Home Staging

Another great article that mentions Showhomes. It appeared in the New York Times.

All the Home’s a Stage

By LISA PREVOST
Published: January 2, 2009
WESTPORT, Conn.

WANTED: Compulsively neat, highly organized people to live in houses being marketed for sale. Must keep house suitable for showing at all times. Dirty dishes, used bath towels and stray newspapers strictly prohibited.

Salary? None. Length of time in house? Unpredictable.

If this description serves only to remind you what a mess your own house is, you are probably not “home manager” material. For people who simply cannot leave the house before making the bed, however, the role of home manager might actually sound appealing. And according to firms that recruit and place home managers, the bleak housing market is driving more of the naturally tidy into their programs.

A home manager is essentially a live-in stager, as well as a caretaker and cleaner extraordinaire. The service is marketed as a tool to sell a vacant property more quickly. Prospective buyers will be less enticed by an empty, stale-smelling house, the theory goes, than by a meticulously kept home decorated with high-quality furnishings.

Home managers are required to accommodate real estate agents who want to show the house any day of the week. They pay a reduced rent and their own utility costs and have to keep up the grounds.

What they get in return is the privilege of living in what are usually large, expensive homes for a fraction of what it would cost to rent such a property. And in instances where they have to leave a house because it sold, staging companies usually try to place them in another house as soon as possible.

Economic uncertainty is making it easier to find reliable, trustworthy people willing to live on a month-to-month basis, said Susan Hendee, an associate at Show to Sell, a Westport firm that offers home manager and staging services. For people who have sold their homes and don’t want to buy another right away, “we’re a very good option,” she said. “This is actually a pretty good time for us.”

Likewise for Susan Hendrickson, the owner of Unique Property Marketing, also in Westport. “In just the last month,” she said, “I’ve put three new home managers in houses.”

Before home managers are accepted into such a program, they usually undergo a rigorous screening process. Firms may do background checks and ask for financial information in addition to scrutinizing the applicant’s furniture and décor.

“You probably have friends who every time you go to their apartment they’ve moved their furniture around, right?” said Thomas Scott, vice president for operations of Showhomes, a national chain of offices offering home manager services. “Those are the people we like.”

With 44 franchises, Showhomes is wrapping up its best year ever, company executives say, and hopes to establish more of a presence in the Northeast in the coming year.

Showhomes charges homeowners a fee for their services, in addition to charging a monthly rate to the home manager.

The two Westport firms, which serve Fairfield County, provide the service to the homeowner, and make their money from the manager’s “rent” — usually $1,000 to $1,500 a month. Market-rate rents for similar properties might run as high as $4,000 a month or more.

“Financially, it was such a benefit for us,” said Sally Bohling, who, with her husband, four children and two dogs, managed two houses in the last two years. The Bohlings were building a house in Westport and didn’t want to get locked into a rental lease in the meantime. So they signed on with Unique Property Marketing.

They spent the first five months in a restored antique home on prestigious Beachside Avenue. Then, when the owner decided to rent that property, they moved their Oriental rugs and baby grand piano to a new 12,000-square-foot colonial in a gated community in Fairfield.

There were some inconveniences beyond the obvious challenge of keeping up with the clutter potential of four children. They couldn’t use the fireplaces or fancy built-in coffee maker. Last-minute Sunday showings were “precarious.” But Ms. Bohling said she treated the role as seriously as a job, and used the experience to teach her children the importance of getting chores done and respecting other people's property. The family moved into their own home last month.

Kerrin O’Brien worked with Unique Property Marketing as a house manager for two Greenwich properties after she and her partner, Tamara, sold their own home there. “We were thinking we’d be moving to New Jersey at some point,” said Ms. O’Brien, a real estate investor, “but we weren’t ready to buy or build, given the economy.”

One of the properties they moved into had been on the market and vacant for at least two years. After they moved in, it sold within a few months, she said.

Having left the second house in November, the couple now live in Monmouth Beach, N.J., and are considering starting their own home manager business.

Kim Elstein, co-owner of Gallery 33, in Westport, finds that being a home manager with Show to Sell enables her to showcase her company’s 20th-century vintage furniture, while also reducing storage costs for her inventory. Every piece of furniture in the renovated ranch she currently manages in Fairfield is for sale. Although the furniture’s sky-high prices are out of reach of the average buyer, Ms. Elstein has noticed that, because the pieces are so unusual, people tend to linger in the house longer. “It should be just enough to give an impression, without clutter,” she said.

Show to Sell’s president, Debra Grant, says most of her home managers come to her through referrals, sometimes from divorce lawyers. Divorced men, it might pain their ex-wives to know, often turn out to be very good home managers.

“We do the decorating, tell them this is how it has to be,” Ms. Grant said. “And then they don’t touch anything once it’s set up.”