home staging tips + more (!)

Dear Cindy:

I am thinking about putting my home for sale. I feel that I have a pretty good sense of design and my house looks pretty good. I also have read a lot about staging. I know to declutter, clean the house and de-personalize. What do I really need a stager for?

A in SF

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Dear A:

I always say that staging is a bit like getting a haircut. Sure, I can cut my hair myself, or have my mom do it. But I run a risk that my hair will not reflect structure of my face or I may left both sides of my hair uneven, and cutting the front part of my hair way too short when I try to cut myself some stylish bangs (which are true stories, BTW). It could happen, it's a risk you need to take if you decide to DIY it. No doubt, there are natural born Martha Stewarts, but there are also lots who think they are Ricky Martins and they end up becoming William Hungs. Great sounding in the shower, but terrible in front of Simon.

Your buyers will be like Simon on American Idol. They will be harsh. This is the biggest investment someone will ever make in their lives, harshness is expected. They will try to take your home apart to negotiate you on pricing. An experienced stager will know how to work with tricky floor plan and how to make your home warm and appealing and not over doing it. We are also well trained to "refrain" ourselves from over-styling so that the space will still appeal to a large spectrum of the buyers. It is tough to stage your own home, because it's hard to stay objective of your own design tastes and differentiate what is personal and what is not personal taste. So I want to command you on your courage. But DIY staging can be done and many have done well and many haven't. When in doubt, enlist a 3rd neutral party for help.

If you are ever in doubt, ask your agent for his/hers honest opinion. Or you can also hire a stager for consultation only to come tweak your home for $100-$500 depending on your home sizes. It's a small investment to pay for a large potential equity return and less DOMs (Days On Market) that can bring you peace of mind.

Thanks for Writing & Happy selling,

Cindy

I have heard people say that if you place your photos in a slide show, people can't lift them off the web. That's actually not true. In this post, I am going to show you how someone can do it and why it is important to watermark your work. In case you missed it, here is my Tutorial on How to Watermark your Listing Photos.

I am going to use my Active Rain blog for an example by lifting the photos on the slide show on my menu bar.

Say I want to lift this photo. I press "pause" on the slide show feature to pause the photo. Now I use the screen capture function on my computer. Then I open my photoshop and paste the screen capture to a new document.

Now I crop the image.

Follow the steps of watermarking tutorial: Tutorial on How to Watermark your Listing Photos.

Great, now I have lifted a photo of the slide show! And I just made it my own.

The problem with lifting from slide show is that the resolution is crappy and also see how small the photos came out? If I were make it bigger it becomes very fuzzy like so:

This is also a great way to tell if the photos on someone's site is a rip off from someone else's.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Cindy

As a general rule of thumb I watermark my photos because I have seen photos being lifted off website without being acknowledged and posed as someone else's work. (Someone recently said that he is not a fan about it, but unfortunately I have to do whatever it takes to protect my work. But I am looking in different ways to watermark it so it's not in huge block letters. That is something for you to think about on how you want to do it).

It is also great PR for myself having my website on the photos. There are watermarking softwares out there that you can purchase but certainly you can DIY it in your photoshop. Here is a brief tutorial of photoshop:

Say you have a photograph here about hello kitty flowers, courtesy of Apple Daily of Taiwan. Open it up in your photoshop:

Select the Horizontal Type Tool that looks like the T on the menu bar. (pardon my childlike arrows here...)

Once you select the tool, place the cursor on the photo where you would want the types to show, then type in whatever you would like...

Now that you need to flatten your layers to make it ready to be saved in JPEG. Click on Layer in the menu bar on top, scroll all the way down and merge the layers.

After that, viola! You are done!

Once you closed the layers and saved as a JPEG, it will be difficult to remove the watermarks. There are really skilled people who can do it but it will be a pain to reconstruct the photos. I have also seen people say that if they put the photos in a slide show and it can't be lifted, which is not true. I will write a follow up post later.

Hope this helps,

Cindy

So I staged 2 La Mancha Millbrae on Monday and finally got a chance to process and upload all the photos and testing RealBird out!

It was really easy to upload all the photos and it's actually faster than uploading via VFlyer. I do wish both of these applications have a feature to post multiple photos concurrently. That will save me a lot of energy and time. When I uploaded the photos, it appeared to be distorted and fuzzy. But when I checked the done flyer, they all look fine. What I like about RealBird v. VFlyer is that RealBird has a slideshow feature, which I think I will start using on my own website (oy, more uploading!) for before & after photos. It is not as magical as Real Estate Show of course where you can add music & captions, but I think it looks pretty darn good for its purpose. And it's FREE (music to my ears). You can also post it to your facebook account, in addition to craig's list.

