Sale Prep Tips for a Hot New Years Listing

2020 is here and so is the start of another busy spring real estate season. With the end of the slower holiday months, it’s time to prepare for a different market with more inventory and home shoppers coming to the table. Shaking off the holiday mindset (and holiday clutter) to make room for serious home listing preparations is the task at hand. We asked our founder, Justin M. Riordan, for his best tips to get back in the game this January.

6537 NE Rodney Avenue, Portland Oregon, front facade.

Q: Agents are ready with open arms to help home owners who wanted to wait until after the holidays to list their home. So, Justin, what’s the best way to get a homeowner from holiday mode to being really prepared to list and sell? 
A: With almost every homeowner, the biggest challenge is finding the right mindset. Many of our sellers come to us feeling very much like a client. We do our best to help them change their perspective from “client” to “small business owner” with one big item to sell. The big difference is getting them to understand that they must be more concerned with the buyer's needs than they are with their own needs. Usually the sentence, “Of all the people in the world who might buy this house, you are are not one of them,” is a fairly effective tool for mindset change. 

Q: Holidays bring more clutter, gifts and seasonal stuff than ever — what are your best tips on cleaning house and getting to the nitty-gritty work of moving/storing/selling/donating everything top to bottom?
A: Rome was not built in a day. The toughest way to declutter is doing it right before moving out — especially after years or decades of living there. My best advice is to start slowly, with one medium size box. Fill this box with items that you think you might no longer need or want. Place this box in your storage area, garage or closet with a simple label like "Packed January 2020” or “Donate January 2021." Do this every three months in winter, spring, summer and fall. Throughout the year, you will test the idea if you in fact need these items or not.  If, for a whole year, you did not attempt to open the box, it can be donated to your local charity. Each time you pack a new winter box, it will replace the box packed laster year. The good news is you only have four packed boxes at any given time, and you can keep your clutter in check with little to no anxiety.  

If you have to declutter right now because you are getting ready to sell, I would highly recommend the colored tape system:  Create a color key chart with a square of tape next to each of the following lines:  

RED:  Move to next home

ORANGE:  Trash

YELLOW:  Storage

GREEN: Leave here for staging

BLUE:  Donate to Charity A

PURPLE:  Donate to Charity B 

Print this key chart and tack a copy of it in each room of the house. Take the tape with you and mark every single item with a piece of tape telling the packer (whether it be you or somebody else) where that item is supposed to go. Now you can wordlessly communicate where each item is going to go to anyone assisting you in your move. Even if you are the only person packing I find this system makes the separation between thinking and doing quite easy.

6537 NE Rodney Avenue, Portland Oregon, living room.

Q: Depending on the market, December might have been slower — either less inventory or fewer home shoppers. Now that we’re headed in the right direction towards spring, both will increase. What are your best tips for a competitive listing? 
A: Get listed early. The market has been slowing during the past year and we are starting to see our first uptick in listings in a while. We have had a high volume for houses that will be going on the market in March, April and May. If you can beat that rush, you might standout better in your market. Be sure to follow the golden rules of selling a house: prepare properly, stage properly, price properly. 

Prepare Properly: Get an outside eye like from a home stager like Spade and Archer to take an unbiased look at your house. Create a list of the improvements they suggest. Assign a value to each item in terms of time, money, and energy. From there, decide which of these items to complete. Keep in mind the more you complete, the faster the house will sell, and for a higher price! 

Stage Properly:  Stage your house from soup to nuts. Stage every room completely. Putting a chair and a rug in an empty room is not staging. Staging only a few rooms and expecting your buyer to be impressed is a huge mistake. Virtual staging is like having a profile picture that has been photoshopped within an inch of fiction and expecting to get a second date. Paying a stager to rent furniture means the longer they fail to get your house sold, the more money they will make.  Build your team in a smart and thoughtful way. Make sure your stager has their goals in line with yours. With Spade and Archer Guaranteed, we only get paid when you do… when your house sells. We win together, we lose together. 

