The Staging Game

good afternoon hello peeps Randall and Diane bro here we’re so happy to spend a few minutes with you and talk about uh real estate and life and life we always throw in little asides yeah we got a little sides here and there throw little things in yeah sides so today we’re going to talk about staging staging so we thought we’d play a a little game called the staging game staging game so on my trusty Dusty uh little pickle card here I’ve got a list of things that you might consider doing in anticipation of putting your home on the market okay so the question is would it make sense to do that or not should you bother doing that to put your home on the market 100% yes you don’t know what they are yet oh Well I can tell you any staging is a good thing any stage is a good thing but always all right first one number one repairs yes why do you think think repairs out well people if they see something that’s damaged or you know not working it gives them concern they’re like is this house in good operating order what am I buying I don’t want to take this on if I’ve got a ton of Repairs repairs to do yeah so we recently got a lovely listing here in Prescot lakes and love these folks shout out to them you know who you are yep on Solstice yep the mcclures lovely lovely folks and we recommended always always have your home pre-inspected before you go live on the market just in case you find something you didn’t even know you had wrong you know it’s always good to find out before not when you’re under contract and they agreed they did it they had a few cracked tiles on the roof immediately fixed it beautiful beautiful so now when I show their home I can tell everybody this home was pre-inspected there were a few little things that they had to repair they’ve already taken care of it gives a high yeah it gives people a high level of confidence that this home has been well taken care of and that they are buying something they can move in without having a lot of repairs later on down the road highly advis repair repair repair repair repair repair so so a couple things here first of all you may have repairs to make that you don’t know about that’s why you do a pre-inspection if your home is over four or five years Pre-Inspection do a pre-inspection yep and take care of it all excellent selling feature uh people love the confidence of you know we’ve had this inspected we’ve already done everything they love that you’re good to go you got we have a clear report if you have less than a few years you know you may not want to spend the money on the pre-inspection I think it’s still a good idea it’s not that much three or $400 it’s not a big investment it’s not a big investment really uh puts a feather in your cap in terms of selling the home if you have repairs that are visible we once went to a home yeah there was a wire hanging from the ceiling of the master bedroom yes yeah yeah with nothing else no light fixture no wire wires yeah anything like that oh God it dists people yeah they’re like what’s wrong is that is that safe is that is that a Live Wire yeah I actually found a problem with the home without even having an inspected you should probably have that repaired before you call your agent so if you got you know ripped carpeting or you know a lot of broken tiles and you’re flooring just address it yeah address it because people will tag you for that it will also not help you in terms of getting top dollar yeah you know people will be like well you know I need new carpeting it’s gross you’ve got broken tile so I’m gonna ding you for five grand yep so you know all things to keep in mind yep what’s our next one paint oh well we cannot ever say enough about pain I keep saying it paint paint paint pain if you have and your agent should be able to tell you this if you have a relatively contemporary color then you don’t need to and it’s recent I it looks good you don’t have to paint but if you have faux finishes oh yeah if you have anything that’s Peach yes if you know anything like that that people might think is weird mint green mint green Paint yeah paint it just do it it’s cheap it’s easy fast gives a whole new look and it also makes your house look super clean again um I know I have dogs so you know they hit the wall and you have marks and things like that so absolutely that’s the easiest cheapest thing you can do yeah and if even if your pain is up to speed yeah uh any dings on the wall paint them if you’ve taken don’t leave picture picture hooks on the wall yes if you’re taking all your pictures down take them down seal the holes seal it and lightly touch up yep these are this going to be harder okay uh oh okay what about adding a fireplace uh well I I’m a mix bag on that and I’ll tell you it’s an investment you might have to pay about five grand I this is my opinion um if I had a lot of money and I didn’t really care maybe I would consider hiring somebody to come install a fireplace you should know most homes you don’t have to go through the roof and punch a hole or anything you can vent it out through sidew wall so don’t get wigged out by that um but I would also consider just saying I’ll give you a fireplace um allowance allowance thank you I couldn’t dat word we’ve done that in the past uh we did a fireplace allowance and then I did um a a virtual uh virtual stadi picture where we added a fireplace so you can see what it looked like um that worked reasonably well but a lot of people they’re they home alert fireplace they looking for fireplace they specifically are requiring it they’re requesting it in their searches Fireplaces they want to only homes with fireplaces so something to consider especially in Prescot we’re a little mountain town people enjoy their fireplace love fireplace um it wouldn’t stop me from buying a home but I we’ve had buyers that did not buy because there was no fire and even though we say look you can add it it just seems to overwhelm them so um think if you got yeah if you got a huge wall that when you don’t have a fireplace might be a good idea you’re looking at $5,000 as just sort of an entrylevel fireplace if your home is in Phoenix no if your home is in Las Vegas on half the year it’s 120 degrees all right so people aren’t going to be looking for firls but we have four seasons here and there’s nothing more fun than sitting with you know your wife and the dogs and coffee fireplace depends on your wife I guess depends on the day it depends on the day but uh yeah that that’s a that’s part of prescot’s charm part of the charm sit in front of a warm fireplace when it’s snowing outside it’s lovely so yeah I’m I’m kind of sometimes I think yeah just add it sometimes I say just offer an allowance to make it happen yep but that’s my two cents on that two cents next next one granite countertops or Gran countertops it doesn’t have to be Granite the uh what is it quartz is really so upgrading the countertops what do you think yeah I think that’s a good one um we bought our house and immediately upgraded imately upgraded um and so had it been upgraded I would have appreciated that a whole lot more yeah um so