“In staging, you try to bring up the good stuff and push back the things that you don’t want people to see,” Yesayan said as she surveyed some elaborate place settings on the dinner table in a north Glendale home built in 1929 by architect Paul Williams that she’s been enlisted to help sell.
The three-bedroom hillside home boasts expansive views of downtown Glendale, and the cultural cachet of Williams’ name. It’s also prepared with a mix of the current owner’s furniture, including an antique Steinway piano, and a collection of antique chairs and tables Yesayan has collected over the years.
The home, which was listed in August for $1.9 million, hasn’t yet sold.
With home sales slowing across the region, due in part to tightened lending standards, inventory is staying on the market longer and there’s more of it available, experts say.
But the slowing market, while potentially disconcerting to sellers, may be good news for Yesayan and other home stagers, said real estate Michael Sirk, owner of a Prudential California Realty office in Glendale and a Yesayan client.
With the market now yielding choosier, more patient buyers, agents have to do more to get buyers’ attention, Sirk said.
Staging, he said, is one way to differentiate a property, he said.
“I think things are getting harder right now,” he said. “Real estate agents, now they actually have to work . . . I absolutely think [the market will help home stagers] because they’ll be getting more business that way.”
Though some real estate industry experts prefer to leave a new home bare — to show-off floors, the interior structures and leave much to the buyer’s imagination — Glendale-based agent Odette Peters says the practice adds value to properties.
“It most certainly generates more money for the seller,” Peters said. “Buyers seem to like it better, because then it gives them some idea about what they can do with their home, gives them some insight and it works for both, in my opinion. It doesn’t cost that much more. It’s money well-spent in my opinion.”
Yesayan charges between 1% and 3% of the selling price for her services, she said.
A portion of her fee is collected up-front, and the rest is paid when the home gets sold, she said.
“The goal, of course, is to sell the house,” she said.
