The Most Common Home Staging Mistakes and the Most Valuable Staging Tips – Be Sure You Know!

It’s Eric from Keller Williams, Realty and team Sztanyo.com. I’m here with Sharon and Maureen from Eye for Designs, the best stagers in Cincinnati. I wanted to talk a little bit about you’re getting ready to sell your home and there are some things you can do that are great to stage the home.

Learning From The Experts – Knowing The Common Home Staging Mistakes and Tips For A succesful Staging

There are some things that you can do that are terrible and they’ve seen it all. And so I want to ask them what are some of the biggest home staging mistakes you might make when you’re staging the house? And on the flip side, what are some of the things that can benefit the most as you’re staging the home, marketing it and trying to get it sold for the most amount of money in the least amount of time.

Eric :

All right. So you guys have seen it all, uh, tell us some of the biggest home staging mistakes you see home sellers make when they’re getting their house ready to sell and put it on the market.

Maureen :

Well I think keeping it is one of the most common home staging mistakes, you know, choosing personal things, you know, colors, repainting into a color that you may like, but a buyer wouldn’t. I’ve seen people redo window treatments that just, again, aren’t neutral enough or show enough light. So sometimes spending money before you see a professional stage or to get some ideas would be a good idea.

People put brand new red carpet. And I get it, they’re thinking “oh, I replaced the carpet”, but they shrink it down the clientele or the people that would, you know, like that. And it may be something that they would enjoy living in, but others wouldn’t.

Sharon :

Another home staging mistakes that we talked about was I think sometimes they’ll strip away everything. Yeah. And so they think depersonalizing decluttering “oh, great! I have nothing on my counters. I have nothing on my coffee table.” But it’s just stripped of emotion.

Eric :

And I can speak to that too. Not only am I an agent in town, but I’m also an investor and a home flipper. And so a lot of times, you know, the home is vacant and we’ve cleared everything out and we’ve made everything neutral, but I will still call Eye for designs to come stage it because there’s no life in it yet. You know, it’s nice and it’s clean and updated, but the staging helps bring in that emotion for the home buyer so they can picture themselves in it. And you’re saying some people can go too far on that and they hear, well, everything’s got to be neutral but you were talking about kind of a color scheme, how you go throughout the house. Explain that a little bit more.

Sharon :

Right. So the thought behind staging is that we will strategically use colors, pops just here and there to keep the eye moving and take it on a journey throughout the house. So that we’re making it stop. Let’s say this corner in the kitchen and say “oh gosh, that’s great storage in the corner over there.” And so lazy Susan, and, you know, so you’ve got a, like a cookbook, that’s got some color to it. And then over here, we’re going to have, you know, a tray with bottled wine and wine glasses or something, that’s moving it over to the huge island. And so we’re saying, follow me throughout the house. And we’re strategic in how we choose the colors and marry that with everything within a room to keep the eye moving, to take in those features.

Eric :

So let’s talk about then on the flip side of that, when you come into a house and you’re working maybe with the owner who’s still there or even if it’s vacant and you’re trying to make a cohesive design, but are there certain things that are a higher priority or you feel like might have a bigger impact when you’re trying to coach someone through consultation to get their home ready to sell?. Or is there a priority of like “we have to do this”?

Maureen :

I always say clean and declutter. When you walk in the front door, you want to have that “wow” moment. You want to say “oh my God, this living room” or if it’s the dining room you see, or if you can see all the way through to the kitchen. So what’s going to catch your eye?. So I usually stand at the front door and say, okay, this has got to go or got to bring you in. I mean, you be able to stand in the front door and turn it around. So you want something to catch their eye that they want to go further in.

Eric :

First impressions really matter in that way. And even you were talking earlier about someone living there. They’ve got their TV in a certain place. And you were like, well, I don’t care where you have your TV, like, that’s fine for you. Right. But I’m trying to make a good picture. Tell me a little bit about that, how you’re thinking through that.

Maureen :

We arrange the furniture, the size, like, I know my kids are all in their thirties and they all want recliners, like “okay, that’s great.” But you know, it might not make the room look the best visually. It might not flow properly. I think a room’s got to flow. So you have your walkways open. You can see through from room to room if you have an open concept house. Yeah. So I just think it’s important visually. And like we said, the size of all your furniture is the proportion to that room.

Sharon :

Yes. The scale I think is so important. I’m flipping through online photos and I see another home staging mistakes like, you’ve got a massive couch and then you see a little piece of art above it, like little, and you go “well, now you’ve just shrunk your space there.” So scale has to be in line with what the room can hold and what’s going to be optimal.

Eric :

If you’re thinking through talking to a seller, do you have any other that’s like most important on your list?

Sharon :

Q-tip clean. Think about smells, mean we all live in our house and we just don’t realize. And so there’s nothing like when you walk into a home and you think “oh, I smell big dog.” And so how do you coach them that this is really important. Not only doing a deep dive clean, but you know, maybe the pet needs to go to the pet motel for a period of time when you put your house in the market. Just yesterday did a consultation and they have two huge dogs. And they said, we understand the house does have a dog smell, and we are going to move the dogs to craft their grandma’s, grandpas. And you know, there’ll be out of the house. And so the smell is important. That’s where cleaning really comes in.

Maureen :

One way to avoid home staging mistakes is knowing your clientele, I mean, probably a family looking at your home, then you need to set up like “I want my family to eat in a kitchen”, or “I want to have a dining room set up.” You know, people are pertaining to turning their dining rooms into office spaces. So what is your clientele? Who are you marketing? And the same thing with the downtown properties, I’ve been doing a lot of downtown properties and they even wanted an office. So I did a loft that we needed to set up an office. So know your clientele too. Ask your agent, what are these people going to be looking for? They’re looking for more bedrooms or they’re looking for living space, what are they looking for? And then that gives me an idea of how we’re going to stage the home also.

Sharon :

Right, because it is a marketing tool. And so absolutely who are we marketing to is critical. It’s creating the lifestyle that is going to be what is attractive to that.

Eric :

So the bottom line guys is you don’t know what you’re doing and it doesn’t matter how much HD TV you’ve watched. I promise you, you don’t know what you’re doing. So hire the professionals – Sharon and Maureen. Thank you so much for your time today. If people in Cincinnati area want to get ahold of you, what’s the best way to find you guys.

Sharon :

They can look online, www.eye4designinteriors.net, which is E-Y-E the number 4, design interiors.net. They can call the main number, which is on the website and we’ll pick up, but being able to decide who the best to send somebody out and so you can avoid the common home staging mistakes and the most valuable staging tips.

Eric :

Thank you guys so much for your time and best of luck going forward. And everyone called Sharon and Maureen, get your home stage. All right. Thanks guys. We’ll see you next.