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Selling a property used to be simple. You’d hire a smooth-talking estate agent; they’d draw up property details (full of bad grammar and advertising puff); you’d fill the house with the smell of roasting coffee, and wait for viewers to come knocking.
Well, those days are as dated as one of Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen’s cravats. Nowadays, if you want a quick sale you call in the ‘home-stagers’.
Five times more people inquired about home-staging last year compared with the year 2000, according to the Home Staging Association, and Tracey Taylor, of Tunbridge Wells, Kent, was one of them.
Investment: It costs around £5,000 to ‘stage’ a two-bedroom flat — an insignificant sum when compared with the 8% home-stagers claim they can add to a sale price
She had been letting her two-bedroom, lower ground-floor flat overlooking the town for several years, and had not anticipated any difficulty selling.
However, when she put the property on the market, it became a ‘sticker’.
‘There was nothing dramatically distasteful about the flat but it had been let to tenants and was just a bit dark and cluttered,’ says Tracey, 59, an exam invigilator. The estate agent, Savills, advised me to hire home-stagers.’
She hired Beau Property Staging. ‘Beau changed a soulless, dated flat into a warm, chic apartment,’ she says. ‘They cleared out our pokey little utility room, then spruced up the kitchen and added some modern units.’
Beau finished their work on August 24 and the flat soon had two offers. Tracey sold it for £480,000, well above the asking price, in December.
It costs around £5,000 to ‘stage’ a two-bedroom flat — compared with the 8 per cent home-stagers claim they can add to a sale price
It costs around £5,000 to ‘stage’ a two-bedroom flat — an insignificant sum when compared with the 8 per cent home-stagers claim they can add to a sale price.
Also, the property market is falling — down 3.4 per cent compared with this time last year, according to Nationwide. So it makes financial sense to sell as fast as possible.
Joss Miller, at Beau Property, has a clear staging strategy. ‘Make sure that rooms have an obvious purpose, and use mirrors to add space and light, she says.
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‘Don’t fill rooms for the sake of it. If a piece doesn’t amplify or enhance the property, it’s not needed. And never base your staging on your personal taste.’
Kai Carter, an estate agents in Newbury, Berkshire, uses CGI and state-of-the-art photography to take home-staging to a new level. It is marketing Old Church House in the village of Ecchinswell, near Newbury, for £1.12 million (kaicarterestates.com).
It is a conversion of the village church, dating from 1860. I found an impressive interior.
A kitchen-cum-dining room leads into a living room with a cathedral ceiling and mullioned windows, all looking out over Lord Lloyd-Webber’s Sydmonton Estate.
The furniture, notably the heavy oak doors, is a nod to the house’s history.
Yet the agent, Natalie Carter, has gone to great lengths to tone down the sense of antiquity.She has digitally cleared the rooms; then rejigged the floor plans, refurnishing the new spaces with CGI.
The rooms you see in the brochure do not actually exist. ‘We have given the furniture a modern twist and digitally changed the layout to more clearly define the rooms,’ says Natalie.
‘My aim is to create a neutral look so the buyer sees the space and features, not the furniture.’
You may imagine that Natalie could be accused of misleading prospective buyers, but that’s not the case.
She is mindful of the laws of property misrepresentation, which state she cannot change the colour of the walls or carpets or ‘virtually’ mend a broken window.
The countryside is such an important attraction that Natalie also provides drone films of the setting.
It’s all a long way from the traditional tricks of house sales. What will the future bring? ‘I think virtual reality will play a big part,’ says Natalie. ‘I can imagine talking a prospective buyer through a house viewing in real time while they are by a pool in Tenerife.’
So no need to put the coffee pot on, then.