Price Properly: Your real estate agent will perform a Comparative Market Analysis. This will give them a very good idea how your home should be priced. They will want to pricing your listing at a nice round number like $600,000 vs. $599,999. Trust them, with a nice round number they will be able to capture two categories of the search engine like $500,000 to $600,000 and 600,000 to $700,000 where as $599,999 would have been missed by the $600,000 to $700,000 searches. You can nearly double your clicks by choosing round numbers rather than numbers that end numbers other than zero’s. 

6537 NE Rodney Avenue, Portland Oregon, dining room.

Q: Home staging — like in most things — is you get what you pay for. What should an agent and a homeowner look for in a stager before adding them to their listing team? 
A: Take a look at the stagers website or social media then ask them for links to projects similar to yours. Ask them for a free consultation and pricing based on that consultation. Ask them about their education and work history. Then ask them if they will still get paid if your house never sells. Ask them if their work is guaranteed to be successful. Ask them if the staging is free if the house does not sell. 

Q: Lastly, a lot of expenses can come when listing a home and it can be tough right after a spendy holiday season. What’s your best advice for getting quality staging on a budget? 
The best deal on the market right now is Guaranteed Home Staging® by Spade and Archer. For just $750 we will stage the entire property for as long as it takes for the home to sell. The remainder of payment will come from escrow when the sale of your home closes. If the sale never closes, we simple remove our furniture and return your $750. Full house staging for unlimited duration of time for only $750 up front sound like a heck of deal to me. Did I mention that 96% of our guaranteed projects sell? 

6537 NE Rodney Avenue, Portland Oregon, master bedroom

HELP! MY SELLER CAN’T (OR WON’T) MOVE OUT!

HELP! MY SELLER CAN’T (OR WON’T) MOVE OUT!

Staging options when you need some occupied assistance - an interview with our Creative Director .

Real estate pros know that a vacant, fully staged home is the best way to sell a home fast for the highest bid. But sometimes that’s just not a reality for the home seller. Making lemonade out of lemons, what’s the spectrum of occupied staging options? There are a few! So let’s dig in with Spade and Archer Seattle Creative Director who keeps our office flowing smoothly with all kinds of staging projects every day.

Let’s get clear on terminology, what’s effective, and what you can expect from these tiered staging options for occupied properties.

Q: What is occupied staging? 

A: When a homeowner is still living in the property, either on a partial or full-time basis, we consider this an occupied staging project. 

Q: What is a rearrange? 

A: When we only use the home owner’s belongings to freshly design the property for listing, that is called a rearrange. Our design team will go into an occupied home, provide guidance on how to declutter and organize, select which furniture items to hide, and which to feature. After our team is finished, the home is categorically ready to be shown and listing photographs are ready to be taken. 

Q: What is an enhancement? 

A: Similar to rearrange staging, our design team will evaluate a home in a consult and use the owner’s belongings to stage a home, but an enhancement stage is when we supplement with Spade and Archer furniture, art and decor to create the overall design scheme. This service touches every surface creates a clean, modern overall look that appeals to the ideal demographics of the future home buyer. In this scenario the homeowner is either still living on-site in the staged home or they may be living off-sight while we are using their items through the process.

Q: How long does it take? 

A: In most cases, all of our services are completed in a single day. 

Q: Can the homeowner be there? 

A: Spade and Archer recommends the homeowner and all subcontractors, realtors, cleaners, or other service providers are not present during our installation. There are many moving parts to our staging process and having the space to ourselves is the most effective way to meet our goal of a great product for the eventual buyer.

Q: Why does it work in our current market? 

A: Slower real estate months generally result in more occupied homes on the market. With uncertainty around how long the sale will take, homeowners are less motivated to move out.  That being said, I believe it’s an opportunity missed to not list in the winter months as there are many people still looking and the inventory is low, thus allowing the winter listings to stand out. If you want to take advantage of the winter real estate season, not moving out and simply using us for a rearrange can really hedge your bets and allow you to still stand out with a well-arranged home. 

Q: Is there a running rental rate? 

A: An enhancement has a recurring rental rate as some of our Spade and Archer's items are supplemented into your design. If it’s a pure rearrange, then the one-time labor fee is all you pay. 

