By Marty Graham
July 9, 2006

The days of selling a San Diego house by posting a sign and refereeing the ensuing bidding war are over, as sellers face challenges they haven't seen for years.

SCOTT LINNETT / Union-Tribune Stager Terri Wise arrived at a Kensington home with tools of the trade. The result may be higher bids and a fast sale.

The homes that do sell sit on the market for an average of about nine weeks, according to the association's statistics. Sellers have to work harder to sell, real estate agents say.

But many home sellers ignore one important step at the very beginning of the sales process.

It's called “staging” a home, which means bringing a house up to its maximum potential by eliminating clutter, emphasizing cleanliness and decorating not with an eye to your tastes, but to those of others.

This can speed up the sale and keep the price higher by getting buyers to fall in love with a home by more readily seeing it as theirs.

“My staged homes sell faster,” says real estate agent Mark Istratoff. “It's been a common practice for upper-end homes, but it will matter far more for moderately priced properties in this new buyers' market.

“The minute we finish the staging, the houses sell,” Istratoff said. “It works for the whole spectrum, from starter homes to high-end – I ask for staging with about three-quarters of the homes I sell, because getting the home in a condition where it will appeal to buyers is a vital service.”

San Diego home stagers, like Cathleen McCandless, Sandy Newton, David Kopec and Terri Wise, say there's more demand for stagers these days – and that their customers are their best sources for new clients.

“You can get a 20 percent to 40 percent higher price because you appeal to a specific person,” Kopec said. “I usually earn $500 to $1,000, and it's a pittance compared to how much more money a seller can make.”

Stagers work to appeal to the feelings of potential buyers as much as the realities of the lives they will have. For example, Kopec said, men have a greater need for a sense of spaciousness, where women look for cozy, intimate areas.

BEFORE: Wise first tackled a room in the house by moving the carpet and pulling the couch away from the wall. More subtle changes, revealed below, followed. The goal is to make potential buyers see the house as theirs.

AFTER: A new painting hangs on the left wall, above a table now behind the couch. Candles sit on tabletops, and have replaced a framed photo. A coffee table makes the newly positioned furnishings act as a group, while plants are more prominent.

McCandless works primarily on high-end homes that are for sale, but the goal remains the same regardless of the price.

“This is a psychological process to create a space the buyer can't refuse,” she said. “Buying a home is an inverse process compared to most shopping – you're looking for reasons why you should buy it, rather than looking for reasons you shouldn't.”

Giving people a reason to buy starts before they ever enter a house. Kopec, whose work takes him all over the country, gives advice that runs deeper than soap, sorting and a coat of paint. Kopec looks at a space not just in terms of color and clutter, but from the deeper things that drive a buyer.

“Home selling relies on strong emotionally based decisions,” he said. “A good home stager profiles the community first because people tend to look in communities where they have much in common with their neighbors.”

With a North Park home, that means playing up the home's artistic features: the coved ceilings and the colorful neighborhood. In Tierrasanta, it means accenting the family-friendly features: the kitchen that overlooks the play area and the back yard.

Kopec, who teaches at the San Diego Design Institute and the NewSchool of Architecture & Design, says the old adage that birds of a feather flock together holds true in real estate.

“In Poway and Tierrasanta, people are raising children and they look at safety for their children,” he said. “For example, they look at corners where children can hurt themselves. Older people are looking at maintenance: How easy is it to clean, how much work do I have to do to keep it beautiful and useful?”

Kopec said he uses information from the San Diego Association of Governments and observations from driving around a neighborhood to see who lives there and to get an idea of who might be coming to buy.

“I try to stage a home to suit the buyers' profile,” he said.

Age and gender are important parts of the profile, he said. With younger couples, the staging is 75 percent to suit the woman – with caveats. As couples get older, and especially in retirement communities, staging is a 50-50 split between what men and women like.

It is as important to engage the man as much as the woman, he said. Although women drive the decision, a balky husband can sink the deal.

“Females like cozier settings, areas that facilitate intimate conversations, and rooms arranged so they can see where the kids are,” he said. “Males like having gadgets, televisions and electronics, open spaces, higher ceilings.

