At its core, home staging is about first impressions.
Transformations Staging & Redesign owner Becky Harmon compares a house showing to speed dating. In the latter, romantic hopefuls get five minutes to impress another person.
In real estate, home sellers get five seconds.
“Your first impression is everything, and it has to be as good as possible,” Harmon said.
That’s why so many people are turning to home staging experts who understand the importance of presentation. A well-staged home will first remove anything “negative” from the scene.
“The clutter and the day-to-day things, like a soap dish that’s not pretty on the sink — things that are distracting to the home buyer,” explained Harmon.
This done, the pro brings in accents — sometimes furniture — to give the home a “wow” factor.
“The best analogy I can think of is that decluttering is pulling the weeds and staging is adding the flowers,” Harmon said.
Harmon knows her business. A former interior designer, she started her Jacksonville-based company in 2004 when she realized people didn’t always need everything to be completely redone. And interior design is not inexpensive.
In fact, the Transformations team will frequently work with the homeowner’s own furnishings. This can save customers money.
“I don’t want the homeowner to spend a fortune,” Harmon said.
Still, she maintains a warehouse of accessories and a business arrangement with a furniture leasing company so that appropriate articles can be brought in for a showing or open house.
She cited statistics revealing that a home will often sell up to four times faster if it is staged. And, convenience of a quick sale aside, this can have financial implications.
“Over a period of two or three months, you have probably taken two or three markdowns, which can be as much as 10% of the home’s value,” Harmon said. “The cost of staging with furniture averages 1% of the home’s value, or less.”
And using the owner’s furnishings generally costs about a quarter of that, she said.
An important factor in staging a home the right way is understanding the style of the home, so that everything looks right. Many Ponte Vedra homes are in the Charleston Traditional style, Harmon said. Atlantic Beach, by contrast, is more Boho.
“At Marsh Landing, we want to give it a traditional, but Southern, flair,” Harmon said.
Still, she said, “we don’t do the same thing for any two houses.”
In addition to staging, Transformations does renovations and furnishes Airbnbs. Harmon teaches classes, which she said is her favorite part.
“We’re one of only a handful of accredited training centers around the country,” she said. “People come to my classes from as far away as California.”
Even after nearly two decades, the art of home staging hasn’t lost its appeal for Harmon.
“To go into homes and make them beautiful, it’s just exhilarating,” she said. “I’ll never get tired of that.”
To learn more about Transformations Staging & Redesign, its services and classes, go to transform-us.com.
