My realtor even had a professional "stager" come in to make the place look...presentable, or whatever. TEXAS STYLE, of course. Basically, the idea is to make it look like someone ELSE lives there. Someone...TEXAN.
Now. In case you were wondering, the first thing your average Texas Home Stager does is replace all of the of the photos of you at dive bars drinking tall boys (pretty Texan if you ask me BUT I DIGRESS) with THESE:
GIANT CROSSES. So awesome. I'm glad I've been keeping up on my smoke detector maintenance, I'll tell you that much. Just in case we experience some kind of...FLAME BURSTING sitch.
GIANT CROSSES. So awesome. I'm glad I've been keeping up on my smoke detector maintenance, I'll tell you that much. Just in case we experience some kind of...FLAME BURSTING sitch.Also, I had to display the "I Can't Stand Your Bullshit" cross-stitch type(little)a made me considerably less prominently. Le sigh. HATERS.
FYI, the stager did let me keep the Crazy Baptist University flag in the office. As if to say, "Hey! Just wanted to let you know that this home is owned by someone with the full backing of the Southern Baptist Convention!". Which is true, of course. Well. Ish. Except for the drinking. And the dancing. And the, uh,...actually, you know what? If the the SBC has some kind of...no-fly list or similar, there's a pretty good chance I'm on it. Oh, CBU. Pro Ecclesia, Pro Texana; your motto AND MINE.
Anyway, I had my first showing last night, before I got home. AAAND, I can already tell this is going to give me a complex. All afternoon, I couldn't stop thinking of any number of truly horrifying things waiting to be discovered, and wondering just HOW DEEP these clowns are going to be digging. GAH! What if they open the fridge? Or the medicine cabinet? Or the NIGHTSTAND DRAWERS?
Well, they get what they get if that happens. I'm just sayin. Don't come running to me in six months when the lambs are still screaming.
33 comments:
Good luck with the sale! I remember when I was selling my condo and we had 42 (!!!) showings and every single one of them made me desperately anxious because I know what I do when I look at a house, and it ain't kind. However, I also think it's awesome that you had a stager a la HGTV. That would be kind of fun!
EEK. The cross is so ridiculous, and so NOT YOU. Hopefully the house doesn't start on fire.
It WAS fun. Especially since SHE DID ALL THE WORK.
I should add that she really WAS nice, and the house really DOES look great.
They should know that regardless of what's in your nightstand drawer, it's not included with the house. ;)
HAHAHAHAHA! So true. I am going to amend the sellers disclosure RIGHT NOW.
Good luck! And also, you should keep any samurai swords hidden. :)NOT a good selling point. Bryan and I went into a house and they had them in the master bedroom.
I wouldn't open drawers of a house I was looking at. What a bizarre and irrelevant thing to do. Hopefully your viewers feel the same way.
at least the stager still let it look like *someone* was living there.. i get all depressed when i see the shows on tlc or wherever, and they make the houses look like sterile waiting rooms with NOTHING PERSONAL EVER ANYWHERE. i mean, i get that it's so the new people can easily imagine their own shit in there, but it makes me sad for the ppl whose house it still is.
Good luck!
I love that you got the staged. What happens if, say a 2-year-old destroys something of the stager's. What happens when it gets unstaged, do they put all your stuff back, or is it all boxed ready to move? Can you get a stager even if you're not moving, like if you're having a dinner party and your house looks like crap?
You crack me up!!!
I hated it when people left our closet and garage doors open with the lights on, like, "We wanted to highlight your messiness and why we didn't buy your house."
You mean to tell me you don't want them to find your well-worn Gideon's Bible in your nightstand drawer?
We're putting our house on the market in a few months. I'm already hiding things under floorboards.
Weird. I know that in California, they make you take all the hangings off the walls and stick most of your furniture in a storage facility.
Good luck with the house. The inspection report is the worst. Things like "your 1950 style chimney is not up to 2009 code" will make you want to hurl.
People are probably more comfortable buying a house from someone with an old lady name when the house actually looks like it belongs to an old lady.
That cracks me up about the crosses. Because that's always the first thing I look for in a house: Jesus paraphernalia.
Of course, I ain't Texan.