Q: Does it work?

A rearrange does work, however, it is less effective than our vacant stages. Generally, when used it creates a much more marketable listing. The best and most price-effective product we offer is a vacant stage in our Guaranteed Home Staging® program -- a no-risk option where full staging in the vacant home is paid at closing, and if it does not sell, Spade and Archer does not charge the homeowner a dime. This Guaranteed Home Staging® program allows both the homeowner and Spade and Archer to work as a team to get the home sold as fast as possible and at the highest price. Like the rearrange, a vacant Guaranteed Home Staging® listing does not have any recurring rental fees and can stay staged as long as needed with no additional cost. The difference is the rearrange product is paid upfront, while the Guaranteed project takes the payment out of escrow. It also gets you a full stage, inside and out, with a design that is guaranteed to sell. All in all, we have many different options that can fit your needs no matter what the financial situation is or how cold it is outside. 

Ten Steps to Sell a Stale Donut

What is a stale donut?

A stale donut is a real estate term describing a house that has been on the market for a very long period of time, with little traction. It looks just as beautiful as it did the day that it went on the market, but here we are, 225 days later. It’s still exactly the same, and nobody wants it because it's been sitting on a shelf for so long. The instant a home shopper sees the number of days on market they think, "Well what's wrong with it? Must be infested with rats or squatters, I don't know...!?" That is a stale donut.

Let’s talk about the ten steps to transform a stale donut into a mouthwatering, fresh-baked pastry folks are dying to get their hands on.

Step#1: Kill the Listing

Sellers are often afraid to remove the listing because they think their ideal buyer is “coming any minute.” The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. If your home has been listed for 385 days, the current strategy has not worked.  You have to change it up. In order to do that, you’re going to have to go home, start from scratch and completely re-evaluate the situation.

Step#2: Move Out

Generally, if your home has been sitting for a long time the reason is one of two major offenders: priced too high or presented poorly.  It may also be a combination of: vacant, empty and not showing well bare; priced too high; occupied and just looks like hell; or terrible staging.  Start with the vacating property and getting out of there. Pack up your stuff, relocate, go to an Airbnb, find a rental apartment, move into the vacation house that you have at the beach, go to the ADU that's in the backyard, get out of that house. You are stopping the sale. Clearing out of the space gives you the opportunity to really prep the house for the next buyer. 

Pack with two different colors of tape – one to label boxes for storage and another color to label boxes going to your temporary apartment. Store the stuff you're not going to use on a daily basis like sentimental or decorative items. Items like enough sets of dishes for your family to eat one meal per day, a TV, a couch, beds and other basic needs, you’ll bring with you to your temporary housing. The home you are listing is going to be prepared correctly which means it’s going to sell really fast which means you're going to be moving into your next house before you know it.

Step #3: Consult a Home Stager

It can be scary to have a home stager come to your house. It might seem invasive to have someone you don’t know knock on your door to evaluate your personal space. They are also going to be the first one to be honest with you about your home because they're the first ones as a service professional to give you honest feedback. Home stagers know how to sell homes and they are coming to judge yours.  This is actually their greatest value. A home stager is going to be the first one to say, "Look, you have to repaint the bathroom, you have to get rid of that brown sponge-paint." You'll be like, "Why?" And the stager will say, "Well, it’s a huge turn off to the next buyer and makes this space look darker." The blunt honesty of telling you what will and will not appeal to the future buyer is no reflection of the home you LOVED, only the home you are trying to sell to another family.

You should not pay a home stager for a consultation. It’s their job to tell you how to get that house ready for market. They're going to give you a lot of fantastic advice but you will not need to confirm a “yes or no” during that meeting.  All you're going to do is take notes of that advice.

Once the home stager is gone, then you're going to take that list and assign three values to them: time, money, and energy. Once you have those three values assigned you can make a decision if you're going to do each one of those things or not. Take a breather after the stager leaves, assign reasonable numbers to each task and make a logical decision not an emotional one.

