Home Staging NJ Luxury Real Estate

We've heard of niche marketing, target markeing event marketing, live marketing, blog marketing, cause related marketing...what about sense marketing?  Here's what I'm thinking:--

Home staging works.  We know this.  

Why does it work?  Lots of reasons - it illustrates lifestyle, demonstrates space and potential, gives competitive advantage, differentiates a home and, most importantly, gets the place sold.  

How does it do that?  By shoring up the value and engaging a buyer's emotions.  Jeanette Fisher calls the emotional side of marketing with staging Design Psychology.  She writes about it beautifully and persuasively in her book. 'Home Staging with Design Psychology: Sell Your home for Top Dollar-- FAST! Design Psychology for Redesign and Home Staging' .

Maybe there's a simpler point of view: selling a house is about 2 things:-

1.     Put the whole property into mint condition, (shoring up the value) and

2.     Illustrate the home's assets by triggering emotion.

Engaging emotions...positively... is best accomplished when done subtly, and the way I've found most successful with that is to speak to all 5 of the buyer's senses.  Here's a brief example of what I mean:-

Sight

Using soothing colors in relaxing spaces, vibrant colors in action-oriented spaces and strong, exciting accent colors to draw the eye around the room, feature to feature.

Hearing

Gentle wind chimes, bubbling water fountains... things like that do way more for me to mask road noise than the artificial blasting of jazz from a radio.  (I hate jazz, btw.  That yahoo ad years ago was a come-on!)

Touch

Soft, luxurious throws; rough hewn linens; rippling silks; plush carpets; glowing, polished floors that seem to lead the eye for ever....

Taste

People get hungry touring houses.  A cookie, a fun candy, a snack... goes a long way to 'puttin' out the welcome'

Smell

The boiling cinnamon water is old hat now, and seems artificial. And how much bread can one family go through?  Put the machine away!  However... did you know that one way to make a small house seem bigger is to have a different aroma (from candles, pot pourri, etc.) in each room? Avoid anything really heavy and cloying - like vanilla, patchouli, sandlewood.  Look for lavendar, citrus, bergamot, etc. AND BAD SMELLS WILL KILL A DEAL FASTER THAN ANYTHING!!  If you know that you have a sensitive nose and you don't like stronger, fresh aromas, just neutralize the place with a product like Fabreze Anti-Allergen spray.

What do you guys reckon?  How do you use the senses in your staging?

Think there's a place in your staging/home marketing arsenal for Sense Marketing?  I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Equally, I'd love to invite you all to join me in a new group on Facebook - the Home Marketing Mastermind group.  It's tactical, property specific and at its early stages.  I'd love you all to come play there, too -- http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=14468968705

On March 3rd, I blogged about using home warranties the same way second hand car dealerships do, especially for high end vehicles.  I even coined the phrase Certified Pre-Owned and asked my readers to recall Philip Bosco's smooth voice enticing you to consider a Certified Pre-Owned Lexus... I explained it was a way for buyers to overcome their preference for brand new homes in lieu of something reliable and with character.

It is with some satisfaction, therefore, that I find this on Sellsius this weekend:

Naturally, I am taking full credit for this company's initiative.  I have actually never heard of this company, but I did rewrite my blog post into a 7 tips article that went everywhere (newsletter, EZA, other sites)  and even is customizable for realtors to use in their own marketing.  I'm sure they saw it somehow... <grin>

The fun though is in the debate.  We know that second hand car salesmen have a bad rap; do realtors selling owner-occupied homes fall into the same category?

One of the key dangers in the 2ndary car market is that they put the mileage clock back.  Can you do that with a house?

I don't think the realtors are competing with home inspectors in offering these warranties; surely this is an opportunity for a joint venture between inspectors and realty offices?

And, since home stagers are a marketing partner for home owners and realtors alike, maybe they too, could partner up with a home inspector and insurance person, and have their own warranties they could offer?

Let's wrestle with these tasty topics....what do you all think?