When we bought our house last spring, we saw ("viewed"? isn't that the same terminology you use at a funeral?) some staged houses. It seemed to be the rule that every three-bedroom house had to have a boy's room and a girl's room. Since every family has one boy and one girl. Or doesn't, but wants this. Or wants to believe everyone ELSE has that, at least everyone else normal enough to be selling a house they'd want to live in...the logic behind this makes my head hurt.
Selling your house is such a pain. I hope yours goes quickly. Then HELLO Boston, right?
OMG. I had no idea there were stagers in REAL LIFE.
Ugh, we sold our home in 2005 at the peak of the insane R/E market and didn't have to have a showing before we got an offer. These days it's going to take some kind of natural disaster to get me to put my house on the market because the idea of having showings and dealing with that crap makes me want to run away.
Also, the crosses are cracking me up. In the NW I think they might cause people to refuse to buy a house fearing religious cooties or something...
Are you selling in preparation for The Chowdah? Or are you selling and getting your own non-crossy Texas place?
It took us almost 10 months to sell our house earlier this year. I may never be the same again. I hate the process and all it entails with my entire being. I hope your experience is so much better, easier and smoother than ours. If not, you can always try a St. Joseph statue.
I think you need to write things on a prominently displayed calendar, like "Sell house by this date or stock up on gasoline and matches." You know, so the buyers know you're a motivated seller and all.
Good luck. Buying and selling a house stresses me out so bad I end up napping 24/7 so I don't succumb to the insanity.
You have got to get the HELL out of Texas.
Did the stager contribute that cross? Or did you have it? It is DEFINITELY so Texas.
Our realtor didn't think we should keep our aviation art depicting a fighter plane blowing up a bridge when selling our house. My husband kept it anyway. House sold in four days.
I wish a stager would come to just make my house look good FOR ME (minus superfluous crosses, natch.)
OK, everyone who thinks that is MY giant cross, RAISE YOUR HANDS.
I gotta say, I know that everyone says you're supposed to remove "personal shit" from your house when you're selling, but those are the things that made me identify with two houses we saw in particular (one of them is the one we bought.) I LIKED knowing people put effort into their homes and loved them.
I liked seeing (at our house now) the family photos in the hallway and all that. It made it feel lived in and not like the waiting area at a hospital.
Plus I just like scoping out people's shit. And stealing decorating ideas.
That cross? Would definitely be noted by me and made fun of.
But I'm a heathen from the Northeast. ;)
You aren't the only one on the SBC no-fly list, that's for sure.
Good luck selling your house!!
Honestly, crosses aside, the house looks way better than it did under my reign of terror.
Plus she gives little tips like putting things in groups of either one or three, that kind of thing. Pretty cool.
Have you seen that website "It's Lovely I'll Take It" or something like that? Lovelylisting.com maybe? Idk, it's in my FEEDER. As long as Chez Tess doesn't end up there I'd say you're doing ok!
OH BOY. I live in fear of our house going on the market sometime this spring/summer. In this market? WITH A TODDLER AND AN INFANT?!?! Shoot me now.
We will be putting stuff in storage. We will be taking down the photos of friends at Gay Pride. We will hopefully not have to hang a cross.
I remember opening closets and and anything built into the house (I wanted to see how deep closets/drawers were). I would NEVER open furniture like bedside tables. But I will now commence the nightmares about such things, thankyouverymuch.
WHEN THE LAMBS ARE STILL SCREAMING!!!!!!?!?!!??!
Those words made me snort like a wild hog and frighten all those who sit around me at work right now. Holy crap!
Damn....I'm so glad I found you again.
Also, good luck with your home selling....sending $$$ vibes your way.
Honestly, people look at the weirdest things when viewing a home for sale. When we sold our last house our realtor relayed to us that some guy looked in our refridgerator - and it wasn't staying with the house! WTF?? Maybe he just REALLY needed lunch.
I still remember what a pain in the ass it is to keep your house always "ready" for that potential sale! Deep breathing exercises don't work for shit, either.
OMIG you just made me DIE laughing!!!
Dive bars with tall boys - loves it! I've started and "Ami with cheap beers" photo collection and let's just say it's expanding more quickly than anything else I've ever collected. Number of people in my life who are shocked: 0.
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