Staging & Photography
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SETTING THE STAGE “ What is the first thing your buyers will see and smell when they open your front door? They may not yet be consciously aware of it but, at some level, the buyers have already made a decision at this point as to whether your home is on the list or off the list.” - from STAGING YOUR HOME, a publication of BHHS | Aspen Snowmass Properties
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OUR COMMITMENT TO INCREASE YOUR HOME’S APPEAL AND MAXIMIZE ITS VALUE
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he most important thing to remember, once you decide to list your property for sale, is that you’re about to become a homeseller and no longer a homeowner — two different roles entirely. And, your most important job as a homeseller is to set the stage (your home) for a flawless production (a showing).
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iven the intensely competitive nature of our market and the number of listings available, most properties benefit tremendously by being decluttered, staged and more fully accessorized before they are introduced to the marketplace. They otherwise may suffer by not being distinguishable from other listings and/or by having no real personality, a requisite to capture buyers’ interest, even in the best of economies. We want your prospective purchasers to see your property online, or to walk into your home, and say, “Wow!!”
As old stage hands ourselves, we’ve learned a few things over the last 25 years about setting the stage to insure your buyers’ applause, and we estimate 80% of our listings are now given some staging attention before they are photographed and put on the market. Staging involves not only organizing, thinning out and rearranging what’s already there, but also adding accessories that bring color and life to your property in order to put it in “model home showing” condition. This includes remarkable accents that catch the eye throughout (especially at the entry), area rugs which define furniture arrangements, beds made like you would see in high-end showrooms (which often means new linen and pillows), big, fluffy
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5-star hotel towels, and art and accessories that sparkle in every room, even baths — not tchotchkes and clutter, but strong pieces that contribute warmth, elegance and, most importantly, current taste. For years, we have taken on staging our listings as part of our service, and we are very effective in this arena. No other company in the valley spends as much time on this facet of marketing property as we do, and this translates into more of our listings getting sold, and faster, than those of our competitors.’ Our design fees, as well as our time to purchase and install, are included in our commission. We ask our clients to give us a budget, and then we make the best possible use of that money to pull their homes together by shopping in the valley and online, and even by going to the design centers in Edwards or Denver. In most cases, we estimate a staging budget in the $5000 to $20,000 range — an investment we are confident is paid off in terms of both heightened interest in our listings and higher offers.
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THE VALUE OF GOOD PHOTOGRAPHY
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ccording to Realtor.com, 9 out of 10 buyers now do their preliminary research online through third-party search engines, such as Zillow or dozens of others. Buyers get excited about or, conversely, lose interest in, a property often based solely on the photographs they see of it on a website. The same holds true for real estate brokers selecting properties for their buyers to consider. For these reasons, beautiful staging and powerful photography are essential. In addition to our staging skills, we have a keen eye for art direction and work closely with our professional photographers to select the best angles to highlight a room, arrange furniture and accessories to make the spaces look warm and inviting, and determine the perfect time of day to capture the views and best light. Unlike many of our competitors, we don’t wait until dusk when the light is balanced, inside and out, and then run around shooting all the rooms in an hour or less — an effort which, while far easier, results in all the photos having a bluish tinge to them and rendering, at first blush, one home indistinguishable from the next. Once we receive a signed listing agreement and our staging efforts are in place, we will have a complete set of photographs taken by our photographer. These photographs are used for the creation of your brochure and your property’s web page and are then uploaded to the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices international website, as well as to the Aspen/Glenwood Springs Board of Realtors MLS, a feed which then gets picked up by a variety of real estate search engines, such as Zillow, realtor.com, and Homes.com.
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“The hallmark of good packaging is its ability to draw attention to a product and to increase the perceived value of what lies within.”
The following pages show properties we have staged and had professionally photographed. The “before” photos show the homes and condominiums before we undertook these efforts. Most of these photos were quickly captured on our phones for the purposes of making a shopping list, so we acknowledge they’ll pale against professional photos. In some cases, though, these are the actual pictures used by previous listing brokers to market those properties (obviously, unsuccessfully). In either case, we think the difference between staged and not staged is remarkable and so worth the expense and effort. (All After photography, Jeremy Swanson)
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WILLOUGHBY WAY
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his spectacular home on Red Mountain was, when we listed it, very warm and livable and filled with chenille oversized chairs and sofas and ottomans. It was a house designed by the owners to be one where the family could sit down anywhere, shoes on, watch TV or read a book, and just be lazy and comfy. In our opinion, the home, given its luxury price tag and location in one of Aspen’s highest-end neighborhoods, needed more elegance and décor which reflected the contemporary taste buyers expect today. As this home seemed very crowded with furniture, we started by simply taking several layers of sofas, chairs and lamps out of the house and donating them to Habitat for Humanity. The remaining pieces were all shuffled about into new furniture arrangements designed to maximize the dramatic views from the house, especially from the living room and entry foyer.
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A dreary main level media room was transformed into a beautiful study. A guest master bedroom with high ceilings and three walls of windows, but serving triple-duty as an office, as well as an exercise room, was completely rearranged to be inviting and magical. Even more things were donated. With more spaciousness then in the house, we could see how best to stretch a $15,000 budget in a 7800 sq ft property. Rugs, contemporary accessory pillows, flat-screen TVs, all new linen for every bedroom, art and elegant accessories were added. A lofted room used as a catch-all for miscellaneous “stuff” was made into a fifth sleeping space. The result? This is perhaps best answered by the phrase almost every broker and buyer uses to describe their experience of being in this property — a very happy home. There could be no better accolade for our work.