But the great thing about vFlyer is that it's cross industries where RealBird is real estate industry specific.

Here is what the vFlyer ad looks like in Craig's list

Here is what the RealBird flyer looks like in Craig's list

Here is the embedded slide show via RealBird

Here is the application of the RealBird Slide Show on my site www.staged4more.com

Have a chart here (let me know if it is incorrect or anything you want me to add)

I have also been impressed by their customer services. Upon signing up, I actually received a real live person call to see if everything is working great. I also love them contacting us stagers via Active Rain directly to add a "home stager" category since we generally are like orphans in the industry and always have to check "the others" box. ;)

And thanks to David C's original post I Put My Listings on RealBird Tonight, So Should You!

Here is a link to RealBird's AR post: RealBird flies free

Starting last Wednesday, on Wednesdays are a 5-part series on Dealing with Common Seller Objections to Staging. The series will cover:

1. "I don't believe in staging"
2. "My kids are preventing me from staging"
3. "Me and significant other both work and we have no time"
4. "I don't want to pay for it"
5. "I am too busy to keep the home staged"

People may say, "Cindy Lin, you are a single gal and you have no children, of course it is easy for you to say this and that! You have no idea what we go through!" Well, what people don't know is that I have worked extensively with children from various ages when I was working for City Year Washington DC of AmeriCorps. Throughout the year, I:

• As an Executive Director of Camp City Year, I directed 15 camp staff members, 29 high school "volunteers" (more like forced volunteers by their schools to perform community services) and 100-120 campers from pre-school to 6th grade during camp
• While working as the Executive Director, I worked with problem children who were sent repeatedly to time out, which included:
  • children who were violent: I had children broke into fist fights, they scratched each other with nails, punched each other. I had a girl who beated her classmate with her purse. I had a teacher's child stabbed someone with craft scissors. I also had conversations with a child's mother that explained violence was taught on purpose as a defense mechanism because in her neighborhood it's incredibly dangerous, that violence is the only defense.
    
  • children who would try anything to get out of class: I had a child who peed himself on purpose several times to get out of the class. He wanted attention because he knew that we would have to call his mother for clean change of clothes, and she just had a new baby. He wasn't getting the attention that he wanted. I also talked to lots of little kids who had stomach aches but mysteriously disappeared once we offered them medicine or a shot.
    
  • children who just couldn't help themselves: I had a trouble child whom I spent hours on the phone with his mother. Her child was extremely unruly, I saw him every session for some behavioral problem. I later found out on the phone that he set a fire to the neighbor's house.
• Developed and co-taught an 8-week interactive substance abuse and HIV/AIDS awareness curriculum to 1128 4th-6th graders in 15 District of Columbia Public School System (DCPS) schools.
• Revitalized, acted and delivered skit shows to 3163 DCPS 4th-6th graders.
• Educated 15 kindergartners in Beacon House Ready Set Read, an after-school literacy program.
• Worked as part of a street team that distributed safe-sex materials and education to high school kids.
  

True, I may not have a child myself, but I imagine most parents don't deal with 7 kindergarten kids crying all at the same time, while 3 kids running around with scissors trying to escape from you and think it's funny that you are chasing them and tell them to stop, and the other 5 is coloring the walls and destroying the books at the same time. Nor dealing with 35 unruly students in a classroom setting while teaching a very adult-sensitive curriculum that was highly redtaped by the school board. Nor dealing with students who told me they were going to pop me a cap to my face. Or high school and college kids telling me that they need an extra large condom instead because they are much more well endowed than normal males.

My service year at City Year taught me a great deal about communications. Sure I was the "teacher" in the classroom, but it was my students who did most of the teaching. I learned through attempted andexperimented many different communication methods:

• Be very honest. Kids know when you are lying to them. Just because they are 5 years old, doesn't mean they are dumb. They know when you treat them like a dumb kid, they won't like it and they will act out according to it.
  
  
• Be structured & organized. Kids respond to structures. The interesting thing about traveling to different schools was that the schools where the children were unruly, screaming constantly back at you, and refused to listen were usually the schools where we showed up on the first day, the school administrator completely forgot about us or their administration was very disorganized and kept us waiting for a long time before they figured out what classrooms we were going to. If we arrived at the school where the school administrator not only came out to give us a tour, expressed their excitement about our work, and gave us an organized breakdown of the classrooms, etc., the school children were usually much more polite and listened and responded to the curriculum well. They also showed higher test scores when they take the exit exam/questionnaires. They retained the information much better than schools that had unorganized administration.
  
