“It’s the sizzle, not the sausage, darling.” This is how a client of interior designer Diana Molohan pithily explained the concept of home staging to her husband. Preparing and styling properties to draw in the right buyers is par for the course in high-end markets like LA, but some Irish homeowners are sceptical. However, in an era of Insta-perfect interiors and a “swipe right” culture, buyers increasingly expect the “sizzle” from potential property matches, so scrimping on presentation can be a false economy.
Molohan, who runs My Kind of Design and specialises in staging, notes that over the pandemic, everybody turned to viewing properties virtually. “It’s turned into Tinder for property,” she laughs. So while you may have a “cracking property in the most beautiful location”, if you haven’t presented it well, you’re not going to catch the eye of increasingly discerning buyers.
She says there are properties sitting on the market that shouldn’t be, simply because the owners have decided not to invest any more into them. “They don’t see the point in spending any more on the property,” she says. “Your house is one of the most expensive purchases you’ll ever make in your life. You’ve got to stop viewing it as your home and start viewing it as an asset.”
Molohan, who has staged 42 properties so far this year, advises that if you stage correctly, you’re likely to stand out online, sell three times more quickly and achieve a higher selling price. She has endless examples of this “sell high, sell fast” model being borne out in practice.
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Take, for instance, a ground-floor apartment in the Cowper Downs area of Dublin. It had a lovely, bright dual-aspect livingroom but the property was tired and needed love.
Her team took up the old carpet, put down wooden floors, painted throughout, blitzed the bathroom (regrouting, steam cleaning and putting in a new vanity unit) and gave the kitchen a really deep clean – all of this cost about €10,000.
Prior to the work being done, the apartment was valued at €370,000 - €375,000. After being staged, it went on the market for €395,000 and sold for €415,000.
She also worked on a gorgeous two-bed apartment on Dublin’s Forbes Quay that just wasn’t shifting. The owner had removed the furniture so it was like a “big, empty shell”.
It had been sitting on the market for about six months when she came in and staged it. “Within four days they were offered the asking price.”
So how much should you budget for staging? It very much depends, but she advises that homeowners should probably invest between 0.5 per cent and 2 per cent of their asking price on the presentation and staging of their property. Anything more than 2 per cent is “over-egging it” and moving more into renovation territory.
“If you’re going to go to the market, engage somebody knowledgeable before going off half-cocked into Homebase,” she adds. “You can rack up an awful lot of money very quickly and be at nothing.”
A professional stager will assess the entire property, point out aspects that might put off potential buyers, advise on suggested repairs and improvements such as repainting or “wrapping” a kitchen, get a crew in to carry out the work and, if necessary, bring in furniture to ensure the property is presented in the best possible light.
Molohan, who spent seven years at Colliers International negotiating the sales of some of Ireland’s largest private homes and estates, has now built up a huge inventory of furniture for staging. “Some people have a shoe addiction. I have a furniture addiction,” she says. Her arsenal of furniture, accessories and art allows her to pivot the style of each property so that it is targeted at the right buyer, whether that’s families or downsizers. The overall idea is to “put your very, very best foot forward”.
Another seasoned stager is Breeda O’Sullivan. She runs her own independent company, UpStaged Properties, but estate agents also recommend her to their clients when staging is needed. “People can be sceptical at first but when the home has been staged and the photos are up online, they get it,” she says.
“My claim to fame is we sold one [property] for €1,050,000 over the asking price. I’m not saying that was totally down to me but when you stage a house, you change how it’s presented on the market.” The property in question was a beautiful period home with large rooms and high ceilings. She staged all the rooms using just enough furniture to show off the light and space without cluttering the property.
Sometimes she’s faced with properties that have “yellow walls and grey carpets and no budget to change it”, so she has to figure out how to distract away from the less attractive features. She recently did a house that had pine ceilings and orange terracotta tiled flooring. “All you could see was orange.” She suggested painting out the ceiling so it wasn’t as imposing and it worked really well, giving a New England vibe.
O’Sullivan stages everything from one-bedroom apartments to four-storey-over-basement period properties and says that the cost of preparing for market can range from €3,000 to €12,000 and more, depending on the size of the property. “We are staging with the potential buyer in mind and want to appeal to as many people as possible, so our staging is contemporary in style, taking into account the age of the property.”
She says that a figure of 1 per cent of the asking price is a number for people to have in mind in terms of a budget if painting, new carpets and staging are required. She has a team that can carry out these jobs and an inventory of furniture if needed. The furniture usually stays in the property for about two months. “At that stage I would expect it to be sale agreed.”
Top tips for staging your home for sale
- Declutter, ruthlessly. “If you’re thinking of selling, go through your house and put a red dot, like you would in a gallery, on things you don’t want to part with and then have the piles of stuff you would like to see go to a new home,” says Diana Molohan of My Kind of Design.
- Look at your property with fresh eyes, see what jobs need tackling and then put in the elbow grease.
- Weed the garden and have the front of the house looking its best. Leave an outdoor light on as potential buyers often drive by at night for a look.
- Give your interiors a deep clean, and neutralise your palette. “If that means painting, then so be it – paint it,” Molohan says.
- Use lots of ambient lighting like lamps rather than overheads, and make sure all lightbulbs are working.
- Molohan doesn’t put TVs in when she’s staging a property. “They draw your eye to a big black hole in the corner.”
- Pull back on personal items. A “rogue’s gallery” of photos in one specific place like going up the stairs is fine, she advises, but personal photos dotted throughout the house stops people from being able to visualise themselves living there.
- Breeda O’Sullivan recommends taking down all photos: “I liken it to when you walk into a hotel bedroom. You don’t want to have a photo of the person who slept there the night before.” Staging, she explains, is all about the buyer, not the seller.
