I figured this would be a timely follow-up to Wednesday’s top-ten list, as I’m starting to realize that more people know about the what when it comes to staging, but not as much the why.

But if everybody is doing it, then it must be working, right?

Last week, I was walking through a property with a prospective seller, and I found myself starring into the corner of the bedroom for some time.

I told the seller, “This is great space, we really need to show it off!”

I asked him to remove the old chair in the corner of the room, partly because it was old and a bit worn, but also because I wanted to show how large the bedroom was.

He said, “Don’t you think it’ll look bare without that chair?”  I told him, “Precisely!”

He asked, “So what do you want to accomplish by doing that?”

I replied, “I want the prospective buyer to come into this room and think to him or herself, ‘I could definitely fit a chair there.'”

He furrowed his brow a little bit and thought about it, then shrugged it off.  “I guess you know what you’re doing.”

It seems redundant, right?

Removing a chair so that a buyer can come in and say, “I think I’ll put a chair there!”

Why not just leave the chair?

Well part of my job is trying to get buyers into a house or condo by marketing it, but I also try to get them to stay there as long as possible once they’re inside.  And since I’ve been told that I’m no longer allowed to lock all the doors and shut them in, I have to get more creative.

One of the many purposes of staging is to empower the buyer.

In this quick example above, what I’m trying to do is get the buyer to see things his or her way.  Sometimes, stagers will go overboard by putting too many items into a space and not allowing for any imagination.  Other times, you’ll leave an open space to allow the buyer to have some fun trying to think of what piece of furniture to buy, what he or she can take from home, etc.

The longer the buyer is inside that house or condo, the better.  So yes – you might want to remove an armchair so that the buyer can say, “I’d like to put an armchair there!”  But that buyer is now thinking about the condo as if its his or hers, and already mapping out where to put furniture!  You really want to allow the buyer to put him or herself in that space.

This, of course, leads into one of the biggest mistakes that sellers can possibly make: leaving up personal photos and other items.

At the very base of selling real estate – buyers want to walk into a model suite every time.  So if you can stage your house or condo in a neutral, tasteful way, you can appeal to the largest percentage of the buyer pool while not offending anybody.

If a buyer walks into a condo it looks like Facebook puked up photos on the fridge, that buyer isn’t going to see this as ‘his or her’ place, but rather your place.

If you have photos of your trip to Fiji on the living room wall, you run the risk of the buyer: a) having never been to Fiji and being jealous and hating you, b) having been to Fiji and had food poisoning for days from some bad shrimp, c) having been dumped on a Honeymoon, d) all of the above, even though that makes no sense.

What if you’re better looking than the buyer?  What if your husband is hotter and he’s in all the photos?

What if you have a group photo of you and your six BFF’s, one of whom happens to be the girl who stole the buyer’s boyfriend?!?!  Laugh if you want, but downtown Toronto can be a very small place and I’ve had at least a dozen occurances of a buyer-client recognizing somebody from a photo on the wall of a condo.

I also tell my clients to remove things like University degrees.  Buyers will examine these to see where the seller went to school; “Oh he graduated from Western in 2005 – I wonder if he knows Trudy!”  And think of how this will affect the buyer’s overall view of the suite.  If the seller got a college diploma and the buyer has a Masters, then the buyer might subconsciously be thinking that the unit is somehow beneath him.

I tell my clients to remove their books and DVD’s and replace them with generic art and cook books.  You’d be surprised how many buyers will examine a wall full of business books to determine if the seller is in equities or infrastructure.  I can’t tell you how many buyers will look over your collection of J.K. Rowling books and say, “What a bandwagon fan – he doesn’t have any of her early works!”

Buyers don’t want to know anything about the person who lives there, and as a seller, you don’t want them to know anything either.

As I said: the root of the issue is that buyers want a neutral model suite, and photos of you and your friends, your mom, or Gandhi is hardly what I’d call “neutral,” nor is a shelf full of Harlequin romance novels, or a stack of every Bruce Willis movie ever made.

“Neutral” is not a bad word when it comes to real estate.

You want neutral paint colours; things like light greys, beiges, and off-whites – as boring as they are.

You want neutral furniture and style, unless you’re going with a very obvious theme, such as super-modern Italian furniture in a high-end loft.

And you want neutral items throughout the condo, which brings me to The IKEA Effect.

I joked around a lot in Wednesday’s post about IKEA wall art, but the truth is: buyers are warm to this.

Now I’m obviously not talking about staging a $12,000,000 house, since that is not my demographic and I vomit when I think of being so rich that I’d have to eat here every night:

So when it comes to a more “typical” or modest house or condo, I find that buyers respond to neutral items that are numbingly common among properties that have been staged.

There’s a reason you’ll see the same staging items over and over – throw pillows, martini sets, cook books, willows, wall art, red apples, lemons and limes – all from IKEA, HomeSense, and Bed Bath & Beyond.

Only a small percentage of properties can do well if they’re outlandishly unique, and it’s much easier to make your property as warm and inviting as all the others – by making it more of the same.

Please understand that I’m NOT suggesting you simply roll over and conform.

Remember, not all properties are staged, and only a handful actually show well.  Think of all the vacant, tenanted, or “lived in” properties we see on MLS every day.  I think since we ignore these and almost pretend they don’t exist, therefore we often believe that every property is staged.

Walking into a condo that smells like vanilla, has a martini set and red apples on the counter, art books on the TV table, and throw pillows on the couch, makes the buyer feel like they’re in that coveted model suite.  Walking into a tenanted property where two university students are living in a 1-bedroom-plus-den does not enable the buyer to see him or herself in there.

After a while, the savvy buyer comes to expect that a “nice” condo will have IKEA wall-art and a giant vase with birds of paradise on the rented glass dining room table.  You could list the same identical property – one vacant and one filled with cliche staging items, and I guarantee the buyer will differentiate between the two.

Whether consciously or subconsciously, the buyer feels much warmer inside a staged condo that has all the same cheesy items as the others.

This is the number one reason why I think we stage properties, other than, of course, the obvious reason that they look better!

But as buyers become both more savvy and more picky, I feel as if they almost come to expect that every house or condo will be staged, otherwise they assign a lower monetary value to it, and actually move it down on their list.

Ask yourself this question: what shows worse – a vacant property or one that looks like it belongs on Hoarders?

I think the responses would be 50/50, but that’s because some buyers like to furnish the space in their own minds, and some like it spelled out for them.  Either way, a neutral, open, modest, and warm look to the property will appeal to more buyers, and it’s been proven time and time again.

So the next time you’re at an open house, don’t be afraid to pick up the vase on the end table in the living room, turn it upside down, and see if the HomeSense price tag is still on the bottom.  The sellers are probably going to take it back once the property has been sold, and then some other prospective seller can purchase it for staging, and the circle will be unbroken…