FOUR SQUARE STAGING BLOG

Are you struggling to get your house sold?  Is your listing stale?  Are you not getting the foot traffic needed to increase the odds of selling your house?  If it doesn’t sell soon, are you on the verge of carrying two-(2) mortgages and facing a real financial burden?  How can you push the process along?  One possible solution is to stage it. Home staging is defined as the act of preparing a private residence for sale in the real estate marketplace.  The goal of  staging  is to make a  home  appealing to the highest number of potential buyers, thereby selling a property more swiftly and for more money. There are only two-(2) times you must do this:  Now and Right Now.  If you’re hemin’ and hawin’ about what it’s going to cost, just think what it will cost you, if you’re forced to carry two-(2) mortgages until you first house is sold.  The small investment in staging will more than pay for itself with th...

Have you ever hired a generalist to do a specialist’s job?  If so, what was the outcome?  If your experience was anything like mine when I hired the wrong contractor, you probably did not fair too well. It’s easy to fall into this trap because many of us are looking to save money and may not fully appreciate the value a specialist brings.  We may think a generalist can pull off the job, but quickly learn that it comes at a price.  Also, indecision as a result of over-thinking or over-analyzing whether to hire a specialist can cost us far more time and money in the long run. As a professional home stager, I see this quite often.  Based on my experience, the key is to educate prospective clients on the home staging process and the amount of prep work required to get the home in sell-ready condition before it is listed.  Once homeowners and realtors see the value of home staging and understand the statistics around why it works then, they’re better a...

THE STAGE IS SET What a great day to be out.  The last weekend in September.  The weather was awesome – just right for a fall day and a street fair in Westfield.  I arrived about 12:30 PM to relieve a member of our business networking group who had covered an earlier shift at our table.  Upon arrival, I couldn’t help but notice the amazing sights, sounds and smells of everything wonderful about street fairs from the crowds, to the array of food trucks for all the “foodies” out there, to the more than 300 vendors, to bands cranking out tunes on the makeshift stage and to the air-filled bouncy tents attracting the little ones.  Having had a light breakfast, my stomach still had that low rumble that we sometimes get when we’re hungry.   I couldn’t help but notice the aroma of the mouth-watering grilled lamb, chicken gyros, sweet potato fries, shish kabobs, crab cakes, polish sausage, hots dogs and burgers – you get what I’m saying?  When you’re hu...