Real Estate Curve

6 easy ways to make your property more appealing to buyers

By Luke Mullins

Faced with a massive glut of unsold homes, many would-be sellers are struggling to make their properties stand out in today’s downtrodden real estate market. But while the economic head winds are beyond property owners’ control, author Barb Schwarz says they can dramatically improve their chances of making a sale by devoting attention to an often-overlooked corner of real estate marketing: home staging.

(Look Photography/Beateworks/Corbis /Jupiterimages)

Schwarz, the CEO of StagedHomes.com, was a pioneer in home staging back in the early 1970s and has used the techniques to sell properties ever since. “The goal [of home staging] is for the buyer to mentally move in,” Schwarz says. “If they cannot mentally feel and see themselves living here, you’ve lost them.” Schwarz offers six simple tips to help home sellers better position themselves in a sluggish market.

Get them inside. The first thing a prospective buyer notices about a home is not the living room but the front yard. “A lot of people think staging is the inside only,” Schwarz says. “[But] we’ve got to stage the outside to get them inside.” So cut the grass, trim the hedges, rake those leaves, sweep the sidewalks, and power-wash the driveway. And make sure you don’t have too many potted plants scattered around the property. “Nothing dead,” Schwarz says. “You’d be amazed how many people have dead plants in their yards.”

Pretend you‘re camping. Schwarz says a cluttered room will appear too small to buyers. “Clutter eats equity,” she says. Schwarz tells homeowners to go through each room of the house and divide their belongings into two piles: “keep” and “give up.” Items in the “keep” pile will be used to stage the room, while those in the “give up” pile should be stored elsewhere. “Pretend you are camping,” she says. “When you go camping, you are not taking all those books, right?”

The decluttered rooms may appear bare to the seller, but the buyer won’t think so. “We are not selling your things…. We are selling the space,” Schwarz says. “And buyers cannot visualize when there is too much [stuff] in the room.” Decluttering a home’s outdoor spaces is important, too, she says.

Balance hard and soft surfaces. When staging a particular room, it’s essential to have a good balance of hard surfaces, such as a coffee-table top, and soft surfaces, like a carpet, Schwarz says. For example, a room with a cushy, 7-foot-long sofa, a love seat, and four La-Z-Boy recliners has too many soft surfaces and not enough hard surfaces. “The room is sinking,” she says. “It’s all too heavy.” Instead, consider getting rid of the La-Z-Boys and the love seat, replacing them with two wingback chairs. “If you have hardwood floors but no rugs, it’s too hard,” Schwarz says. “So you want to add a rug.”

Work in ones or threes. Schwarz recommends arranging items on top of hard surfaces in ones or threes.

You would place three items—say, a lamp, a plant, and a book—on top of a larger hard surface, like an end table. “You take away the plant and the book, it’s too bare,” she says. “[But if] you put 10 things on it, it’s overdone.” The three items should be closely grouped together in a triangle shape. “I draw a triangle for my clients,” Schwarz says. “I say, ‘Here is the end table—let’s superimpose a triangle on top of it.’ ” For hard surfaces with less area, however, a single item will do.

Decide from the doorway. Since would-be buyers will get their first impression of each room from the doorway, homeowners should use that perspective to judge their staging work. “Do your work, go back to the doorway. Do some more, go back to the doorway,” Schwarz says. That way, you’ll be better able to ensure that each room appeals to buyers.

Make your place “Q-Tip clean.“ A properly staged home should be immaculate—”Q-Tip clean,” as Schwarz puts it. “I mean Q-Tips getting dead flies out of your windowsill [and] going around the bottom of your toilet on the floor,” she says. The purpose of ensuring the house is spotless is more than simply making it presentable. If a home is unkempt, a buyer will wonder what other, less visible problems may come with the property, Schwarz says. “They’ll say, ‘Gosh, if they live like this, what don’t they take care of that I can’t see?’”

by Phoebe Chongchua

Depending on the location, whether you’re shopping for a new home or trying to sell your current residence, one of the biggest challenges is trying to reduce street noise.

Tony Sola, founder of Acoustics.com cautions homeowners and buyers about too high expectations when it comes to reducing traffic noise.

“Too many times I have seen homeowners try to do something about the noise by adding another layer of drywall, or something to the wall itself. It’s not minimal return, it’s zero return. Unless you control the weak point, that does nothing,” says Sola.

Sola says there are some cases where the wall might be the weak point but he says usually that’s just one percent of the time. Generally the windows are the weakest noise link.

So, if you’ve fallen in love with a home that’s perfect for you but butting up a little close to a busy road, there are options to help make the traffic less noticeable.

Starting with the interior of the house, the first area to listen closely to are the windows. They can tend to let in a significant amount of noise.

“The sound almost always goes through the window and doing anything at all to the walls will be pointless until you have fixed the noise that comes through the window,” says Sola.

Windows have a Sound Transmission Class (STC) rating. The higher the rating the less outside noise you should hear inside the home. A typical single-pane window only has a 22-25 STC rating whereas a dual-pane window might have a STC rating of 27-32. There are also specialty windows with even higher STC ratings available.

Choosing the right STC rating depends on what you’re planning to do.

“If you’re looking at a STC 30 window versus a STC 33 window, you’re not going to notice a huge difference in that but it might be worth it to you, if they’re about the same price. But if you’re looking at replacing windows and you’re planning to go from a STC 30 to a STC 33, that’s a lot of work to get virtually little improvement. If you can get a five or six decibel difference, then that can start to make a noticeable change,” explains Sola.

Keeping sound from coming into your home is usually only part of the solution. Many people want to enjoy a traffic-noise-free backyard. This can be a little more complicated but not impossible.

“One of the first things you would look at is the barrier. If you’ve got a view wall or wrought iron fence that’s not going to block anything, or if you have large oleander bushes, that might block the view but it doesn’t block the sound at all,” says Sola.

Instead he says a solid wall that doesn’t have gaps in it will help a little.

“Auto noise comes from the tires. So to control auto noise the wall will work pretty well because the source is really low — it’s at ground level but truck noise — the medium trucks or the semi truck — comes from about eight feet off the ground, so even if you build a six, seven, or eight-foot wall, that won’t help much,” says Sola.

However, if you couple a barrier wall with a noise-masking system such as a water feature then you can virtually wash away the traffic sounds.

“A water feature, if done right, can work very well,” says Sola.

“You wouldn’t want a water feature that’s just trickling water. You would want something more substantial that does have a noise level to it and more of a broad band noise,” says Sola.

He says the problem with water features is they tend to be very localized. Sola says he’s been to some homes where the homeowner placed one water feature in the backyard and it drowned out the traffic noise in that one area of the yard but the street noise could be heard from other parts of the backyard. He says that’s when a couple of fountains might need to be used.

Getting creative is the key. Working with a sound acoustic expert and landscaper can result in a beautifully designed outdoor area that’s doesn’t reveal any sign of the chaotic hustle and bustle of the nearby road.

Published: July 18, 2008