Do the Right Thing

  Let me preface what I'm about to say by mentioning that if you are even thinking about selling your home now, keep thinking. As every broker will tell you, there's a real shortage of good homes on the market right now resulting in prices pushing up. Basically, an issue of demand and supply.

  That being said, if and when you do decide to sell your home here's my advice: maximize your profit and Do The Right Thing. By 'the right thing' I mean get some outside advice on presenting your home for sale. It can be a real estate agent, it can be a stager, it can be a designer you know-it could be all three. Every week I see examples of doing it the right way and, painfully, of the opposite. The opposite will most likely reduce the price you get and probably prolong the amount of time your property spends on the market.

  Odds are good that you don't see your house the way the rest of the world does. Let's not forget-one man's objet d'art can be another man's emetic. Look, I love my house and most of the things in it. I love being there; it makes me feel good. Even I would call in someone from the outside because I'm too close to it. A friend of my daughter's recently told her, "I love coming to your house; it looks just like Harry Potter's!" Unless I was aiming for 5th graders with a lot of cash on hand, that's not exactly what I'd be going for in marketing it. On the occasions when a friend or even a client to whom I've sold the house asks me what I think they will get for the house in the current market, I tell them I have to come over with my "other" eyes. It can be a house I've spent endless hours in but I still need to go in to it analyzing it the way the market will perceive it.

   While I find the current market here in L.A (and in New York as well) to be quite healthy, we're still in a market in which imagination counts for almost zero. Buyers want it done or, at worst, to only have to make minor cosmetic changes. Even paint scratches or missing doorknobs begin to subconsciously suggest "Oh, it needs work." And clutter is the ultimate fantasy killer.

   While purchasing a home is usually the largest transaction one incurs and involves numerous practical considerations, let's not kid ourselves. What we're selling, to some extent,  is fantasy. The fantasy of how good it will feel to live there. When our hearts beat a bit faster as we walk into our immaculately kept dream house, we willingly forget that once we move in with our three kids, dog, two cats, two hamsters and a snake, it's not going to look like that for long. At best, it'll look like that for 15 minutes before we have a party. But when we're looking to buy, we forget all that if our dream is laid out before us.

   If you've read this blog before, you probably know how I feel about the work of many stagers-it has a sameness and a lack of personality. But ironically-it works; I can't deny that. Sometimes you, or I as your agent, have to pull them back a bit. For example, I hate it when they have dining room tables set for dinner. To me, it suggests that either Frazzled Mom had to set the table early in the morning before packing in the rest of her day or, even worse, that the family had to leave town in a hurry for mysterious reasons. Last week, in a newly renovated Hancock Park home I saw a new low in this concept...

... I mean come on, even four-year-olds, who are known to occasionally take a bite out of wax fruit, won't fall for ceramic avocados. In the living room of the same home, where there was no other art work, there was, for some unknown reason...

...an impressionistic painting of Ronald Reagan. Let's not even discuss the badly placed lamps and the weird fertility symbol on the table or how crookedly it's hung. Let me simply suggest putting away any and all portraits you may own of political figures. The new owner's fantasies do not include your politics. Art, in general, is a tricky issue. Sometimes it is a huge benefit in showing a home. But most agents I know have had to suggest at one time or another, "How about taking down the collection of erotic paintings?" Certainly in this area not everyone has the same fantasies. And bad art is just as tricky, such as the painting I recently saw at the top of the stairs in a musty Beverly Hills mansion....

   While I'd like to believe it is a painting of the now deceased's granddaughter, I couldn't shake the feeling it was a portrait of grandpa's last girlfriend, the one who will be receiving the proceeds from the sale of this 15 million dollar manse or, at least, fighting over it in court with his children. In other words: I was paying little attention to the house itself.

    Much of what you need to do before showing your home is about paring down. This would have been sage advice for another home now on the market...

