half of the video, then they are probably want to see more of that. So what we do with that is that we retarget these people that watched half the video and then we try to lead them to a landing page, right. We've been doing this with our own business for several years and now redoing it with our, our client's listings and I think you're gonna see the results are pretty exciting.
[End of video transcript]