Stage Flowers
The appeal of having servants isn’t lost on me. No, I would certainly appreciate someone else attending to, say, every single household chore ever invented. Putting our house on the market has sharpened my awareness of how much I dislike domesticity, but we have to live somewhere and we can’t very well live in squalor, now can we?
Strangers traipsing around scrutinizing the tidiness of my closets, the shade of green on the walls of the powder room, well, it is a bit intrusive. But for them to envision themselves living in 2100 square feet of energy efficient suburban bliss, an open house is what’s required. I wish we could slap a virtual tour on Realtor.com with a message that says…
You Want To Live Here. You Know You Do. So, buy it. BUY IT NOW.
Stage Candy
Of course we did that too, but for some reason people like to visit a place, stand around in its open floor plan, feel the coolness of its granite counter tops, and see their reflection in a sparkling glass shower enclosure before they sign on the dotted line. I get it. But to stand there and ask things they could have easily discovered online, like the house has two stories, or that the bedrooms are all upstairs, or that there is no pool?
Come on! Give me a break! I did some serious cleaning for you people! Make me an offer or complement my decorating sense or at least ask how I remove soap scum!
Stage Fruit
According to savvy real estate agents, Feng Shui is the way to get a house sold quickly. So, I did just what they said, played non-offensive music lightly in the background, placed the color red by the front door, folded all the bath towels in the same direction instead of cramming them on the shelves. At the end of the day we only had four visitors to our open house. Hardly worth the FENG shui. Plus all the dusting, vacuuming, and hiding the dirty laundry in the trunk of my car.
So, we wait. Keep the candy dish filled and fresh flowers by the door. Oh, and replace the stage fruit when it begins to shrivel. Gotta head to class now and get my road rage on.
See ya ‘round the bend. As always, ads below this post are NOT endorsed by this blogger.
Honie Briggs 
I hate selling a home – having to duck out of my own home at a minute’s notice was really difficult when I was working from home. I never tried Feng Shui – here’s hoping it works for you!!
I have been so fortunate with the last three houses I sold, I had already moved out. They were absolutely empty and professionally cleaned. No issue at all. With this one, well if I decide to move, it will be a much different issue, not looking forward to it at all.
Good luck with selling.
We’re still in our first home and haven’t had to go through the selling process, but we learned a lot from the quirks and missteps we saw in the twenty other houses we visited besides this one. One had mounds of laundry on the floor as we walked in. One had a second refrigerator in the middle of the living room. One smelled like an abandoned zoo. One had an entire wall covered with the world’s largest Al Unser Jr. memorabilia collection. One had a mailbox decorated with manly flame decals. One had a walk-in closet that, when I peeked inside, detonated a big potpourri grenade in my face so I couldn’t breathe for ten minutes.
So I applaud your attempt to make your home appear inviting to would-be buyers instead of trying to frighten and confuse them.
This made me laugh, Randall. Oh, the tales we can tell about what people think is an acceptable way to present a home for sale. It boggles the mind, doesn’t it? The man who came to film the virtual tour said he once made a seller cry.When she saw how beautiful her home looked online, she didn’t want to move. I assured him that would not happen to me, but I must admit the online photos do look pretty good. I thought about printing a sign for the open house that said, “Someone awesome lives here. It could be you.” But I didn’t.
When I was in 5th grade we were looking to move, and spent weekends looking at houses. One Sunday we went from one house to another, and there was one that had a particularly gorgeously set dining room table, and something with a delicious scent cooking in the oven. They were quite well-dressed, and were clearly having dinner company, and we needed to hurry. They were gracious, but… kept looking at the table and the door.
One more house, and then to dinner before we drove the 1.5 hours home. Dinner was at a family place, extremely casual, burgers and hot dogs and the like. All delicious, but extremely casual.
Imagine our surprise to look at the next table, and see the family from that house with the gorgeous dining room table and enticing scent. Sure enough, we were fenged. Or shuied. or both.
