Meet the runners-up in our 'Save Our Sale' staging contest, May 31, 2009

Meet the runners-up in our 'Save Our Sale' staging contest

By JENNIFER GISH, Staff writer First published: Sunday, May 31, 2009

Neil Bindelglass' work isn't so much about erasing problems as it is about making potential home buyers forget they exist when they walk into a house that's for sale. He's a professional home stager based in Hudson who can draw the eye away from an avocado green bathtub with some fresh towels and a sparkling new medicine cabinet. He can make a tiny room look expansive by editing down the furniture and packing all the knickknacks. He can gently persuade a seller that although the chocolate brown paint on their living room walls is lovely from an interior design standpoint, it's making the average buyer feel like they're standing in a cave. The tough real estate market makes home staging an even more important weapon in the battle to appeal to buyers. And as the calendar turned toward the time of the year for peak home sales, the Times Union decided to help a few desperate Capital Region homeowners get packing faster with a "Save Our Sale" contest. We looked over submitted photos and essays and selected two runners-up and one grand-prize winner. All three received a consultation with Bindelglass, who owns Let Me Organize You (http://letmeorganizeyou.com). He spent several hours at the home of the grand-prize winner staging the foyer and living room, two spaces buyers see immediately when they walk in the door. We'll introduce you to the grand-prize winners -- Penny Trieb and Jay Emerson, who own a late-1970s colonial in Clifton Park -- in next week's Real Estate section. You'll get a look at that home's troubles -- "dated, dated, dated," Bindelglass says -- and then see the home again after some staging by Bindelglass the following week. For today, meet our runners-up and learn from their mistakes, or rather, issues that a stager like Bindelglass works around all the time. Christina Moore, owner of a 1,900-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-and-a-half bathroom contemporary town home on golf course at the McGregor Links Country Club in Saratoga Springs. Listed at $384,900. Moore, who married in August and is looking to move into a house more suitable for her husband and two stepchildren, has had her town home on the market for a year. After about 50 showings, she's left wondering what is turning buyers off. The house is spotless and well-maintained. She'd gotten home staging advice from a friend who had used a professional stager, clearing her countertops of clutter and her walls of personal effects, like family photos. She's in a maintenance-free community where someone else shovels the snow and cuts the grass, and neighbors are primarily upper-income folks who use the town homes only as summer getaways. So it's an ultra-quiet place to live. Bindelglass pinpoints the issue within minutes of entering her otherwise perfectly staged home. "I love your colors. My house is painted pretty similarly, or at least it was until I decided to sell," says Bindelglass, after looking at Moore's chocolate brown living room walls and cherry red walls in the hallway upstairs. "It's absolutely about the color." Moore hired an interior designer to select the colors not long after moving into her home six years ago, she says. Because she was paying a painter $4,500 to do the work, she wanted to get the colors right. From an everyday living standpoint, Bindelglass says, the colors are fine. But the dark walls in the living room close the otherwise open space in. And the majority of buyers are not as adventurous with color, he says, refusing to see past shades that don't appeal to them. Of the 50 showings, Moore says color only came up twice. Instead, buyers would say the house was too roomy (puzzling to Moore because they knew the square footage going in) or it was too far from Albany (again, something she figured they'd realize before looking at the home). Bindelglass says they were simply being polite and didn't want to say what the real issue was. He suggests Moore neutralize the walls with a sand tone that coordinates with the rest of the home's color scheme and leave the walls in the kitchen area green, which most people still view as a neutral color. She sets up an appointment with a painter that day. Joe and Connie Donohue, owners of a 2,780-square-foot, four-bedroom, four-and-a-half bath modified colonial with a finished basement, three-season sunroom and in-ground heated pool in Colonie. The home, which the Donohues are waiting to put on the market until they complete the staging, has yet to be priced but likely will list for around $450,000. In the 10 years since the Donohues had their home built, they've accumulated a lot of stuff, and that's what Bindelglass instantly identifies as the issue they have to contend with if they want a fast sale. Fortunately, he says as he buzzes through the home opening linen closets and surveying spare bedrooms, that's an easy fix: Just start packing for the move early. "As far as preparing it for sale, you are way closer to there than not," Bindelglass tells the Donohues, who are looking to move into a smaller, new-construction home in North Greenbush. The walls are a neutral white throughout; the carpet is clean and nothing looks dated. Sitting on a terraced, well-landscaped hill, the house has brilliant curb appeal, though Bindelglass suggests adding a few large planters containing topiaries or housing colorful foliage to highlight the entrance. The problem with the home is clutter. Connie Donohue's vast collection of furniture she's inherited from her grandmother dwarfs many of the rooms. "Everybody has 2.5 extra pieces of furniture (in each room)," Bindelglass says. So he suggests reducing most of the bedrooms to a small side table and bed, and angling the beds in each room to show that the space is so large the bed can sit at a diagonal with plenty of room left to walk around it. He urges the couple to pack away collectibles and consider storing extra furniture in the garage or a rented storage unit. He suggests they cover the pool-cleaning equipment, which hangs on a fence in the backyard, with another short fence that can mask it. With the exception of a couple of pretty bottles of olive oil and a bowl of fresh fruit, the kitchen countertops should be bare, he says. And then there's the piece of advice Joe Donohue is disappointed to hear: "Get rid of every TV that you possibly can," Bindelglass tells the couple. Joe Donohue has one stationed in nearly every room. Bindelglass says he asks sellers to store extra electronics out of sight for a couple of reasons. "The point of home staging is to give every room a very distinct purpose," he says, and a television in every room makes every room look like a TV room rather than a space for sleeping, dining or relaxing in peace. Too many televisions also can give buyers a bad impression of the homeowners and make buyers feel like the home doesn't fit their lifestyle. "They might walk in and say, 'I never watch any TV; these people are couch potatoes,'" Bindelglass says. "People don't just see the houses. They see the lives that are going in the house, and that's what we're trying to minimize." In all, the fixes Bindelglass suggests will cost the Donohues between $500 and $600, he estimates, but the returns will be huge, he says, when offers come fast and the Donohues head off to their new home. Neil Bindelglass, professional home stager, offers these five tips on color when staging your home: Use neutral colors, but not necessarily white. "I find white to be a little bit sterile," he says. "With the pale beiges or sand color, it's still completely neutral, but it's a whole lot warmer, and you don't feel like you're walking into a hospital." Colors that are great from an interior design standpoint aren't necessarily good for a quick sale. An interior designer seeks to personalize a space, but a home stager's job is to make it appeal to the most people possible. A little color is OK if it's pale. "Once in a while I will do an accent wall that is one, maybe two, tones deeper, but that is still very light," he says. "If you have a pale green, like a moss green or a pale yellow, that's absolutely fine." In most cases, ditch faux finishes. Professionally applied Venetian plaster in an expensive home is acceptable, but in most other cases, it's best to go with neutral finishes. "If it's something that somebody did with a craft book and a couple of sponges, get rid of it," he says. Don't forget flooring. Your electric blue carpet could be new, Bindelglass says, but it's far from neutral. He'd rip it out in favor of an inexpensive, neutral carpeting.