“What you want to do is make sure a man feels he can pass through the house easily and he doesn't have to step around all sorts of furniture, because men have a larger sense of personal space,” he added. “Men tend to gravitate toward homes built to accommodate the handicapped for that reason.”

Terry Eilers, author of “How to Sell Your Home Fast,” offers the two-suitcase rule to help test for ease of passage. In the book, Eilers advocates walking through the home with a large suitcase in each hand, then rearranging furniture and belongings to make that an easy trip.

“Men do much better with shutters and blinds,” Kopec said. “They don't make the same emotional connections that women do with curtains. And a home that's too frilly will send everyone running.”

Once a stager has figured out the potential buyers' profile, the next step is cleaning out things that tell potential buyers “you don't belong here, this space is taken.”

Stagers come in to depersonalize the home, without making it cold. They work to create vignettes, sweet spots in the house where buyers can see themselves curled up with a book, having an intimate conversation or whipping up a cozy family supper.

Cleaning, a bit of paint, and getting rid of the clutter are the most basic tasks, according to Wise, who works with local real estate agents on houses ranging from North Park cottages and condos to sprawling estates in Palm Springs. Wise also offers a move-in service to help people organize their homes as they unpack, and a redesign service for families in the homes. But home staging for sale can be the greatest challenge.

The goal is to help potential buyers see the home's potential and its charms. That means balancing between diluting the current residents' personality without leaving the home feeling sterile, Wise said.

“I use people's existing furniture and place it in different spots to make the house more interesting to buyers,” she said. “Usually it's more about eliminating things than about adding. We try to open the home up, to make it look fresh and inviting.”

That means hiding the beloved-but-threadbare couch, putting the family photos, toys and pets away, and wiping down the walls, switch plates and cabinets to make them look clean and fresh.

Sandy Newton, who's staged homes in Coronado and downtown, says the pets –and their smells – must go. “If I walk into a house and smell dog and cat smell, and I love dogs and cats, I won't even consider buying it,” Newton said. “You want people to see themselves and their lives in the house, not to feel like they'd be displacing people who are already there.”

Staging starts at the curb, McCandless said. She worked with a client in Rancho Santa Fe whose $5 million home had a huge crack in the driveway – the first thing anyone looking at the house saw, including McCandless. “She didn't want to spend $20,000 to repave it, and that is a lot of money, but the house just sat and sat on the market for months,” McCandless said. “The day after the repaving was finished, someone came along and bought it.

“If people see cracks in the walkway and water spots on the house, it makes them feel like the plumbing and foundation are shot, and they won't even consider buying,” she added.

Dead plants in the front yard also will doom a sale, McCandless said. She had a client in Del Mar whose entryway was full of dead and dying cactus. McCandless replaced the thorny mess with a colorful assortment of flowering plants and shrubs, and the house sold almost immediately.

Some homes are just more difficult to salvage.

Kopec recently looked at a home in Palm Springs that was foundering on the upscale market despite a fair asking price. He drove out to see the house armed only with vague directions.

“I knew immediately which house it was – it was yellow with white shutters, very gingerbready on the outside, and lots of floral patterns and dried flowers inside,” he said. “When people look for houses in Palm Springs, they are thinking of light, cool, open spaces, of air – not French country in the middle of the desert.”

Kopec said that, given the strong personality of the house, his best advice was to reduce the asking price.

“It had too much personality that couldn't be cured by removing a wedding photo,” he said.

For all the nuisance of shuffling furniture, sorting and hiding clutter, and wringing the overt personality out of a home, an occupied house is still easier to sell than an empty one, the experts say.

So, if need be, they rent some furniture and arrange it.

“Most people don't have vision,” Kopec said. “They live in the present and do not have the capacity to envision the home with their furniture, so they need to have a reference point to compare with their own things.”

Both Kopec and Wise say they've done such a good job of enhancing a home's charms that the owners fell for the house all over again.

“I worked with a really nice couple in Fletcher Hills who planned to sell because they were tired of the house,” Wise said. “After we got the clutter out and rearranged the house, they called the Realtor and said they wanted to stay.

“I did another home in the College Area where, when the Realtors' caravan came through with a photographer, the photographer bought it on the spot,” she said.