  
• Stand your ground. Once you let an inch slide, they will try to take the whole foot. If I let Roger goof off during this tutoring session or do less homework than usual, he will try to negotiate the same thing, if not more the next session.
  
  
• They are fearless, tough negotiators who got nothing to lose. They have nothing to lose, the worst thing is that they will hear a no. And they will be persistent. They have all the time in the world, whereas you don't. They know that and they will want to wear you out. They will use any tactic to do so, and they are not afraid to use it. Have you see children tripped and fell in playground, and then secretly scanned the surrounding? If they saw an adult watching, they started cryingimmediately. But if no one else saw it, they stood up and carry on with their play. Fascinating, huh?
  
  
• Be fair. Children are very sensitive to fairness. If I give an extra snack to someone, you will see 10 more children coming back asking for an extra one too.
  
  
• Communicate very directly, to the point where there would be no confusion. The worst thing you can do is sending them mixed signals, especially in teaching children what are good behaviors and what aren't. This is why your message must be very clear and direct. Show them if you need to in person. Do it with them make sure they understand that this is what you would like them to do.
  
  
• Be consistent. You MUST BE CONSISTENT. Again, this is about not sending them mix messages. If you do not maintain consistency, then they will find loopholes to disobey you. I am a prime example of this. As a child, I knew where the loopholes were because my parents were not on the same page on a lot of things. I got away with a lot of stuff hee hee. (But in my defense that I was the oldest child, so I have to break every rule anyway). This also goes back to the point of being organized & structure. You are basically training them a schedule and behavior patterns. My friends actually trained their newborn baby when to sleep and when to wake up and be fed. It's truly an amazing thing to watch. We were at a house warming party and they brought their child. He was sleeping like a rock where in the next room people were screaming and laughing.
  
  
• Stroke their ego. Like any adults, kids too love to be acknowledged and their egos massaged. Public humiliation is HUGE in a child's world. At the after school program, me and my teaching partner once experimented with the gold star system but we actually take away kids' stars when they misbehaved. Oh,did it backfired! Once we took away those stars. Kids were screaming twice as loud and hid under tables, wouldn't come out. At the Camp, finally an adult staff made this sign "I am on time-out" and made kids who were repeated offenders wore it. The adult staff also made the children stood in the hallway where everyone walked by to go to the next class. I saw significantly less children came back the rest of the day. Kids were teased "haha, you are on time-out. nanananana~" Kids were crying when they stood there suffering public humiliations.
  
  
• Respect -- treat them with respect to teach them respect. That includes respect for you as a parent, the guests in this home (buyers) and respect your home.
  
  
• Enlist help when you need to. You cannot by everywhere at the same time. When you need help, ask for it!

"How do these apply to staging when I have small children?"

Often times when I get asked a lot is that sellers have young children and they can't keep it organized. Or they have teenagers and are attached to their homes, schools and friends, what to do?! A lot of it is really about mindset & attitude, which will influence your attitude about your sale, and consequently affects how motivated you are to sell the house, or how motivated for you to keep it on the market. Here are a few tips that can help you stay on point while utilizing the communication methods above.

1. Plan ahead, get them involved. When you decide that you are selling, it is probably a thought process in the making. It's not often where you woke up one morning and suddenly decided that you need to sell. If you know down the line a year from now, you may be thinking of selling and moving, let you kids know. Start talking to them about it and start preparing for the possible objections that you may encounter in your selling decision. Additionally, set your intention -- what are the expectations for everyone in the family. Knowing what you are expecting will help to eliminate fear. They may be too young to understand what exactly it is going on, but they understand the sense of belonging. They wan to belong and feel included.
   
   
2. Prep them on the process, eliminate fear. One of the most emotional factor in a sale is FEAR. Whether it is your fear that your home won't sell for a profitable price or counter offers being accepted. Your family members will have the same emotion as well. It's a stressful situation to begin with, and selling with children (young or pre-teen or teen) can be significantly more stressful if your children are not on board with it. They usually object to it because of the fear of fitting in, fear of losing friends, fear of not able to adjust into the new environment. So talk to them, communicate why you are relocating and it's never too early to talk about money with your children to talk to them about investment. Once you prep them with the why and the how in the selling process, you help to eliminate any fear or element of surprise when you sell.
   