Step #4: Execute the Scope of Work

Now you have that precious to-do list. That might mean you hire contractors, or DIY it, do some landscaping, painting, etc. Depending on the condition of the house, there may be a lot of moving parts. Coordinate with your partner or family, create a timeline for these tasks and get organized. Figure out which you can do yourself and which you need to hire out.

Step #5: Stage It

Finally, all the basics of the home are set and well-prepared for the next family. Now it’s time to SHOW OFF the features and functionality of the home so your ideal buyer will know from first glance what their life will look and feel like. This is when you're going to hire a home stager. They have the expertise in selling homes, skill in design and all the furniture ready to create a drop-dead gorgeous listing.  Your professional home stager will cost you anywhere from one to two percent of your final sales price, but they're going to bring you 10% more money at closing time.

Your home stager is going to create a design using furniture, color and art in your house that is not reflective of your personal style choices. In fact, of all the people in the world who might buy this house, you are not one of them. Your home stager is going to design for the 90th percentile of people that are looking at your house so they can garner the most offers in the least amount of time. This is not about your taste, this is about visual merchandising for a product that you have to sell, and that's it.

Bad staging can do more harm than good. Seriously reconsider that budget stager and if they would be more of a hindrance than a help. When it comes to cheap staging versus a professional, it's like having K-Mart compete against Nordstrom.

 Step #6 Re-Document the Home

Your house is now perfect and ready for visitors – so let’s show it off with a show-stopping listing. This will include fresh photos, and possibly video or 3D walkthrough.  

Use these new photos, and potential videos and 3D walkthroughs to create a single property website. If you have a stale donut, having a single property website is going to be huge because all of the listing services like Zillow and Redfin are going to have those old, tired photos of your last listing. While it will cost a little bit more, it is worth it. A professional real estate photographer will work wonders for that fresh listing.  

Step #7 Create a New Listing

Create a new MLS number so you can re-assign that to this fresh listing and no longer associate it with the old listing. You may be welcoming back home shoppers that had previously seen the home. Ideally, we want them thinking this is a whole new property.  

Step #8 Change the Price

Again, it’s usually one of two reasons why houses don't sell. The home is either overpriced or it’s not prepared correctly. If you are not prepared to drop your price a single dime, then raise the price by $10,000 dollars, or by $5,000 dollars, or by something, by anything. The way that people search for properties today is that they go to a listing website and they put in their price range. $400,000 to $500,000. And if your number comes up in that same exact range, you're only hitting those people that are looking for $400,000 to $500,000. Give them a slightly different searching number so they’ll get a slightly different demographic of people looking for this space.

Step #9 Throw a Party

It’s a celebration! Time to have a calm, home-focused event to invite folks over.  If you have great views, it might be during the night time. Maybe it's a breakfast event. Whatever the theme or time of day, you want to get that invitation out to every single real estate agent you can possibly find. Reach them any way you can, it might be postcards, it might be emailed, it might be phone calls, get them to your house, give them a drink, and give them food. Any way that you can get people to come to your house, start a buzz around your property. You have a stale donut on your hands and it's toxic. The second you can change the narrative around that project, the faster you will sell that house.

Step #10: Sell the House

Which brings us to step number ten: sell the freaking house. After the party, organize your showings, have your open houses and start watching those bids come in. Good luck!

Staging for Families: 6 Tips and Tricks

Selling your home while living in it can be so hard with kids — we get it. You’re managing jobs, family schedules, homework, animals, and it seems like everywhere the kids go they undo the picture-perfect room that WAS ready for the next listing appointment.

How do you pull off BOTH making life livable in your home while keeping it looking like the dream home for the next family coming to tour?

Here are some easy tips and tricks to shoot for that inspiring, magazine-perfect look when you’ll be shoving things in closets and bins ten minutes before a realtor shows up with home shoppers.

