The Matt Shepard Group - Staging A Home

We Help You Add The "Wow! Factor" To Your Home
Not every home that goes on the market will sell. To sell well and quickly, your home must be in the top 10% of its competitive class. It must be compelling on three main counts: price, condition and location.
In a competitive selling market everything possible must be done to give your home a competitive edge. After pricing your home correctly based on its location and features, there is more to be done to make sure that it will be in the coveted 10%. Your home must be prepared for public scrutiny - and for that you need the WOW! Factor.

Invest Time and Money
Statistics show that homeowners whose homes sell well have not only invested from 1% to 3% of its value to get the property ready to sell, they invest their own time and energy, too. Painting, deep cleaning and landscaping are common tasks taken on by the seller to prepare their home.

Making a Model - The Visual Coordination Technique
     Once the clients have gone through the preparation steps we review here, they are ready to add the "Wow!" to their home. Matt started in real estate in new home sales. His experience is that 70% of all new homes sold are sold from model homes. Model homes are not with-out personality; nor are they blank slates. On the contrary, builders pay some of the country's most talented designers to "fabricate" a lifestyle in their model homes. Good designers use the furnishings to harmonize with the home's architectural features.
     Once your lived-in home is repaired, freshly painted and cleaned, it bears some resemblance to the blank canvas the model home decorator starts with: it has architectural focal points, design negatives to work around and strong selling positives that should be highlighted.
     Visual Coordination is the craft of arranging a given set of furnishings - in this case your possessions - to make a home or a room look bigger, brighter, more usable. Instead of going to the decorators' model home furnishings warehouse, we use your possessions - your art, furniture, collections, plants - as the finishing material in presenting your home as a model.
     Matt studied with Carole Talbott, nationally known trainer of designers in the practice of Visual Coordination, so that we can share with our clients the remarkable benefits of this discipline. Rather than relying on personal taste, which certainly varies among people, Carole Talbott's program uses rules and formulas based on geometry, patterns found in nature and observed human/environment interaction, to arrange rooms and passages that are pleasing.

The Visual Coordination Makeover Process
Matt and his group work as the make-over team. We spend three to four hours in a home rearranging furniture, rugs, lighting, art and accessories in key areas; the foyer, living room, dining room, family room and kitchen.
Usually starting in the living room, we empty the room, moving out all the furnishings. We arrange all like items together so we can see our "inventory:" all lamps, all art, collectibles by type. We identify the architectural focal point of the room and analyze the room's shape and any unusual features like vaulted ceiling or bay windows. Following Carole Talbott's formulas, we re-install your furnishings. We start with rugs and furniture, and then "layer in" the lighting, art and accessories. We move through each room using the same process: empty, analyze, and re-install. Often, art or accessories hiding in a den or bedroom end up on display in the living room or foyer. At the end, there is often a carton of unused pieces we set aside for storage. Sometimes, as needed, we add lampshades, pillows, throws, or other small decorative pieces to fill in according to the formulas.

Your Home a Model Home???
We market homes across the entire spectrum of price range, type and size, from $100,000 to $1,200,000 and have visually coordinated rooms in all of them. A dark condo whose owners were still using some of their furnishings from student days; a small pre-war cape cod with a collection of oversized, overstuffed, and pet-worn furniture; and a former model home brimming with fascinating Mexican art and furnishings.
In every case, the seller was surprised and delighted with the makeover results. In every case, agents showing the homes - even the condo - reported a strong positive perception of condition, size and presentation the "Wow! Factor".

1 We drop off our pre listing seller kit with a summary of staging and some articles written about us and a video tape on general prep of a home.ie cleaning, painting, neutralizing etc.

2 after the market plan is reviewed and listing is sign we go thru the house a make of list of things that need to be done. we facilitate with our contractors or the clients to insure that all is done in a timely fashion.

3. team comes in a couple of days before the home is to go on the market and stage it.

I am grateful to you for offering me this fantastic service. Your sales talent and expertise in home staging made the sale!
Norine Fuller