   
3. Set ground rules. Set a clear boundary and communicate it directly. When you have your home staged, it only makes sense to keep it staged, because you invested in it, correct? Children can be messy people, so create systems in advance to help them to stay organized. Pack up 80% of things that your children don't need, but don't do it by yourself. Involve your children in the packing process. Let them keep a few key and favorite toys will help them be more emotionally ready to face this selling challenge. Set aside a block of time, ask them that what they would like to keep and would like to pack. Tell them they can pick ___ (stick your own # here), and ask them to decide. During the living in staged home process, keep things organized by providing a system, such as different storage baskets that can help them organize their toys & books, etc. Teach them to put things away right after they are done with it. It will be less work on your part, and also give them a sense of responsibilities and participation in this effort.
   
   
4. Set rewards for following ground rules. Set rewards. Celebrate small victories. It will help your children to get excited about the day-to-day grind of organizing, it will also give you more time to bond. A client of mine take her 2 boys to a barber that gives them ice cream after the haircuts. They are extremely well behaved during the haircut and keep perfectly still during it because they know there is a chocolate ice cream cone coming.
   
   
5. Stay on point and focused. It's easy to slack off and easy to lose the focus. Set reminders for yourself and remind yourself your intention -- why you are doing this in the first place, what were the expectations and responsibilities that in your initial plan? Keeping the home staged is hard, but you need to make keeping your home staged part of your routine to help to make it work. If it just becomes something that you do everyday like brushing your teeth, it will be much an easier process. You need to keep to your boundaries and the expectations that you set in the beginning.
   
   
6. Get them involved in you home buying process. You are not the only one moving, are you? That's why you are reading this post ;) Bring your kids to homes you are considering buying, let them share the excitement of starting in a new space, pick their new room. Make the transition exciting for them to help them feel motivated to keep the home staged.
   
   
7. Keep reminding the why and the benefits of this whole process.

I know having children can be a trying experience. You are already exhausted from work and the last thing you want to do is to make sure they don't mess the staging up. But know that this is only temporarily and your efforts will bring you equity. This too, will pass. Having a game plan before you sell will help you to transition into selling process easier. Also setting reasonable expectations will help you to eliminate objections from your children. More importantly, ask for help when you need it. Enlist family and friends' help to babysit while you pack or help to keep an eye on things. Work with your realtor and stager, if they are any good, they should work with you on this to help your transition through the process. Also communicate with your stager about your concerns. Your stager should work with you in terms of how to make this easier.

I personally don't do a lot of decor stuff when I redesign. I focus really on paintings to change the ambiance because those are the stuff that won't get changed during day to day living. I do tie ribbons on nice towels in the bathrooms so they know not to use them.

I ask my sellers to get

*a shower caddy -- so all they need to do is chuck it in the cabinets

*shower the night before open house so it doesn't look like someone just took a shower which sometimes can repel people

*put the show accent pillows out in the living room when it needs to be shown (i only put out 2)

*I ask what their living habits are and where they eat, so if they eat at their dining room table, the set up is very minimum. They can either eat around it haha or recreate it themselves.

*I only put bedskirt if the bed needs it. I left their sheets if it's in good condition which most of time they are. I only bring in the "show" comforter and the matching bed pillows for them. All they need to do is take those out from their closet before show time and cover their existing sheets.

*I also asked them to pack up a lot of items that they don't need right now. Because they are moving anyway, might as well pack now! ;)

I hope this post, although lengthy, will help you. Feel free to share your personal experience and any criticism on this matter!

Happy selling,

Cindy

Cindy Lin is the proud owner and principal designer of Staged4more Home Staging & Redesigns, a hands-on, customer satisfaction oriented staging and redesign company that offers flexible solutions to cater to individual seller's needs. Staged4more serves all San Francisco Bay area. To see before and after photos of Cindy's work, read her blog, ask her questions, visit www.staged4more.com

If a random stranger emailed you to add him/her onto Friendster, Facebook, Myspace or any other social network you belong to, would you do it if he/she has a cute mug like this?

Well, an internet security company, Sophos, did tested it to 200 random facebook users, and 41% of people agreed to become Facebook friends with Freddi Staur (anagram of I D FRAUDSTER), leaking personal data.

Sophos Facebook ID Probe findings:

In the majority of cases, Freddi was able to gain access to respondents' photos of family and friends, information about likes/dislikes, hobbies, employer details and other personal facts. In addition, many users also disclosed the names of their spouses or partners, several included their complete résumés, while one user even divulged his mother's maiden name - information often requested by websites in order to retrieve account details.