1. Decrease the Chaos, Always “Pre-pack and De-mark the territory”
It is important to remember that when you are selling a home, you are like a small business owner with just one product to sell, your home. If you went into a retail store to buy a T-shirt and the store owner had cluttered up the place with his personal trophies, leftover pizza boxes, and dirty laundry it would be very difficult to see the T-shirt you want to buy in a good light. Instead, you would simply be concentrating on all of the business owner’s things. If you don't find this unacceptable for a retail store owner to do, why would you think it would be ok for you to do this while selling your home? Seriously, de-mark your territory (most people call it depersonalizing) and pre-pack your clutter (most people call it decluttering) your home. Remove any distraction that will take a visitor away from imagining living in the home themselves.

2. Managing Kid Stuff
The last time I sold a home to a kid was… never. Kids don't buy houses, moms do. True enough, most homes are purchased by couples, but ultimately it will most likely be the adult female of the family who will make the decision on which home will be purchased. Have you ever hear a woman say these words? “I love it when my kids leave their toys strewn about our house. In fact, yesterday, I stepped on a Lego with bare feet, I was in downright ecstasy.” No? Yeah, neither have I. Pick up the toys before you show your home. A tidy family home with the kids’ toys organized or scarce will allow young couples to imagine family life without being reminded of the…. er, less than nostalgic facts of kid clutter.

3. Tackling Kids’ Rooms
Shared bedrooms are certainly not the worst thing in the world. We often stage rooms with two twin beds. Here is the secret, go down right cutsie and make the twin beds be exactly identical twins. Human beings love symmetry and making the beds look exactly alike will appeal to that love all thing symmetrical.

4. Organizing Your Closets, Garages and Basements last
When preparing a home for market we must sometimes make priorities. I have often seen homes with closets that are perfect and living rooms that are a total mess, I alway shake my head slowly and roll my eyes uncontrollably. Our priorities go like this.

• First - Public rooms: get the living room, dining room and kitchen in great shape first they will make the first impression

• Second - Master bedroom and bathroom: This is the room that the female of the house will be using so making sure she is taken care of is of utmost importance because as we know the adult female of the family will ultimately decide which house is purchased

• Next - Other private spaces: Kids rooms, bathrooms, guest rooms, offices all follow suit

• Last - Storage and utility areas: These hold the least amount weight and thus can be sacrificed to make other spaces look good

5. Quick Cleaning for Quick Escapes
Make things easy on yourself. Cramming in appointments and showings inside your already busy life is a lot. Set yourself up for success from the start of the staging process. Give each kid in the family a dish barrel (a large triple ply-box roughly 3’x2’x2’). Ask them to fill it with their favorite toys. Once they are done, “pre-pack” all of the rest of the toys. (We say pre-pack and not declutter as it has a more positive ring, you are going to end up packing all that stuff when you sell anyway, why not get started now? Your future self will thank you!) When it is time to play the filled dish barrels can be dumped out and the toys inside can be played with. When it is time for a showing the boxes can be filled with the toys and placed in the closet. This keeps the kids sane as they have something to play with and the parents sane in that there is a finite amount of cleaning to do before each showing.

6. Consider Storage Units
Ultimately if you have more things than storage space, you may want to consider renting storage, you may also want to consider a garage sale or donating items you have not touched in more than six months.

Staged and Sold in Two Days: A Spade and Archer Success Story

In August, we loved seeing the impact of our staging with this house that started out occupied, became vacant but unstaged, and then finally professionally staged vacant.

We asked the seller’s agent, Alicia Selliken of Sotheby’s International here in Portland, a few questions about the path of this sale and why she thinks staging sealed the deal.

BEFORE STAGING, OCCUPIED

AFTER STAGING, VACANT

Q: Tell us a little bit about the home before Spade and Archer was involved.  What was going on with the property?

 A: It's a traditional home in a close in neighborhood. The size works well for both couples or families. The price point was $579,00. There were tenants living in the home when I took the listing. The seller originally wanted to try to sell the home to an investor willing to keep the tenants in place.  We had taken listing photos of the house with the tenants' furniture in it with no real staging whatsoever.

Eventually, the tenants vacated and after the home sat on the market empty for a bit, the owner decided to stage with Spade and Archer, which was awesome.

Q: So during the listing process, visitors had come to see the home in three different conditions, is that right?

A: Yes!  I had buyers through with the tenant’s furniture, and they looked at it and they liked it. Then they came back through when it was vacant and they liked it, but there was a hesitation.

