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Selling Your Home? Entice Buyer's
Kids to
Beg “Mommy - Daddy, We Want This House!”
by Emily Cressey
Selling real estate? Did you know that children can influence up to 50% of buying decisions made by their parents? That’s the conclusion of real estate investor and property staging expert Karen Schaefer.
Imagine selling a house fast. If you were a parent toting young kids through house after house, looking for the ‘perfect home,’ don’t you think you would enjoy – and connect a little more – with the house that your kids were quietly and busily enjoying themselves in? “Yes!” is the answer to this question on a recent interview done by Christine Harvey with Karen Schaefer on the WomenforWealth.com teleseminar, designed to help women increase wealth through real estate investment.
Interested in selling property fast? Karen is. In fact, she’s so convinced that this is a valuable property-selling strategy, that she’s started her own company, Simple Appeal, to teach investors, realtors, leasing agents, and others how to do just that.
Create a House the Buyer's Children Fall in
Love With
Creating a house that the children fall in love with is just another trick in her arsenal of strategies and techniques designed to fill her properties quickly. She’s been so successful, in fact, that she’s never had to pay the mortgage on an empty house because she is able to lease and sell her investment homes so darn fast!
Selling real estate fast through staging children’s rooms is unique and effective. This article features some of the secrets she shared with the WomenforWealth.com real estate teleconference listeners who tuned in to learn how they, too, could fill property in half the time at twice the profit, regardless of market conditions.
When selling homes, Karen says it’s important to market the home to kids because they will literally sell the house for you. She even jokes, “I sometimes feel guilty like I should pay [the kids] a commission!”
She then goes on to her strategy for staging children’s rooms in a house, “What I usually do is two kinds of bedrooms for kids. One I refer to as a ‘tweener bedroom’ for kids somewhere in the eight to thirteen age group. Then I will do another bedroom that is more toddler age.”
Schaefer’s techniques for a toddler age bedroom or baby bedroom emphasize creating a space that catches the kids’ eyes, but contains nothing that they will be able to destroy. She focuses on fun, simple, and colorful.
Schaefer reveals, “What I find and use a lot of times are big gift bags that have Barney, or Burt and Ernie, or just fun airplanes, or just tissue paper. I like bags that have babies on them, because babies like babies,” says Karen.
“I will set up three or four of these large gift bags and set the bags around the room. Then I will put a can of soup or can of tuna in the bottom of each one just to give it some weight, generally something so small that kids can’t hurt themselves with it. Then I will overstuff it with tons and tons of colorful tissue paper,” emphasizes Karen.
She also adds something like a little pop up tent in the room, shaped like a castle or a firehouse, or just add a miniature pop up jumper - I will throw some balls in that. I may have a rocking horse or some coloring books, anything like that, says Karen. Then I will do a really fun stencil on the wall at kid’s eye level, so I will usually opt for doing that underneath a window, because they will walk right in and put their hands on it,” she says.
Other Ideas to Stage a Child's Room
When selling real estate fast, remember that good and easy stencils are the sponge type stencils, available at craft stores, that are shaped like bugs and octopus and fish for children’s rooms. “I will just put them all over the wall, underneath the window. Basically what I am trying to do is to create a space that kids will walk in and they will start to play and have a good time. It allows the parents to look, but all I have done is a very inexpensive design and inexpensive scene. The kids can throw paper everywhere, they can have fun, they can toss the balls around. It takes me two seconds to clean it back up and if I need to replace the tissue paper I’m only out about a dollar. So, for me it is kind of multi purpose to create this very cute, fun little environment for kids that the parents like too because it is very cute, but it also keeps them busy so the parents can enjoy the home,” says Schaefer.
When selling property, realize that the last thing you want to hear is their child hanging on and begging, “Let’s go, let’s go, I’m bored here!!!!” With staging, you have the exact opposite. They love your house. And you might only have paid $10 pay for that tent, plus a little for the bags and crepe paper at a discount store.
In summary, to sell houses fast, pay attention to staging. It can be very simple. As this interview with WomenforWealth.com shows, just filling one bedroom with inexpensive things can be a start. A lot of other ideas are available in the full interview.
For more information on selling houses fast, or to
access the complete, power-packed Tele-Seminar, Check out the interview we
did with Karen Schafer,
Staging Systems:
Sell that Property in Half the Time with Twice the Profit. This
one hour interview covers the home exterior, the living room, the master
bedroom, kid’s and teen’s rooms, all important kitchens and baths, entry way
and much more.
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