As social networking become very common and acceptable even in business world, our identity become fairly transparent. Through blogging people can catch glimpses of your personality or even aspects of your personal life or your clients. Privacy is becoming a very alarming issue when it comes to identity theft.

Here are a few Cindy rules:

• When I post before photos of a staging project, I blur the faces of the people in the photos, ESPECIALLY if a child is in the photo to protect sellers' privacy and avoid potential lurkers finding out who lives in an owner-occupied home
• I don't add anyone I don't know as a friend on any social network, especially strange single men who keep pestering me after I emailed back politely and asked "Have we met?"
• I don't  reveal where my real residence is. I use ups mailbox service where my business address still appears to be a real address. Once you put your real address out there, there is potential that new clients can come by and just want to meet you.
• I don't reveal my personal email address.

I think by working in such a people-friendly business like real estate, it feels hard not to be friendly and welcoming to further my network. However, like any real relationships, whether online or in person, it still needs to have boundaries and authenticity for it to be successful and fruitful.

Cheers,

Cindy

Starting today, on Wednesdays are a 5-part series on Dealing with Common Seller Objections to Staging.

The series will cover:

1. "I don't believe in staging"
2. "I have young children and I cannot stage"
3. "Me and significant other both work and we have no time"
4. "I don't want to pay for it"
5. "I am too busy to keep the home staged"

"I Don't Believe in Staging"

Staging is a very easy keyword to plug into listing presentations nowadays. Many media outlets have praised the wonder of home staging and its potential to sell the listings at potentially higher price, which results higher commission and equity for agent and sellers. It is also a true guarantee that good staging will move the listings off the market sooner, whether it is a hot or cold market.

However, not every time the seller is willing to go for it. They hear about all these great things about staging, they are not completely sold. In this blog, I am going to cover 3 reasons why sellers resist staging or fundamentally do not believe in staging and several remedies that agents and fellow stagers can take to persuade sellers in investing in staging.

Here are 3 reasons why sellers don't believe in staging: 

1. Seller was burned by staging before. I once dealt with a seller who was very against staging and thinks that basically it's a bunch of bull**** and was not afraid to tell that in my face and his agent's. Through the whole conversation (actually more like he screamed profanity to me), the seller was extremely agitated and aggressive toward his frustration about being asked to stage. He took it very personally that the agent and the stager, me, were dare to question his taste of furnishing and accessories. It turned out he had staged his home for sale before. The staging not only was overpriced, the result also wasn't great.
   
   
2. Seller feels weary and emotionally drained about the selling process. I got an emergency call recently from a realtor who had used me to redesign one of his listings before. He called on Tuesday and wanting to put the home on the MLS for broker's tour on Thursday of the same week. We met Tuesday at 4:30 and although the home had great furnishing pieces that I could work with, there were still a lot of clutter and personal items everywhere. It also needed accessories. Both of the sellers worked and have very young children. I submitted the proposal and contract once I finished the day and set up assistant to come for staging the next day. On Wednesday morning I got an email to discuss the proposal. We went back and forth with the sellers over the phone and sellers were still not sold on staging. The realtor was really pushing for it since it is a very tough market now in San Francisco Bay Area and they had just submitted an offer to buy another home. He knew staging will help to sell the home, even thought the home is in a great neighborhood, good size lot, he felt there are no guarantee with the housing market nowadays. But he couldn't convince the sellers to because they were already disheartened by the whole process.
   
   
3. Seller was not properly educated what staging is, what does it entail, and how much of an investment it could be financially and emotionally. Going back to the case in #2, the sellers also had unreasonable expectations of staging. They thought that with 2 people redesigning and staging the home for whole day plus accessories rental will only cost $300-$400. (300 dollars?! I can hear my fellow stagers scream at their computers now) Moreover, the sellers were not willing to keep the home staged since they have young children. They don't see the point of it.
   

Here are a few solutions that may help to ease the seller's objections:

1. Set the intention for both you as a real estate professional and your seller: What are we doing here? TO SELL THE HOUSE! Right? Once we used the word "sell," we are entering the process of selling a product. Start by setting that as the intention of your meeting with the seller. This is the first step to help sellers to start emotionally disconnect from their home. After all, once you put it on the MLS, it becomes a product that will open its door to the public. Position yourself as their professional that will help them transition to selling process. You are there to help them, you are not there to be their paperwork monkey.
   