You see, I don't want to be Dolly Decorator who arrives to simply fluff a pillow, I'm a professional home stager - a marketing visionary - an appreciation guru - a tired woman who'd welcome a cup of tea next time she shows up to "restyle", aka pick up your dirty, untidy house with crap everywhere that you should have thrown out 20 years ago!

Forgive my kvetching, friends, I'm on a short break from this week's church project  but will return to it now....altruism... harrumph, harrumph.. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Home Staging Secret:- Marketing to Gen X and Y is NOT about speaking ebonics!  It's just like staging itself; it's about recognizing the "preferred settings" in their lifestyle and making home buying fit into that particular paradigm.  Here are 7 tips to help you hip up... or zizz it, as my 16 year old cousin in London says!  (and for the rest of this article Gen x and y will be lumped together into one generation... because I'm old enough now that I can do that!)

1. WEBmaxed

This is a generation that does EVERYTHING online.  They grew up on it, understand it, and begin every chapter, every challenge that way.  make sure the listing is findable.  Findable in lots of places and findable without the realtor.  Each hit should link to the listing realtor and the listing should be clearly identified with the lister. So, realtors: make each listing findable wihout you, but easy to get in touch with you once the buyers are looking at the page.

2.  On Demand 

Anyone see the article on yahoo about people cramming 30 hours worth into a 24 hour day?  This generation is all about immediate accessibiltiy. To capture them, you need to have your house ready for showing whenever...before work, after, before school, on lunch, weekends, Mondays, all of it!  I recently had a young investment banker client who didn't get home until 10:00 p.m. every night and worked weekends.  We compromised with 9:00p.m. appointments.  They were brutal, but the only thing that fit his schedule.  If I wanted his business....

3.  Buy It Now

Young people want instant gratification.  Duh!

 "Quick and efficient sales are important to young people who have enormous demands on their time and little patience"  says Karen Gravelle of DigitalCustom. "to make a decision, they need to have an efficient presentation of options, understand the pricing factors and be able to complete the sale as as quickly as they would like."

Many realtors will have monthly payments factored out, with 3 different %s down and have that sheet available at the showing.  I recommend going one step further.  Include all the costs, and then annualize the payments. e.g. This home will cost you $24,000 a year - $500 a month in utilities and $1,500 in mortgage payment.  Also included should be:- 

• Name and #  you call for this mortgage
• Calendar/Timeline  with attorney review, inspections, deposit due and closing date all marked out in # of days  (sign today and you can close and move in on "May 31, 2008")
• Name and #  at Moving Concierge who will transfer all of the utilities into your name, including the landscaper, cleaner, etc.
• Name and # of local lawyer, dentist, ob-gyn, tax person, pizza delivery guy, hair person, drycleaner, etc.  (a "welcome wagon" one-sheeter)

...all presented at the time they walk into the house, so that the whole thing is turn-key.

4.  Color It Mine

A simple design, a clean clear message of what is being offered, amplified with color and whimsy.  Look at catalogues like West Elm and you'll see neutral colors on all the big stuff and some serious "punch" coming from vibrant accessories. (in groups of 1,3 or 5).  Have the brochure lady photoshop the pictures of the rooms in 2 other colorways. If the room is beige with chocolate brown and red, show it white with cobalt blue and pale maple or cream with apple green and mahogany.  Think Web 2.0 and allow the buyers to instantly see how they could customize this very look for themselves.

5. Destination

If Starbucks, Borders, Barnes and Noble and Neiman Marcus can teach us anything it is that in the retail world, the more successul stores are the destination ones.  So make the home a destination.  Have a coffe pot ready to go, snacks in the fridge, speakers and presentations held at the Sunday Open House...performances even.  Retailers and event marketers can teach us a lot about experiential marketing.  After all, we want a buyer to really experience the house, not just wander through it like an art gallery.

6.  Analaytics/Metrics

I notice the younger realtors I work with have formulas for things.  Makes sense - there's so much information easily available these days, it makes sense to speak in metrics.  "This house is 87% bigger than the others on the block, it has a 95 Hot Buy ranking from the top 20 realtors in our area, its Value is in the number of bedrooms to baths and the depth of the back yard."  Yes, buying a house is an emotional decision, but these kids know that and want to have some metrics to back it up, so that they don't feel ripped off.

