Story of a Staged Silk Purse & a Sow's Ear

(Scroll down for Video Show) While home staging CAN turn a "sow's ear" of a home into a beautiful and easily sellable "silk purse", there still is only so much staging can do to improve a home's appeal to potential buyers. Sometimes a house that is for sale, even if it is priced right, has quality construction, or uses the most expensive and luxurious finishes... just can't be helped with staging.

CASE IN POINT: Above is an exterior shot of an absolutely beautiful 3/4 of a million dollar Chicago area home that was built well over 1 1/2 years ago... and has not sold. In fact, 17 months after it had NOT sold, the builder hired one of the finest and MOST savvy Realtors I know. The new Realtor called in Real Estaging with the hopes that if we created a beautiful view on the inside it would help counter the house's "problem" that was keeping the house from being sold.

Actually, except for the fact that this spec home was vacant, it really had no other problems of its own. However, was keeping it from being sold WAS quite obvious when we first visited this listing. Even before we ever entered the property, we knew exactly WHY the house wasn't selling. The problem was the neighbor's house and the fact that the yard looked like a pig sty. It didn't help that the home was filled with windows that overlooked the neighboring property.

Both the Realtor and I tried to advise the builder, BEFORE staging the interior, that it would be best to put up a privacy fence to help block the view of the neighboring property. While advice like might risk our chance of getting a staging job, I knew this would be the BEST option... the views out the living room, office and great room windows were/are that bad.

How bad is the actual view out the windows of the neighbors property? Well, below is a quick 30 second video tour of the home and the neighboring property it looks out on.


(Click HERE to view the Video Show if the show does not appear above.)

When I first spoke with the builder he was well aware of the problem (in fact he had installed cellular shades on that side of the house) with the neighboring view. To him the fence option was financially or legistacally not feasible at the time. To install a new privacy fence meant that the newly poured driveway, that sat RIGHT on the lot line, would have to be totally removed. The expense to remove the existing driveway, install a new fence and then reinstall a new driveway would total well over $10,000. The builder hoped investing in real estate staging would do the trick. So we staged the property... it looked fantastic and the builder was quite pleased.

Well, this past week we de-staged it and unfortunately it still had not sold. So I guess this puts a new slant on an old saying... "you can't sell a silk purse when it SITS next to a sow's ear."

Me