    Let's just say that when it comes to tchotchkes, less is more. And yes, flowers are lovely...

..but not if they're dead or have been arranged by a seven year old boy with ADHD. And while we're on bathrooms: pare down here as much as anywhere...

..which is what someone should have told the owner of this Sunset Strip house. Here's a place where we really do not want to see your stuff. A few good towels won't hurt the presentation either.

    While you're out towel shopping, think about bed linens as well. Nothing deflates fantasies more than sadly dressed beds. That same Beverly Hills Mansion with the bad portrait had 9 bedrooms...

..each one...

..with a more depressing bedspread...

..than the one before. Of course the winner of the week for most depressing bedroom...

..would have to be this one, which can only send the message, "Yes, here's where grandma died." This is what's known as a tough sale. Clearly no stager was called in here. Or here:

While this room has enough working against it, here's another tip: hide the electrical cords. When they're running along the wall like this, it tends to suggest there may be wiring issues. And I'm telling you now-if you happen to have vertical blinds...

...I will be asking you to take them down (I think the person who invented vertical blinds should be imprisoned, for life). Also, if you have your furniture arranged around the perimeter of the room like this, just know now that we will be rearranging it.

   But enough of what not to do. Let's look at one of the best examples of what can be done and how it maximized the owner's profit.
   A brilliant interior designer I know recently bought a home for herself:

   Lovely house on a very large lot (much of which was unused). As soon as she moved in and started designing it for herself, she knew it was the right house in the wrong part of town for her, and put it back on the market. Ordinarily this would be a situation in which a seller's biggest question is how much money will I lose on top of what I just paid for it?

   But this seller was very lucky and didn't even have to hire a stager; she was the stager, effectively cutting out the middle man (warning: don't try this at home, kids, unless you are a designer). So the perfectly nice dining room she acquired....

...was transformed....

...into a first class entertaining space. A recently installed but somewhat barren kitchen....

...was now the place where everyone will offer to help you with the dishes...

...while pouring out all their most horrifying secrets. Personally, I believe the transformation of this room alone would have re-sold the house. But she didn't stop there. The perfectly acceptable library she inherited off the main entry....

....she transformed into a study and/or guest room....

....which, among other things, makes downloading books seem like a passing fad. She was able to take a master bedroom with good features but a bit of that corporate-extended-stay feeling....

...and create yet another room that you just don't want to leave....

....especially when there's a fire going.  Even a perfectly nice bathroom...

...she transformed just enough...

...to make it hypnotic. By the time prospective buyers had made it to this room, they were thoroughly ensconced in the fantasy of what it would be like to live here.  Even the large, formerly empty lawn....

....now incorporated a bocce ball court:

    Okay, at this point you might be thinking, "Is there really any difference between a ceramic artichoke and a bocce court?" No; in reality, there isn't. But again, we're not talking about reality here. We're talking about that fantasy-of living here. You know you're not going to sit down to a ceramic artichoke appetizer no matter how long you live there. Buy you could maybe see yourself oh, you know, learning to play bocce. Okay, it's not exactly the Kennedys playing touch football, but it still could look pretty good on a sunny holiday. You see how it works? We're already so far into fantasy that we've reinvented holidays as easy going family get-togethers. I'm telling you-this stuff works.

    So where does it get you as a seller? In this particular case, it got the seller $205,000 more than she had paid for it only 90 days earlier. That's fairly amazing and totally attributable to her talented eye, as are the number of offers she had for the property.

    "But I'm not a designer, " you may be thinking. Even so, you can still do the right thing and bring in that outside eye to help you optimize your eventual financial return. Maybe more succinctly- you're not a designer, so get out of your own way. Find someone, whether it's an agent, a stager or a talented friend, who will help you get it to the point where it is at its most attractive to potential buyers. Someone who doesn't see past your toothpaste or the stains on the rug, like you do. It can make all the difference in the world.

Jamie Foreman
james4man@gmail.com