7.  Meet the Parents

When I was a realtor, the #1 enemy was the best friend.  She/he was the Professional Objector, more than a total PITA, she was the Deal Buster!  (I used to take a buddy of mine out with one client so that my buddy could distract and deal with my client's "helpful friend.")  It would be logical therefore to think the parents would be the same killjoys.  They tend not to be.  And... they will often chip in.

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Juliet Johnson  home stages luxury real estate in suburban New Jersey.

Hi friends, please join me in congratulating our own Kathy Passarette, who steps out in the news with one of the least appreciated or understood marketing tactics -- PR at the local level!!

The picture will take you to the article or this link -- http://www.longislandexchange.com/press/

Congrats, Kathy.  I know you'll do an awesome job; I can't wait to see the pictures!  They're lucky to have you.

Tell us how it all goes.

Note to self:- remember local pr... after all, staging is as regional(AKA local) as Real Estate itself, no?

WARNING!  There are no answers in this posting... only questions. 

Guys, I need advice.  There are a lot of things about eMarketing I don't understand yet.  If you all have written answers to these in your own blog postings, please could you add the link in your answer.  I'd be hugely grateful... this simple soccer mom is drowning in confusion here!

1. Someone told me this week that AR is a forum, and therefore this is not a real blog.  It's a forum thread?  Is that the case?

2.  If it is, why does it matter?  What's the difference?

3.  Do we all need a seperate blog from an identity here? Isn't one enough?  I know we all need to keep adding fresh content to our sites, to appeal to the search engine spiders, and that blogging allows us to do that.  Equally, it gives our customers another way to differentiate us from our competition.  So-o-o-o, isn't one blog - or whatever this is - enough?

Anyone any thoughts?

Rehabbers are those folks that buy a distressed property (usually a foreclosure, but it can be any number of other situations), fix it up and then rent it. Sometimes, they'll sell, more often they prefer to rent - they like the drip income, as I understand it. They also refinance as soon as they can to pull out the appreciation so that they can move on to another property and do the same thing all over again. Their formula is B-R-R-R: Buy-Rehab-Rent-Refi

These property owners care about only one thing alone: - the bottom line. It's just about the numbers.

Well, isn't real estate always about the numbers? It's a concern but not the primary purpose for a home stager. Stagers are the people brought in to make a structure feel like a place to live. We give each room have purpose, and ignite the emotional side of a buyer looking for a "home". (think: Mom, apple pie and white picket fence - all emo-connex in a visceral, subconscious way)

Most realtors have their system for prepping a house to go to market. So, too, with home stagers who offer a list of "tips, tricks and time-tested strategies." Let's see which things Rehabbers do when looking to maximize profit with simple, low cost improvements....remember their entire purpose is to add NET VALUE, that's it.

1     Anything vertical gets a new coat of paint!

They like paint; we like paint.  Paint and caulk cover up a multitude of sins, and even effect a repair. Neutral colors cost the least and have the widest appeal. It's important to the job neatly so as to prevent costly and time-wasting cleanup (think: razor blades on window glass for a couple of hours) But for another reason we may not think of immediately: meticulous prep work allows you to get away with cheap contractor grade paint and still get terrific results.

2     Carpet is Convenient

Rehabbers will tell you that  it is quicker and more cost efficient to simply carpet everything rather than remove linoleum or refinish hard wood floors. This seems grim, for the stager in me, but if a nice, soft carpet has been chosen....

3     Small stuff has big payoff

As we all know: you gotta sweat the small stuff!  Those small, irritating repairs have the biggest impact because they illustrate how well the property has been cared for. Itsy-bitsy details like broken doorbells, torn screens, cracked window panes, missing knobs stained ceilings, and weeds everywhere in what reads on the survey as "garden". Home Stagers will  call it  "the honey do" list. They're fiddly, annoying but they speak volumes on pride of ownership.

