Home makeover

Getting your house to look better can
up its value on the market, according
to staging specialist

by CHRIS BARRY

Name: Fabienne Raphaël

Age: 32

Occupation: “Certified Home Staging Specialist”

Bio: Having trained long and hard as a physiotherapist, this self-assured Anjou gal says that while she “loves physiotherapy” she’s also always been mega-keen on home decorating. “As a child, I’d always turn the furniture around in my room every few months.” Recently inspired by TV shows like Sarah’s House, Des idées de grandeur and Flip This House (“I’d get mad when they’d show re-runs because I always wanted to be learning something new”), Fabienne decided to enroll in “an intensive, four-day course” to learn the ins and outs of home staging, i.e. readying people’s homes for the real estate market. Armed with a genuine passion for her new field, in early 2009 she launched Excellence Home Staging (excellencehomestaging.com), and now, for a modest fee, will gleefully stop by your digs to show you what needs to be done in order to sell your place as quickly as possible while getting maximum dollar for it.

Does it really make all that big a difference to the final sale price to have a home stager come by to tell you that you need better furniture? “Of course. Statistics show you’ll get between two and eight per cent more for it if you do.”

So if my couch is torn up and reeks of cat urine, am I going to have to fork over for a new one just to make my dump seem more appealing to potential buyers? “No, we try and do the maximum change with the minimum investment. We keep what you have that works, so if you have, say, a couch that isn’t so nice, then maybe you can just invest in a cover and some nice cushions to put on it so it won’t look as bad. With animals though, it’s best to get them out of the house when buyers come over. Some people don’t like animals, and if they smell you have a pet, then it’ll be a negative for you and maybe then they won’t want to make an offer on your house.”

Speaking of smells, given that most living spaces have their own distinct odours, and not all of them pleasant, is it tricky walking into a house that smells of, say, cabbage, and informing the proud owners that their home reeks and they’re absolutely going to have to do something about it if they ever want to unload the place? Not really. “When I have a customer that has a house with an odour problem, I simply suggest that they do a huge cleaning, politely informing them that selling a house is like selling a car, you want it to be clean and smell good. I might suggest they boil cinnamon sticks on their stove.”

So insecure people never tell her, “Listen bitch, my house doesn’t smell, you’re the one who stinks!” “Uh, no.”

Last book read: The Magic of Thinking Big, by Dr. David J. Schwartz.

Musical preferences: Michael Jackson, Coltrane, Pink Martini.

Words of wisdom: “There are three types of people in this world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those who wonder what happened. We all have a choice. You can decide which type of person you want to be. I have always chosen to be in the first group.”

Comments: dimwit@hdot.net