   
2. HAVE A PLAN AND TIMELINE -- Mega corporations like Coke and Nike spend months and tons of money to plan any product launch, and the same should go for you. Have a cohesive plan up front, be prepared to help the sellers to walk through the proper steps of marketing their homes to sell. Line up all the vendors on your calendar. You wouldn't schedule virtual tour before staging, correct? At the same time, you need to give your vendors advanced notice to prepare so they can do the best they do when they show up at your door. 1-2 days are considered short notice and you may not get your desired booking dates. So start early. It never hurts to start early and be prepared, but being unprepared will cost you money. And pad yourself for emergencies. Construction tends to run longer then the contractor tells you, so be prepared. That usually will set everybody else -- stager, virtual tour videographer, etc. back. Once you prepared your sellers, they are equipped to deal with setbacks and unpleasant surprises.
   
   
3. Educate, educate, educate! We as real estate professionals are ENGROSSED with real estate lingo, jargon and a bunch of other stuff. We talk real estate all day and all night long until our significant other just wants to reach across the dinner table and put that dinner roll in our mouths. But the sellers don't know, or they know some but lack an overall understanding what selling process can entail. It can be emotionally draining, it can be physically challenging. For us, it's something we see everyday and we become so used to it sometimes we come off as being insensitive to the sellers.
   We have to educate our sellers -- why staging can help them grow their equity and how it can potentially help them sell. Staging packages the home properly so it will appeal to the mass buyers. Here is a great example of it and I use this sometimes when I talk to sellers.
   
   
   "If I were to give you a $20 bill, which one would you take? This wrinkled and crumble one with Jay's love on it?"
   
   "Or This new and crisp $20 dollar bill?!"
   
   
   
4. "Yes, yes I hear all these, but MY SELLERS DON'T LISTEN TO ME!!! I have explained...." Well, believe it or not, I learned a lot from my students when I taught kindergarten for a year. Sometimes you have to explain it differently, shed another light on it and make analogies that your seller can understand. Say your seller loves cars, ask him "If you sell your car would you just leave all your trash in the car and left the car dirty and put a sign on it?" "No, I would detail it." "Well, the same with your house!" Or your seller may be single, ask "Before you go on the date, would you shower and put on your best outfit?" "Yes!" "Well, the same with your house!" Again, we as real estate professionals know these stuff like the back of our hands, but our sellers don't. We need to be able to help them to visualize it in order to achieve the results that they want.
   
   
5. Make a check list that sellers can follow: I have seen agents giving out lists that are 10 pages long. I can just feel the sellers' excitement when they got that list! Like any GTD (getting things done) tools, you need to break these things into smaller bites so these tasks, together, don't look intimidating and helping the sellers to look for reasons to quit. One of the things that I always give out for redesign jobs is a check list of reminders. Let the sellers know that it is NOT difficult to keep the home staged even with small children. Several of my clients have done very well even with young children and others on the way. All they need to do is follow the list. 

Got more tips to share? Feel free to comment below and add your 2 cents!

Happy selling,

Cindy

I came across this today on zillow about fakefurniture.com, which sells white, cardboard-shaped furniture ranging from beds, couches, chairs to dressers to help filling the vacant space. You can get

a lovely dining room table like so

for $53.65

Need a office desk? You can own one like this 

for $52.83

You can even buy a 3BR home!

Three Bedroom House
Fill a 3 bedroom home with furniture. A great way to help a buyer visualize what could be! Includes Twin Bed, Double Bed, King Bed, NightStand, Armoire/Entertainment Center, Triple Dresser/Buffet/Credenza, Desk, Corner Table, Cocktail(Coffee) Table, Dining Table, Dining/Desk Chair, Club Chair, Love Seat & Sofa.

$499.00 Price
$189.22 S&H

TOTAL:
$ 688.22 

Once the home is sold, just remove the accessories atop the cardboard furniture and fold them back up until you need them again. They are easy to transport and store. 

hmm... Frankly my clients will fire me if I stage their homes with these cardboard boxes. Although pushes come to shove, if the sellers are really strapped for cash, I suppose I can stage with cardboard furniture. But not at this price tag! I can just paint the cardboard myself, which I have seen Roger on "Sell This House" did for one of the homes where they were really strapped for cash. He painted all the cardboard boxes white and made furniture for the home...

What are your 2 cents? Would you find a staged home with cardboard furniture appealing to you?  

Cheers,

Cindy