The Conical Glass: Designing to sell

Monday, October 15, 2007

Designing to sell

A few weeks ago, I had thought it might be fun to do some kind of a "Moving Diary" thing here, but the whole process is so exhausting that at this point, I figure that I'll catch up on my blogging after we've moved. (Ditto sleep -- I'm hoping my rampant insomnia will abate once we're in the new digs.) This morning, I woke up early, terrified at the prospect of having to go to the title company office and sign the papers allowing us to borrow a kajillion dollars (note: amount approximate) to buy the new home. At this moment, after signing lots and lots of documents, I owe a frightful amount of money. Once our condo sells, the amount will be a tiny bit less frightful.

In case you haven't sold a property recently, or watched the HGTV program "Designed to Sell," you might not be familiar with home staging. In this tough market, home sellers don't just let people troop through their house -- they have a professional come and make it look like something out of a Pottery Barn catalog before it goes up for sale. Because I'm kind of cheap, I didn't want to pay the $3,000 it would have cost for a traditional home staging. (Most stagers have warehouses full of furniture and accessories; they make you put your crummy old sofa in storage and bring in a fancy new one.) Instead, I hired a young woman named Eileen to come in and work with our existing pieces. Eileen spent several years working as an assistant to a stager and she doesn't have her own storehouse of furniture. She walked around our condo for a while, taking notes, and emailed me a long list of suggestions -- put all of our CDs into storage, for instance, and paint the oak vanity in the guest bathroom white. Then she went shopping and bought a bunch of throw pillows and plants. With a new slipcover for our love seat, new bedding, and bright white towels that we're not allowed to use, the place looks awfully spiffy. Total cost, including Eileen's fee: around $600, and I get to keep all the stuff she bought. (She just sold her own house and it was only on the market for one day, so I'm hoping the magic will work for us, too.)

Our Realtor is holding open houses here on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, so by this time next week, I should have some idea of whether we'll be scheduling a refi or getting ready to pay two mortgages for a while. He's convinced it's going to sell quickly, but it's hard to be overconfident when the Chronicle has been running an almost-daily series with the not-at-all-alarmist title of "MORTGAGE MELTDOWN." At least Joe & I are proof that even in this market, banks are still handing out kajillion-dollar mortgages to qualified buyers; hopefully, someone out there will be equally qualified and ready to plunk down a bunch of bucks on our condo.

posted by 125records @ 1:13 PM

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