Once the home was fully staged we had an open house. The same buyers that had seen the home tenant occupied, vacant and now staged, decided to write an offer immediately after the open house.  It's    interesting to watch people's reactions to a space when it's staged.  Spade and Archer has a formula of design that allows people to easily imagine themselves living in this space. 

Q: Tell us a little bit about the timing of this home on the market. Before and after staging?

A: The home was originally listed on May 31, 2019. Spade and Archer staging was installed on August 8, 2019. We received an offer and we were pending two days after staging.  

BEFORE STAGING, OCCUPIED

AFTER STAGING, VACANT

Wow, so after 69 days on the market it sold just two days after staging?

A: Yes! It was staged on a Thursday. I held open houses Saturday and Sunday. We had an offer in hand Sunday.  We were all prepared with new photos and weren't able to even get them all posted until after we were pending!

Q: That's awesome. This project was also a part of the Spade and Archer Guaranteed program. How has Guaranteed Home Staging® worked for you?

A: I love the new Guaranteed Home Staging® program because sometimes the price of staging is a barrier for clients. To have the ability to put just $750 down, and pay for staging at closing makes great staging so much more attainable for sellers.

Q: Tell me more about what you think is going on esthetically that inspires that action?

A: Justin and the team create a comfortable feeling that people feel when they enter the space that says, “I'm home.”  It's a feel-good reaction.  The use of antique cameras or radios and other vintage pieces helps make the space interesting and relatable so it doesn’t at all come across as sterile. All of these elements let the buyers connect with the space more comfortably.

Particularly for this house, the huge third floor bonus room was a challenge. Sometimes people walk into a big space and can be overwhelmed because of its possibilities. Spade and Archer designed it to be the perfect set up for a multipurpose space for media and games – clearly closing the gap for visitors on what could happen in that room. 

BEFORE STAGING, OCCUPIED

AFTER STAGING, VACANT

Q: From your perspective, what do you think really happened for those people who saw this space occupied, saw the space vacant, and then saw the space correctly staged? What do you think happened for them that would make them want to put in an offer so quickly?

A: Right. I think that at first they were kind of wondering if it was the right space for them. It was just a blank slate. And I think that once it was staged correctly, and every space’s function was laid out,  it was so much easier to see how it would be their home and how they'd live in it.  

Q: We love hearing these success stories! But aside from results like this, why do you pretty consistently choose Spade and Archer to stage?

A:  Well, I love Justin for one thing. You always know you're going to get a quality service consistently. 

When Spade and Archer is on your team and done their part, it feels a little like Christmas morning... you can't wait to go in and see how they've staged, the colors they’ve used, the pieces they’ve chosen. It’s so exciting and fun!

 I greatly respect Justin and the team, not only for their design skills and professionalism, but for their willingness to collaborate and think outside the box. Spade and Archer works with brokers in innovative ways like joint open houses. I love working together with Spade & Archer to deliver the best service to our shared customers. There is a sense of community and common good that is created when we work together...and honestly, it's a lot of fun. 

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About Alicia Selliken of Sotheby’s International

Alicia recently joined Cascade Sotheby’s International Realty as a broker and lead of the firm’s new charitable giving program. She has been a broker since 2007 and also holds an MSW (Master of Social Work) degree in Family Therapy. She loves using her experience in real estate and social work to help the process of buying and selling homes go as smoothly as possible for all parties involved. Forming a genuine connection with her clients is important, and being a strong advocate is the key to a successful real estate experience. As a native Oregonian, Alicia especially enjoys using the success of her practice to give back to local nonprofits including Girls Inc. of the Pacific Northwest and I Have A Dream Oregon. Selliken brings not only an innovative and creative spirit to what we are creating here in the Portland Metro region, but her values and heart for community align brilliantly with ours."says Deb Tebbs, CEO, founder and owner at Cascade Sotheby’s International Realty. CSIR’s international reach is also important to Alicia. As the world gets smaller and conversations get bigger she wants to be a part of the unique global reach Cascade Sotheby’s offers.