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HOMES: Making a home a house

HARDIN COUNTY — A fresh coat of paint, rearranged furniture and some expert advice can be the difference in quickly selling a home.

Home staging is not always what you see on TV in programs such as “Designed to Sell” and “Get it Sold” on HGTV. These programs often have their clients go through very expensive and intense makeovers that typically are not necessary when staging a home. A usually stager can make do with items the homeowner already has.

Shanon Bowman’s home had been on the market for a while when her real estate agent suggested hiring a stager.

Bowman used Staged to Sell, an Elizabethtown business owned by stager Suzanne Baetz.

Baetz works with real estate agents in the area to help get homes ready to put on the market or help them make improvements to put a home back on the market.

She instructed Bowman to clean clutter, remove pictures on the wall, rearrange rooms, add a chair rail to the dining room and paint the interior of the house. The goal was to let the prospective buyer see the home as theirs and not the current homeowners’.

“With the amount of work we did I’m hoping it sells pretty quickly,” Bowman said. She spent two months preparing the house and said it was a very tiring experience.

Bowman advises others trying to sell homes, “if you are interested in selling, get some help.”

Baetz said you can’t always wait until the home is on the market to stage it. If the homeowner already has lowered the price, they cannot raise it back up after staging.

If prospective buyers already have seen the home they may not return for a second look after it has been staged

First impressions are key.

“You want to have a person walk into the house and visualize themselves living there,” Baetz said.

For staging, Baetz meets with a customer as a consultant and take notes on everything in the home.

In a following meeting, she gives them a detailed report on the things they can do to make their home more appealing to a potential buyer. The report also explains why the changes are necessary.

Baetz will either leave the report with the homeowners to do the work on their own or they can hire her to implement her plan.

“I help people move on with their lives,” Baetz said. “You have to take a home and make it a house so someone else can make it their home.”

Sheila O’Mara of Staged SO Right in Elizabethtown also helps homeowners and business owners prep their property for sale.

“The goal is for the Realtor, stager and homeowner to work together to get maximum profit in the shortest amount of time,” said O’Mara.

She said some homes need more help than others and even some well-decorated homes need some time editing and packing belongings.

O’Mara likes to remind homeowners that it took a long time to get their home to its present condition and the more time they give themselves, the less stress they will feel when selling it.

In one project, she took a kitchen that had been taken down to the studs and designed it with new cabinets, counters, appliances, floors and walls.

“The results were amazing and we absolutely got every penny that was spent back in the selling price,” O’Mara said.

This project was on the extreme end of what she does. Most homes do not need that degree of renovation.

Paint usually helps and good color choices have made a difference when a property shows, she said.

“The whole mood of a house changes with just some different paint,” O’Mara said.

Baetz has a few tips for homeowners as they prepare to sell their home.

Brought to you by Sharon Kreighbaum, Staged Makeovers