4      Just Replace the High Impact Features

These guys will just replace only items that yield the best POW! So, instead of doing a new bathroom, they'll replace just the toilet and resurface the other fittings, like the tub and sink. No, 'Designed to Sell' here!  In the kitchen they'll add merely a new stove in the kitchen, with bright lights, and if you're lucky, some bright linoleum (at least they won't carpet here, huh?) and they feel like they have tizzed up the space immeasurably and for very small expense.

5     Stick to the ORIGINAL plan

My husband is particularly good here in his rehabbing, where I - once I've rid the space of the really awful things - want to keep going until I reach "perfection" (or at least something really good looking!) You made a plan, you created a budget... you need to stick to it. Remember TIME, and the cost of carrying a place while you fix it up is as important a number to factor in as the out of pocket expenses for repairs.

A trick trainers offer here is to not do it all yourself. "When you do, you screw it up", says Jeff Schnitter of the EWI. You do too much and the budget goes kablowee! If all you're doing is managing the project, arms length, you can focus more on the marketing end. 

How many stagers and realtors achieve that balance?  Yeah, we could learn a few things, I guess....

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Water wars started this morning; we had a pair of hooded pimply boys cowering by the garage with vast SuperSoakers at 6:30 a.m.

Strawberry Festival is this afternoon; cars, kids and inflatables were gathering as I chased off the WaterBoys.

Despite all these summery activities, I'm still offering Spring Selling Tips as my opt-in giveaway; when does Summer start in terms of RE anyway?  When the kids are out of school?

For a while now, I've been wondering about a Stager's Why?  Realtors, too, but stagers more so.  Why are you a home stager?  What is your purpose?  To make a living or to help people isn't big enough, or motivating enough... according the Success Gurus of today.  And while I completely respect Eckhardt Tolle's theory that we exist simply to "be"; for me that's a WAY to live not a WHY to live.

Here's Alex Mandossian, coincidentally, this morning -

http://www.alexmandossian.com/2008/05/06/what-is-your-verb/

It is good timing for me.  I have long worried that we simply feed greed. I would like a higher purpose; I would like to fill in the sentence - I ****, therefore I am.  After a very expensive coaching program during my diversion in network marketing, I came up with the purpose statement "I serve by igniting change".  It didn't really fit then, and it doesn't fit now. 

Alex' redux of Descartes is better, easier, simpler somehow.  It would be cool if I could authentically say I appreciate, therefore I am... but there's a lot of other parts of my life where I don't add value at all, neither am I especially "grateful" all the time (road rage, for example and  a certain attitude of, um, "experience" shall we say? etc)  I can't imagine I'll ever be able to evolve enough to "appreciate" 24-7.  It might be a suitable personal goal, however.

Alex quotes Buckminster Fuller (one of the all time great success gurus, that today's people seem to quote all the time) -

"I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am.  I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing - a noun.  I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process - an integral function of the Universe."

What is your verb?

Here's Alex' list of 104 "power verbs" to choose from:-

Abolish

Accelerate

Achieve

Act

Adopt

Align

Anticipate

Apply

Assess

Avoid

Boost

Break

Bridge

Build

Burn

Capture

Change

Choose

Clarify

Clobber

Confront

Connect

Conquer

Convert

Create

Decide

Define

Defuse

Deliver

Deploy

Design

Develop

Diagnose

Discover

Drive

Eliminate

Ensure

Establish

Evaluate

Exploit

Explore

Filter

Finalize

Find

Focus

Foresee

Gain

Gather

Generate

Grasp

Identify

Ignite

Implement

Improve

Increase

Innovate

Inspire

Intensify

Lead

Learn

Leverage

Manage

Master

Maximize

Measure

Mobilize

Motivate

Overcome

Penetrate

Persuade

Plan

Position

Prepare

Prevent

Profit

Raise

Reconsider

Reduce

Refresh

Replace

Resist

Respond

Retain

Save

Scan

Shatter

Shave-off

Sidestep

Simplify

Slash

Solve

Stimulate

Stop

Stretch

Succeed

Supplement

Take

Transfer

Transform

Understand

Unleash

Unravel

Use

Win

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What is YOUR why?