Perspectives: Home Staging Can Help Builders With Sales
By Beth L. Bliffen 
Long gone are the days when only interior designers were asked to decorate a model home for builders. Builders are now seeking out other resources to perform the same task for less money. Who are these people? Home stagers.
Home stagers specialize in transforming cold, uninviting and unsold houses into warm and welcoming homes. They do so with an acquired skill set of knowing what a potential homebuyer is looking for and will design the home accordingly. The result has homebuyers saying, "I love it, this is the one!"
As a home stager myself, I have encountered many new homebuilders that simply cannot afford the previous traditions of hiring an interior designer or a model home decorating company to get their homes show ready. These companies have extremely high markup for their designer appeal and often struggle with the staging approach, for they get caught up in trying to make too much of a design statement.
Home stagers are forced by nature to be extremely resourceful, as they are used to working with a home seller's budget. Their ability to create and deliver beautiful models in a short amount of time is one of the skills that makes a home stager different than traditional model designers. They know the best places for furniture and accessories. Also, due to time restraints, a home stager can stage a model home in less time. Some models can actually be staged in 30 days from being contracted, not unlike the six months time frame required by some interior designers.
It's important to remember that the point of preparing the model home is to sell homes. There is a big difference between decorating a home to taste and staging for the largest group of potential homebuyers. Home stagers have an edge in this area. They look at all areas of the home, and seek out the best features to emphasize and the other aspects that may need to be downplayed to catch the homebuyer's attention. Home stagers do not recreate the "new orange." They showcase the model homes in tones and accents that the potential homebuyers can see themselves living in the homes. The homes must appeal to the largest potential audience or it is useless.
Whether it be a large luxury homes, townhomes, condos or smaller single-family homes, home staging is where it's at for providing the most appeal for the least amount of money. With the current market saturated with foreclosures, especially in California, now more than ever is the time to save money and sell homes.
More and more new home builders are staging their standing inventory production homes in addition to their model homes, due to the high carrying costs of standing inventory. Model home staging is one of the valuable services that a new homebuilder can benefit from, and when done right, it enhances the beauty and grandeur the homebuilder built into the home and adds just enough life so that a homebuyer can feel and emotionally connect -- "fall in love" with it -- on a deeper level.
To close sales, you need your prospective homebuyers to see themselves living there. If a homebuyer can’t envision living in your homes, they don’t move in, they move on.
Beth L. Bliffen is a 22-year veteran of the real estate industry, specializing in marketing new homes. A Lakewood resident, she is the founder and owner of Homes Enhanced, specialzing in real estate staging, interior redesign and model interiors. She can be reached at HomesEnhanced@aol.com.
