Look around your house.

Those lime-green curtains, sunshine-yellow walls and antique doll collection may make you feel at home, but when it comes time to sell, they may turn off buyers or keep you from getting top dollar.

Imagine what the place would look like if some of your stuff was carted away and your rooms made over by professionals who know what buyers want to see. Would your home sell faster and for more money?

Home stagers say so. They say that for $200 to $2,500, they can make any house scream, “Buy me.” Some work with what you have, remove clutter, rearrange furniture and paint walls. Others bring in their own furnishings and coordinate drastic changes such as new countertops and flooring.

Empty homes also get infused with fashionable furniture, set up the way some builders present their model homes. Every room gets decorated as though someone lives there, down to plates on the table and towels in the bathroom. Then when the property is sold, it all goes away.

“I’ve been in homes that look absolutely perfect but don’t sell,” said real estate agent Mary Hartman, with Century 21 Beggins Enterprises in the Tampa, Fla., region. “A stager will come in, spend a few hours, and it won’t look like the same house anymore. Then the next person that comes in buys. It’s amazing.”

Even in the Tampa Bay area’s hot real estate market, where homes can sell within hours, savvy real estate agents aren’t enough for some sellers. They’re turning to home redesigners to make the most from their investment. Some real estate agents even pay for the services to sell homes faster and set their listings apart from the competition’s.

Entrenched in California, where real estate agents say 90 percent of the homes on the market use redesign services, the phenomenon has moved across the country. More Tampa area businesses — many one-woman shows — are popping up in the phone book and on the Internet.

Although straightening up the house for prospective buyers may seem like common sense, professionals add another layer, often suggesting ideas home owners haven’t considered. But don’t call them decorators. Traditional home designers may seek to incorporate their clients’ style into the look of the home, but home stagers “undecorate,” said Deborah Ehrlich, owner of Staging Plus Inc.

The trend is called many things — staging, redesigning, visually coordinating — but setting up a home to sell institutionalizes principles real estate agents have long known, said Doug Bachtel, a University of Georgia professor in the college of Family and Consumer Sciences.

“This is a natural extension of the housing trend,” Bachtel said, noting that he wishes he had thought of the business plan himself. “You pay a little to have someone help with your bottom line.”

Bachtel attributes the growing trend in part to the success of TV home makeover shows, some of which focus on designing to sell, and to working parents who don’t have time to clean up their cluttered homes.

Also, he said, the booming real estate market has more people thinking of their homes as investments, and that tends to make sellers want professional help to maximize profit.

Ehrlich recently spent three days preparing for sale a vacant four-bedroom home in Tampa’s Westchase neighborhood. Her goal was to make the home feel cozy and play up its best features, such as the screened patio and pool and the open floor plan.

Weeks before, she recommended the owners paint the main rooms a neutral beige, put in new carpet and granite countertops in the kitchen and bathroom, and install new light fixtures and sink facets.

She unloaded bright red and white pillows, two couches, lamps, blankets, artwork and a pop-up bed stuffed in a duffel bag. She has collected the furnishings through the years and uses them routinely for jobs. When this home sells, the items likely will move to the next house or to her garage for storage.

The Westchase owners are spending $15,000 to get the home ready for the market. They paid $215,500 for house in March 2001 and hope to sell it for about $430,000. Ehrlich gets $2,000 of the money going into the house, which includes the first month fee for furniture rental.

“It’s all about illusion,” she said, fluffing pillows in the living room overlooking the pool. “My job is to have people come in, look out the window and say, ‘Wow, what a nice pool,” not ‘Look at this and that.” We’re selling the house.”

That’s where a lot of homeowners mess up, redesigners say. They show the house decorated in their style, but buyers need to see it undecorated so they can envision themselves living there.

It’s a balance, though, because if the home is too bare, some can’t imagine it filled with their furniture.

Real estate agent Deborah Marcum learned this the hard way. After nearly a year of trying to sell a Tierra Verde condo, she was stumped as to why there were no offers.

Potential buyers told her the home had too much stuff inside and felt small. The sellers, frustrated, eventually moved out. Marcum continued to show the vacant home, but without furniture, buyers said they couldn’t picture their belongings and feared they wouldn’t fit.

“I went out and bought some furniture, moved it in and made it look like someone lived there,” Marcum said. “A few weeks later, the home sold.”

She recalls another listing she had for a vacant penthouse in Tierra Verde. She tried to talk the seller into hiring a stager, but he didn’t think it was worth the expense. After a few months on the market, he agreed to pay a couple thousand dollars to bring in furniture and add color. Ten days later, he accepted an offer.

Marcum works with stager Kelly McFrederick, of Kelly’s Staging Kreations. McFrederick works only with Tierra Verde homeowners and holds training seminars for StagedHomes.com.

Among her most successful jobs are a home that sat on the market for 700 days and sold seven days after she staged it and one that sat for 400 days and sold 12 days after her remaking.

“Buyers only see what they see, not what it’s going to be,” McFrederick said. “We help them.”

It took five months for Karen Tarpley, one of McFrederick’s clients, to sell her high-end Tierra Verde condo, but she said that was fast considering the $700,000 asking price. The experience was so good, she said from her new home in Jacksonville, that she’ll seek out a home stager the next time she sells.

No one tracks how much more staged homes sell for compared with ones sold as-is, but Barb Schwarz, who founded the International Association of Home Staging Professionals in 2000, estimates staging increases sales prices an average of 20 percent.

The average U.S. home, she said, is on the market for 30 to 35 days; staged homes sell in six to seven days.

Schwarz said her business, StagedHomes.com, has accredited 4,000 stagers and real estate agents in the past five years. The association, she said, estimates that 25 percent of the U.S. homes on the market are staged. In San Francisco, the estimate is closer to 90 percent.

Although Florida has had redesigning professionals for years, the staging idea is heating up locally. The Tampa Bay chapter of the International Association of Home Staging Professionals was formed in January.

Although some spend big bucks to get a home ready for the market, home stagers such as Beth Powell of Visual Coordinations specialize in frugal decorating.

Powell considers herself a redesigner and works with clients who want a more organized home as well as those hoping to get more money from a sale.

She searches home listings daily and spots those that aren’t moving. If it sits on the market for a while, Powell calls to make her pitch. These homes are typically in the $150,000 to $200,000 range or lower, she said.

“The smaller the house, the more our services can help,” Powell said. “There are homes that don’t need a stager, but the majority can use the help.”

She brings in a few props, such as artificial palm trees and a bowl of oranges for the kitchen table, and rearranges furniture so rooms aren’t crowded. Adding inexpensive touch-ups such as fresh mulch and flowers outside add curb appeal and make a good first impression.

Some real estate agents such as Hartman, Marcum and Hon Wong, who works with Keller Williams in Pinellas County, include staging services in their listings. Wong and Marcum both work with McFrederick on the their Tierra Verde homes and say they more than make up for the cost in commissions when the homes sell, plus staging helps them compete with other agents.

“This is a way to differentiate yourself,” he said. “Like most Realtors, you tend to think the property will sell itself, and for the most part it does, but sometimes staging can make a big difference.”

As a footnote, Michele Flory & Company provide free staging service for our listing clients.

Source: RisMedia, Shannon Behnken