Home staging gives sellers a leg up - Chattanooga Bar Association

14 | Friday, March 16, 2012 Hamilton County Herald www.hamiltoncountyherald.com
STAGING Continued from page 13
leave, Maddox says. “If you can
pack up those hundreds of paperbacks,
those knickknacks, and
those 13 chairs around the dining
room table, then your move will
be less stressful.”
Maddox also enjoys adding
little touches here and there that
bring a room to life. Among her
clever additions to the kitchen of
the Cronan home is the colored
dishware inside the glass cabinets.
� e true genius at the heart of
what Maddox does, though, is her
ability to redefi ne underutilized
space. In the Cronan home, she
turned a downstairs den the family
was using as a spare bedroom
into an offi ce for Shaleigh’s real
estate business, complete with a
desk and a cozy reception area for
clients.
Sometimes, when Maddox is
transforming a space, there are
gaps between what a room needs
and what the homeowners have
on hand. In these cases, Maddox
dips into her inventory to fi nd the
missing object and then works it
into the overall scheme. Planted
throughout the Cronan household
are pieces of furniture and
other odds and ends that look as
though they have always been a
part of the home – including the
colored dishes.
Maddox can even furnish an
entire house – a service that’s in
great demand given the number
of foreclosures on the market.
“Furnished rooms look a little
bigger, so there’s value in staging
an empty house,” she says.
However, the thing Maddox
enjoys the most is spotting the
small things she can do that will
make a big diff erence.
“Years ago, it wasn’t popular
to have trim on your drapes, and
a friend of mine had a set of gorgeous
custom drapes she hated
because of the ugly trim. So I took
a seam ripper, removed the trim,
and she was amazed at the diff erence,”
Maddox says.
Shaleigh was impressed with
Maddox’s advice to paint the
stark white return air vents in her
house the same color as the walls,
causing them to all but disappear
into the surrounding color.
� e idea, Maddox says, was to
turn the Cronan residence from
someone’s home into a marketable
house. � e process isn’t
always easy, as selling a home can
be an emotional event. Shaleigh
grew up in the house she and her
husband are selling, and even
though they remodeled it from
top to bottom, its walls are still
dressed with memories. Maddox
gave them the direction they
needed to prepare their house for
the market.
“We’d accumulated a lot of
stuff , and we didn’t know where
to begin. It was overwhelming,”
Shaleigh says.
Maddox not only guides her
clients, she also holds them
accountable. Shaleigh says her
home still wouldn’t be presentable
if she and her husband, both
busy professionals, had staged
the place on their own. “� eresa
told us what to do and then made
sure we did it. She also kept me
from having to nag my husband
to do the things on his list. � e-
resa would write down what he
needed to do, and then I’d give
the piece of paper to him and
say, ‘Here’s a note from � eresa,’”
Shaleigh says, laughing.
In addition to being the seller,
Shaleigh is also the agent that’s
listing the house. � is has opened
her eyes to the benefi ts of home
staging to Realtors. “Having
access to a team of professionals
gives me validity as an agent.
Plus, I can concentrate on selling
the house while � eresa tells the
homeowner what needs to be
done to get it ready. � at keeps
me from having to speak with
my client about those things and
jeopardizing that relationship,”
she says.
Maddox has no trouble being
straightforward with a client. “I’m
bossy, but in a nice way. At my old
job, I wasn’t the boss, but I was
the bossiest,” she says, adding her
laughter to Shaleigh’s.
Maddox’s “old job” was a position
as an administrative assistant
at Keller Williams in East Brainerd.
When the economy started
to dip, agents became more concerned
than usual about selling
homes as quickly as possible and
at the highest possible price. One
of the obstacles was clutter.
“Agents would come in and say,
‘How am I going to help the seller
to understand that the picture of
grandma and grandpa has to go?’”
Maddox says.
Maddox saw an opportunity.
To ensure she had the credentials
for which agents and sellers were
looking, she earned the ASP (Accredited
Staging Professional) and
IAHSP (International Association
of Home Staging Professionals)
designations, and then went to
work. Today, she’s an award-winning
stager with clients throughout
the Chattanooga area.
“I can visualize things and
I’m good at de-cluttering, so I’ve
always staged my home and the
homes of my children and my
friends. Eventually, I decided to
develop it into a business,” Maddox
says.
While Maddox is happy
to extol the benefi ts of home
staging, the numbers speak
for themselves. According to
StagedHomes.com, 94 percent of
staged homes sell within 33 days,
compared to non-staged homes,
which sell in 144 days. In addition,
Barb Schwarz, president
and CEO of Staged Homes, told
one state real estate association
that staged homes sell for an
average of 10 to 20 percent more
than non-staged homes. For this
reason, nearly 25 percent of properties
are staged today, up from
10 percent about 10 years ago,
Schwarz said.
Selling a home quickly and at
the highest possible price will always
be a priority for Chattanooga
Realtors, whether the market is
up or down. And helping agents
to achieve that goal will always be
job one for Maddox and the other
staging professionals that work in
the Chattanooga area.
“My mother had six children,
and there was never any clutter
in our house. So I love going into
someone else’s home and saying,
‘Get rid of that, get rid of that, and
get rid of that.’ It’s not always easy,
but the results are worth it.” �
Maddox staged the Ooltewah home of Shaleigh Cronan and her family. The family’s dining room looks ready
for the pages of a home magazine. (Photos provided)
Maddox transformed this lived-in space into something worthy of a display home.
Good staging emphasizes the open layout of the Cronan residence.
The master bedroom of the Cronan house is a masterwork of effective staging.