yeah it certainly W especially if you have verica countertops or coron nobody wants that it screams dated dated dated my house your no the house it’s old so if you upgrade and you know you know you can get a reasonable s it’s not like you have to get you know the most Expensive Fossils expensive with fossils in it or something like that we don’t need to have a Bill Gates type of gr here you can just get some nice and people just think wow okay this is current this is current now if the homes in your neighborhood uh generally don’t have Granite uh you might be able to get away with it but it would give you an advantage here’s the thing about granite countertops a lot of agent and people in general use the countertops as an indicator of the upgrades of the whole home true so you could have everything upgraded if you’ve got formica they’re going to think of your home as not being updated right and that’s true yeah very dated and that’s true in the bathrooms too so if you get the counter marble in in the bathrooms I agree that’s a big indicator that people use you know because people don’t they’re not in the business they’re not in construction they don’t know what upgrades look like but they know what Countertops countertops look like yeah so a lot of people use that as a proxy if you’re spending seven or 800,000 you don’t want to see cultured marble count tops in the bathroom especially in the master y so just do it yep it’ll help you get top dollar yep okay this one’s harder uh oh lighting lighting uh well depends if you have a really dated like brass light fixture please get rid of it it it screams old I’m dated anything that’s you know not a current light fixture most people now want caned lights if you have them um change out the thing so it’s the the closed so the bulb isn’t hanging out you know that will be a little update up cans you can get cans now that led and you can dial we did a a video on this you can dial in the color of the light how bright it is yes we did one thing that people like a lot uh is bright yeah now there was a time people wanted cozy you they wanted it dark you know that’s when they had popcorn ceilings and all the rest and all of that will come back eventually people Popcorn Back start putting popcorn back on the ceilings probably before we die but um right now hopefully they want bright they want bright so some of the homes like we’ve seen homes where they added a cover on the back porch and it made the home dark yes the the interior the interior got dark be aware of that yeah so if you need to brighten it up with some cans do that get some new ceiling fans with a nice lighting kit none of that brass and little flowery looking you know that’s all dated get current fans current light fixtures and upgrade your can l yep absolutely none of that will hurt you ever ever and if your house is dark turn on the light when you’re having a show for every single show Absolutely you want to come in when she and I are showing homes that’s my job he’s the light guy yeah I’m the light guy so I will run through the house and I’ll quickly turn on any lights that I think need to be on and I’ll shut them all down before we leave yep uh most agents won’t do that so if you’re home particularly if your home is dark uh turn on the lights it’s a pain in the butt light up yeah now if your home is bright you know don’t turn them on and sometimes that actually plays in your favor because it’s it’s so bright and they don’t even have the lights on but if you don’t have that turn on lights okay all right final one final one I got a bunch of others we’ll do another game okay yeah final one okay tearing down the furniture yes yes and I actually had this happen to us in our in our house in Texas yeah we went out and Showroom on the floor the showroom uh the sofa and the love seat looked fine we got it home huge tremendous yeah it it dwarfed the room yes it fit it fit fine but it it was just too tall too big it was like the whole room was just sofa yeah so always uh it’s better to remove some furniture if you’ve got a lot of pieces if you have a lot of end tape sofa table this that this table that table the in the hallways pull it out you want spacious clear clean areas yes particularly if your square footage is below say 2,000 square fet that’s right it’s you get down to 1,500 and you got a lot of furniture yeah yeah you need to pull furniture out to make that sucker look as big as possible yeah some people have a huge master I’m sorry primary bedroom suite um with huge dresser and mirror and then another chest on chest and then GI and then the room just you know you just have a little room in front of the bed to walk pull some of that out and put it in storage um it just will show more spacious it looks cleaner it looks uh great to walk in you feel like oh yeah this is a nice siiz room this is lovely so it never will hurt to kind of purge some of the furniture even we did it in Texas just go put it in storage for a month or two till you sell it’s well worth it yes look especially in hallways entranceways foyers uh anywhere where people are walking through a room pull it out pull it out pull it out that’s what she said and yeah that is what she said so I can’t take her anywhere one thing also one piece of furniture that will always be suspect in my mind is anything called the hutch hutches are tend to be Generation To Generation Big Y they tend to be passed down from generation to generation and people keep them because they feel they have to yep they take up a lot of space uh and you get used to seeing it you don’t realize how big it is usually you should remove the Hut yeah people come in and they’re like well there really isn’t a lot of room in in these spaces um it seems crowded yeah and that is the wrong impression that is and they’re not going to buy they’re not going to buy can tell them oh but this piece is really big they’re not going to buy they can’t see it they can’t see they can’t see it yeah all right so I think that was a fun game I think we did Gooding game number one staging game number one we actually agreed on pretty much we did we’re winners ding ding ding ding ding ding so those I like this game no rules no rules I like that yeah you can even make uh offhand you know dirty jokes that’s right pardon me if that offends anybody offend you I’m sorry we’ll pair down it’s just funny yeah I mean you know all right so that is our our staging tips of the day if you like tips place to go is pickle 411.com that is our free information site whether you’re a buyer seller somewhere in between there’ll be something there waiting for you that will Amaze Astound delight and form and Entertain You did I say entertain educate educate educate educate yeah yes overwhel go overwhelm yes yeah it’s a lot disparage dispar we don’t dispar it’s all free too it’s all free we don’t even charge you for this that’s all good we’re happy yeah all right my friends we hope to hear from you soon please look out uh and check us out and give us a call we’re happy to help you on your search here in Prescot take care and have a wonderful afternoon bye bye