A couple that’s in the market for a home walks into a house that’s piqued their interest. In the living room, they see the pictures of someone’s grandma and grandpa on the fireplace mantel instead of the beautiful stonework on the fireplace itself. Moving through the dining room, they’re unable to envision their table and chairs in the space because the homeowners are using it as a home office. And their tour through the kitchen is quick, as they can’t see past the half-dozen appliances on the countertops, the children’s drawings on the refrigerator, or the doodads on the windowsill above the sink.
Upstairs, the couple cuts the tour short at the threshold to the master bedroom, which holds so much clutter, they’d feel uncomfortable entering the highly personalized space.
To Shaleigh Cronan and her husband, who have placed their home in Ooltewah, Tenn., on the market, the above scenario would be nightmarish. But the Cronans have a secret weapon that could help them to sell their home quicker and for more money: Theresa Maddox.
Maddox is not a magician. Rather, she goes into houses that are up for sale and de-personalizes them, de-clutters them and dresses them up with subtle, decorative touches. If potential buyers can walk through the front door of a home and immediately begin to visualize themselves living there, she’s done her job.
Removing photos is one of the first things Maddox, a home staging professional, tackles. “When buyers see those personal touches, they tend to forget to look at the house. Baby pictures and vacation photos can be distracting,” she says.
The next thing to go is clutter, which gets under Maddox’s skin. “You want to remove books, collectibles and anything else that will take a buyer’s eye away from the architecture, the windows, and so on,” she says. “I’ve never been a collector, and I don’t like clutter, so it’s easy for me to go into a house and starting telling people to get rid of stuff.”
When the home sells, having the extra stuff already boxed up makes it that much easier to leave, Maddox says. “If you can pack up those hundreds of paperbacks, those knickknacks, and those 13 chairs around the dining room table, then your move will be less stressful.”
Maddox also enjoys adding little touches here and there that bring a room to life. Among her clever additions to the kitchen of the Cronan home is the colored dishware inside the glass cabinets.
The true genius at the heart of what Maddox does, though, is her ability to redefine underutilized space. In the Cronan home, she turned a downstairs den the family was using as a spare bedroom into an office for Shaleigh’s real estate business, complete with a desk and a cozy reception area for clients.
Sometimes, when Maddox is transforming a space, there are gaps between what a room needs and what the homeowners have on hand. In these cases, Maddox dips into her inventory to find the missing object and then works it into the overall scheme. Planted throughout the Cronan household are pieces of furniture and other odds and ends that look as though they have always been a part of the home – including the colored dishes.
Maddox can even furnish an entire house – a service that’s in great demand given the number of foreclosures on the market. “Furnished rooms look a little bigger, so there’s value in staging an empty house,” she says.
However, the thing Maddox enjoys the most is spotting the small things she can do that will make a big difference.
“Years ago, it wasn’t popular to have trim on your drapes, and a friend of mine had a set of gorgeous custom drapes she hated because of the ugly trim. So I took a seam ripper, removed the trim, and she was amazed at the difference,” Maddox says.
Shaleigh was impressed with Maddox’s advice to paint the stark white return air vents in her house the same color as the walls, causing them to all but disappear into the surrounding color.
The idea, Maddox says, was to turn the Cronan residence from someone’s home into a marketable house. The process isn’t always easy, as selling a home can be an emotional event. Shaleigh grew up in the house she and her husband are selling, and even though they remodeled it from top to bottom, its walls are still dressed with memories. Maddox gave them the direction they needed to prepare their house for the market.
“We’d accumulated a lot of stuff, and we didn’t know where to begin. It was overwhelming,” Shaleigh says.
Maddox not only guides her clients, she also holds them accountable. Shaleigh says her home still wouldn’t be presentable if she and her husband, both busy professionals, had staged the place on their own. “Theresa told us what to do and then made sure we did it. She also kept me from having to nag my husband to do the things on his list. Theresa would write down what he needed to do, and then I’d give the piece of paper to him and say, ‘Here’s a note from Theresa,’” Shaleigh says, laughing.
In addition to being the seller, Shaleigh is also the agent that’s listing the house. This has opened her eyes to the benefits of home staging to Realtors. “Having access to a team of professionals gives me validity as an agent. Plus, I can concentrate on selling the house while Theresa tells the homeowner what needs to be done to get it ready. That keeps me from having to speak with my client about those things and jeopardizing that relationship,” she says.
Maddox has no trouble being straightforward with a client. “I’m bossy, but in a nice way. At my old job, I wasn’t the boss, but I was the bossiest,” she says, adding her laughter to Shaleigh’s.
Maddox’s “old job” was a position as an administrative assistant at Keller Williams in East Brainerd. When the economy started to dip, agents became more concerned than usual about selling homes as quickly as possible and at the highest possible price. One of the obstacles was clutter.
“Agents would come in and say, ‘How am I going to help the seller to understand that the picture of grandma and grandpa has to go?’” Maddox says.
Maddox saw an opportunity. To ensure she had the credentials for which agents and sellers were looking, she earned the ASP (Accredited Staging Professional) and IAHSP (International Association of Home Staging Professionals) designations, and then went to work. Today, she’s an award-winning stager with clients throughout the Chattanooga area.
“I can visualize things and I’m good at de-cluttering, so I’ve always staged my home and the homes of my children and my friends. Eventually, I decided to develop it into a business,” Maddox says.
While Maddox is happy to extol the benefits of home staging, the numbers speak for themselves. According to StagedHomes.com, 94 percent of staged homes sell within 33 days, compared to non-staged homes, which sell in 144 days. In addition, Barb Schwarz, president and CEO of Staged Homes, told one state real estate association that staged homes sell for an average of 10 to 20 percent more than non-staged homes. For this reason, nearly 25 percent of properties are staged today, up from 10 percent about 10 years ago, Schwarz said.
Selling a home quickly and at the highest possible price will always be a priority for Chattanooga Realtors, whether the market is up or down. And helping agents to achieve that goal will always be job one for Maddox and the other staging professionals that work in the Chattanooga area.
“My mother had six children, and there was never any clutter in our house. So I love going into someone else’s home and saying, ‘Get rid of that, get rid of that, and get rid of that.’ It’s not always easy, but the results are worth it.”