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“ Research has shown that buyers make the real decision about a house purchase in the first eleven seconds of seeing it.” - f rom STAGING YOUR HOME, a publication of BHHS | Aspen Snowmass Properties
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MOUNTAIN VIEW
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his listing was given to us as a blank palette — a 5200 sq ft, 4-bedroom home which was virtually empty, save for a lonely sectional sofa, a dining table and chairs, and a few bed frames and mattresses. We strongly felt that, unless the home was furnished throughout, it was likely to be viewed by buyers as cold, lifeless, and even sad. With a mere $25,000, we were able to furnish the entire 3-level house and, in the doing, set the scene for the wonderful family home it was meant to be. We started with finding living room furniture from an Aspen estate sale — the pieces were virtually new and were purchased at a fraction of their value. From there, the rest of the living room came together with an area rug, coffee and console tables, lamps and accessories. The sectional which had been in the living room, and which was proportionately too small for the space, was
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moved into a downstairs family room, and then that space was also completed with a rug, a large statement floor lamp, accent pillows, and accessories. Comforters, duvets, new sheets, pillowshams, bed skirts and, in some cases, headboards, were added to all the bedrooms. An empty study was outfitted with a rug, lamps, chairs and desk accouterments. Artwork was found for all the walls, area rugs placed in many of the other rooms, and the entry warmed up with pillows on benches and folk art on walls. One of the features of this home is its great entertainment deck off the living room which was bare and forlorn — we totally transformed the space with a selection of colorful cushions, pillows and outdoor candles. This home is on many of our colleagues’ “short list” of great houses on the market presently — it consistently receives enthusiastic, positive reviews when it’s shown.
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From the National Association of Realtors 2015 Profile of Home Staging Report:
Over 81% of buyers find it “easier to visualize the property as their future home” when it’s staged.
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Almost a third of buyers are more willing to “overlook property faults� when the home is staged.
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WOODRUN
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e took on this listing after it had been on the market with another firm for 6 years. With only $1500 from the seller, but the freedom to rearrange what was already in the house, we set about making what we thought was special about this beautiful, high-quality home stand out. We put a lot of emphasis on the front entry, where first impressions are formed, adding a rug, exchanging the artwork with another piece in the house better suited for that space, and by adding accessories. Accent pillows were added to upholstered pieces. The beds were all remade to look fresher and boutique pillows were added to them. The owner’s art and accessories were moved around to places where they were better showcased.
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Dried, dusty flower arrangements were given away. The budget was used primarily for soft goods (pillows, towels, and especially rugs, which we used throughout the home), coffee table books and accessories, and for items to dress up a beautiful bar and a built-in desk in the family room. Everything in all the closets, drawers and cabinets was re-organized, in the event they were opened. More than any one effort, this home simply needed to be loved. By highlighting what was so great about this property that had previously gone unnoticed, we gave it personality and warmth. We put the home under contract in less than a week, and closed the transaction in less than 30 days.
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MELTON RANCH
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his home was put on the market, just as the Aspen/Snowmass community plunged into the Great Recession, and the sellers, working with other brokers, seemed to constantly be trailing the market in terms of their list price, as it kept coming down. By the time we had the opportunity to take the listing two years into the process, our market had lost a third of its value. With sensitivity to the owners’ disappointment about the market’s unfortunate timing, we worked with them to better position their home, pricewise, against the competition. More importantly, though, we believed their home was coming across as cold and grey and not welcoming in its MLS and advertising pictures.
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We had virtually no staging budget for this home, but the house was filled with beautiful pieces and artwork which we simply moved around to create a series of warm living and sleeping spaces throughout. This is often the case with properties we stage – the owners already have great art, good-looking furniture, and lovely accessories, but their beauty is either overwhelmed by too much ancillary “stuff,” or it’s not been thoughtfully placed. Our focus with this home was how it would photograph – we felt it important that it come across as alive, colorful and comfortable. We filled it with fresh flowers. Following our staging efforts, we put the home under contract in less than a month, and closed the sale 60 days later.
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“ If buyers too strongly feel this property still belongs to you, they also feel it will never belong to them.
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Reduce family photos to a treasured few. Put away collections and hobby treasures that so personalize your home, buyers can’t picture it as their own.�
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HIGHLIGHTS
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nlike many metropolitan areas, the Roaring Fork Valley does not have big professional staging companies with warehouses filled with furniture and trucks which show up at our clients’ homes with moving crews who change out everything with brand new, meant-to-be-admired-butnot-to-be-lived-in arrangements for each room. This is largely due to the distance we are from the major showrooms in Denver, as well as the prohibitive cost of warehouse space sufficient for such undertakings. In addition, many of our listings are vacation properties that are rented for most of the summer and winter, and the financial investment in a total furniture replacement package simply isn’t merited. To make things even more challenging, renters and property management housekeeping teams are never going to keep things in their ideal locations, so careful thought needs to be given to what is worth replacing.
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For this reason, as well as in acknowledgment that our primary expertise is real estate brokerage not interior design, we’ve focused our staging work mainly around soft goods, linen, accessories, art, rugs and the occasional lamp or coffee table. We have a very good eye for such things and, carefully selected and placed, they can positively influence a prospective buyer’s, or even a cooperating broker’s, impression of the homes and condominiums we list. While we’ve seen some extraordinarily beautiful new homes and penthouses developed in recent years which are introduced to the marketplace phenomenally furnished and accessorized, the vast majority of real estate in Aspen and Snowmass was developed in the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, and many of these places reflect very dated, even tired, décor. Over the years, we have successfully transformed dozens and dozens of these homes and condominiums. On the following pages are additional examples of our work.
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“A house with daffodils in it is a house lit up, whether or not the sun be shining outside.” – A.A. Milne
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