Fast forward decades of years, and I was selling my former house. I refused… refused… to play the game. It was clean and neat and I lived there, and didn’t have time for playing the staging game, it was bad enough how many people didn’t show when they were supposed to, how many absurd requests there were (“I’m going to take a nap until my wife gets here in about an hour or two, okay?” Ummm… no. Most definitely, no.)
My fingers are crossed for you. And the house really does look lovely and inviting!!
Fenged Shuied! Sounds like it. You know, we’ve sold houses with and without an agent, and it seems to be 50/50 on how successful we are at hitting that balance of days on market/getting close to our asking price/no surprises at the closing table. It’s a gamble for sure, and I do not like having to get out at a moment’s notice just so someone can say, “Nah, I think I’d prefer the upstairs down and the garage in the back and the kitchen to be closer to the front and more trees in the yard and a swimming pool.” But I’ve never had anyone say they wanted to take a nap while they waited on their wife to arrive. THAT’S FUNNY!! I appreciate the crossed fingers.
Good luck, Stephanie, I don’t know what is more anxiety-producing: selling a house or finding a new place to live. Your photos make your home look very inviting.
Allan, you said it exactly. Anxiety. High anxiety. We’ve found the place we want to make our home. I just hope it doesn’t sell before we can make an offer on it. Thanks for sending some luck our way. We need all we can get.
Showing a house is torture…basically it doesn’t matter(depending on the housing market where you are) – they like it or they don’t for the oddest reasons. I’ve seen horribly cluttered dirty houses sell (priced high even!) and some (like our last one, so neat it drove me insane) sit on the market. So quirky – it all depends on the right person walking in – or seeing it on line. (Actually Feng-shui is worth consideration in this market as we have so many Asian families/CA people moving over, so it doesn’t hurt having a bit of it showing in pixs…)
We usually left – with pets…people here definitely want to see the garage.
Annoyance well understood. Good luck! (and you’ve done the St Joseph thing?…don’t laugh)
Are you referring to burying the St. Joseph statue? I’ve heard of it. Never done it. You are so right about the randomness of it all. Who knows what will make someone want to purchase this place. We did, and that was more random than I can explain in a comment here. Suffice to say I was sick of looking at houses and this one was move in ready. Thanks for the luck. I’ll hold on to it.
good luck–but what a pain–my sister is a stager and the whole thing is quite a game!
Everything is, isn’t it LouAnn? Gamers and the painful games they play. Gotta love it.
if not love it–at least adapt
Adapt is one of my middle names. HA!
I can use all the tips you have to pass out like the mints on your granite counter top. Thank you for the encouragement…commiserating with me. I almost felt you were writing this just for me. Thank you very much. We’re waiting, waiting, waiting patiently. Just a bad time after Christmas and who wants to venture out in this cold? Yes, we’ve had lookers but no bites. We have learned to spring into action when Showings.com or somesuch texts us with an appointment. We have learned we don’t necessarily have to leave. We’ve learned folks don’t look in the garage, so husband and I work on our laptops, use our phones, visit and snack there until they’re gone. Good luck!
Tips and trick abound in the world of real estate sales. I have never been a believer. Especially once when we had an agent send a “free” stager to our house who told me I needed to hang more art. GAAAAHHH! What a bunch of crap. That home sold at full price CASH in one week, and I didn’t do anything except make my bed! Good luck to you too, Georgette.
I remember those days of showing-the-home well. We had to sell our house in Iowa when we moved to Ohio. Always had to keep it so tidy, though I didn’t do anything Feng-shui-ish. That’s probably why we got stuck with two mortgages for 13 months…
Good luck! Hope it sells soon for you!
We have done this so many times I have lots of war stories. The double mortgage, ouch! Relo is almost my least favorite thing to do. I like doing laundry more, and you know that’s saying something. HA! Thanks for the kind wishes, Carrie.