On a serene drive to Lompoc, Patty Ouellet is chipper and eager to get to her next project. A vacant house awaits her special skill. She will arrive and take note of things like natural lighting, landscaping, and more details that casual observers might miss. By the time she’s done, her work will help someone make a life-changing decision.
Ouellet is a professional home stager.
“If I would put it into a few words, it’s preparing and showcasing residential properties for sales,” explained Ouellet, owner of Home Sweet Stage in Nipomo. “You shut your eyes and think of walking through a vacant home. It’s cold and uninviting. Now shut your eyes again and imagine walking through a model home.”
Throughout the Central Coast, home stagers play an integral role in the real estate business, helping realtors give sellers a better idea of what their potential home would look like when lived in. While the aesthetic benefit is instantly clear, industry statistics also show a direct correlation between home sales and the process of staging.
Staging a business
The bug for decorating and design bit Ouellet early on, working side by side with her mother to help decorate their home. But home staging really caught on when she found herself tasked with doing it to a home she owned. She and her husband had a house their sons lived in while they attended college in Santa Cruz. Once it was vacant, the couple decided to sell it.
“I bought some furniture and drove it up there,” she said. “My son and I staged the house. We didn’t know we were doing that at the time. The house sold immediately. It was rewarding knowing I staged it nice enough that somebody actually wanted it.”
But suddenly, she was left with a small inventory of furniture the buyers didn’t want. Reluctant to sell, she kept the pieces for about a year until she finally knew what she wanted to do.
“I thought, that was so much fun, I’m going to stage homes myself,” she said.
Five years later and more than 100 staged homes under her belt, Ouellet has a thriving business with an inventory of more than 12 houses worth of furniture, props, and greenery. She starts her process by viewing a home, deciding which rooms need to be staged, and putting together a proposal.
“I can literally stage next day if needed,” she said, “as long as I have the inventory.”
In the spotlight
There’s nothing more addictive than watching a transformation process; the before and after reveal is an almost cathartic release. Whether it’s watching a mousy brunette be transformed into the next Angelina Jolie or watching a ramshackle home turn into a mansion worthy of a rock star, the visual net gain is intoxicating. People love to see the forlorn become the adored.
Hence the ever-growing popularity of home improvement shows on networks like HGTV or DIY. In nearly every home-flipping or house-selling show, home stagers are often featured, typically at the end before the selling process officially begins. Once the carpenters and painters have packed up, home stagers take over to bring the final touches that tell a buyer this isn’t a house, it’s a home you can live in right now.
For the home-staging business, the rise in industry visibility has resulted in a certain acceptance and ease from both realtors and homebuyers who no longer see the task as a superfluous add on.
“People realize the value of staging,” Darsie Cole of 805 Redesign said. “Some of that was prompted by HGTV. People become a fan of those shows, and now they realize that kind of thing actually is impactful to selling a property. There’s a heightened awareness.”
Cole has a unique perspective on the importance of the industry. She’s a professional realtor with Allan Real Estate Investments, a certified home stager, and a member of the Real Estate Staging Association, an organization that provides training and educational resourced for home stagers. She knows firsthand what a dramatic difference staging can make.
“It’s nice because it gives me the perspective from both sides of the story,” Cole said. “From a realtor standpoint I can understand the value of staging, and being a certified stager, I can understand it even more. I can see it from both the seller’s side and the buyer’s side.”
Plus, realtors are more privy to the overall benefits, which in turn helps stagers.
“It really helps us to understand the whole picture on both sides,” Cole said. “We can take it, we can stage it. We help you market it, list it, and sell it.”
Cole said that while it’s difficult to pinpoint exact costs due to so many variables in home sales, a vacant home could cost on anywhere from $2,900 to $5,500 to stage in California.
“The fee is generally for 60 days,” she said. “And if it doesn’t sell in that time, you have a monthly fee, paid at the beginning of each month.”
Karen Miller, owner of Kamric Interior Design in Santa Ynez, said she offers tiered levels of staging packages to suit each particular home, and she doesn’t always stick to a set price.
“The rule of thumb is 1 percent of the value of your house,” she said. “I don’t necessarily charge that … because 1 percent can be quite high.”
Worthy investment
Industry statistics show the benefits of home staging aren’t just cosmetic—they translate to actual dollar signs. According to the National Association of Realtors’ July 2017 statistics on home staging, 77 percent of realtors said it made it easier for clients to visualize home-staged properties as potential designs.
In the same survey, 40 percent said home staging made buyers more willing to visit a home they saw online and—perhaps one of the biggest advantages of home staging—27 percent said clients were willing to overlook a property’s faults if it was well staged.
Home stagers such as Miller have witnessed the benefits firsthand.
“I’ve seen homes that are not staged sit on the market for eight or nine months,” she said. “And then I’ve seen homes that are staged, and they sell almost immediately.”
Miller said one recent experience involved a home that a realtor had listed for several months. One interested party had previously viewed the home, lightly decorated but unstaged, and turned it down.
The realtor then contacted Miller to see if staging the home could help it sell.
“[Buyers] couldn’t visualize where to put their furniture,” she said. “That was part of the problem. They just didn’t know what do with the space.”
Miller said houses she has staged have had high turnover, sometimes selling as quickly as within three weeks of staging.
“You will sell it, in comparison to a house across the street that’s not staged,” she said.
Stagers point out that while decorating skills are essential, staging is more than making a room look pretty. Staging is as much a precision science as an art. It’s about zeroing in on what’s truly special about a home, finding the flow in a particular space, highlighting the natural light, and understanding what makes a space work.
Miller said the process is about finding not just what will surprise or captivate a buyer but what will hold that feeling throughout the entire home.
“You want to walk in and go, ‘Wow, this is the house I want to live in,’” she said. “From that point on you want to continue that ‘wow’ factor. You want to walk in and see that living room and have some drama there. The kitchen should be equally beautiful and elegant. Everything should look delicious and wonderful to make you want to get in there and start cooking.”
For many in the industry, the work offers a payoff unlike any other profession. Whether it’s seeing a finished room in a real estate brochure or learning of a big sale, stagers relish being the cherry on the home sale cake.
“It’s hard work,” Miller said, “but within about two weeks, boom, it’s there and it’s put together. It’s instant gratification.”
Ouellet, whose work was once featured on HGTV, said the true satisfaction comes long after her physical work is done.
“The most rewarding thing is to sell the house,” she said. “When I go into a project, I’m all in. For me, that’s the fun.”
Contact Arts and Lifestyle writer Rebecca Rose at rrose@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jul 20-27, 2017.