Put Your Home on Stage!
If all the world’s a stage, Katie Green
is a new kind of stage manager.
With years of experience in design,
decorating and real estate, Katie is helping sellers navigate today’s
tricky real estate market.
With FOR SALE inventories way up, and
buyers in shorter supply than in the boom times, sellers need to have
their homes be the cream of the crop, the ones that get attention and the
ones that grab buyers’ hearts.
Katie and her business Savvy Solutions can
do that and it all comes down to staging.
It’s a business that has been going on
for years, sometimes informally, with homeowners taking a crack at it and
sometimes through the work of design professionals like Katie. Lately,
it’s been highlighted on cable programs like Designed to Sell on the
HGTV Network, where homeowners are told exactly what they must do in order
to sell their home—and indeed, what they have to do to reap the most
equity from the property.
That’s where Katie comes in.
Whether it’s as simple as re-arranging
the furniture and picking a new paint color or as complex as a whole new décor,
Katie can dress up a home so it’s a buyer magnet. She’s been revamping
the interiors and exteriors of homes for years, giving her clients huge
advantages.
While staging may sound like a natural part
of getting your home ready to sell, it’s actually an accredited real
estate designation, with professionals working their magic to give sellers
an advantage.
Katie recently added Accredited Staging
Professional (ASP TM) to her already-long list of credentials, after
attending a workshop in Florida.
The accreditation was pioneered by Barb
Schwarz of Seattle, Washington and is now internationally known and
respected. Schwarz’s video How to Prepare Your Home for Sale…So it
Sells received the Consumer Education Product of the Year Award from the
Real Estate Education Association of America. According to real estate
pros, homes that are “staged,” reducing clutter, and being spruced up
for sale by accredited Staging Professionals traditionally sell faster,
with a higher equity return.
Karen Vollm, a Realtor with Coldwell Banker
in Washington, DC said “Katie has a beautiful touch. The last condo she
staged for me thrilled my seller and prompted raves from the buyers.
Showing the property in the best light is essential in this market.”
So how did Rehoboth resident Katie Green
get the staging “bug?”
According to Katie, she’d been decorating
and re-doing things since she was a small child. “That included my
outdoor playhouses,” she says. “My father would get upset with me
because I wanted to repaint my room at least twice a year.”
With thirty years of decorating experience,
Katie got into the staging business quite naturally. But she realized that
staging is uniquely different from decorating.
According to Katie, decorating is done to
match a specific client’s tastes. Staging means creating an inviting
space where prospective buyers can imagine themselves living.
“People often don’t realize that they
are not selling their HOME. They are SELLING their home. There’s a
difference. You want the buyers to fall in love with the bones of the
house—but getting them to look seriously takes staging.”
Katie tells of going into some homes so
cluttered they look like the inside of a Cracker Barrel Restaurant. People
don’t event want to go inside and look. It makes them nervous.
Getting the homeowners to part with their
clutter by putting it in storage so they can show off the house is often
difficult but rewarding in the end Katie says.
Along with paint, fabric, and furniture
decisions, Katie often uses natural materials, branches, plants, and lots
of greenery to give a home a welcoming feel.
“The design starts at the curb and
invites people inside,” she says, explaining the importance of the right
front door and a great exterior look.
With “clutter eats equity” as her
mantra and a fresh eye on each property, it’s amazing what Katie can do
with lots of talent and not lots of money. She loves a challenge and has
turned small, elderly mobile homes into very cute living spaces. She’s
equally at home staging a large home for sale.
Combining the best of Design on a Dime,
Curb Appeal and Designed to Sell, Katie Green has a savvy solution for the
most frustrated home seller.
“Today’s home seller needs to make
their property as tempting as possible to perspective buyers,” says
Katie. “Let me give it a makeover.”
You can reach Katie Green at at KaGre3@aol.com.
|
Back to Top of Page 