My husband Roger and I recently sold our big old apartment on Riverside Drive.?We had moved into the building ?in time to celebrate our daughter?s first birthday in 1975. Six years later our son was?born there (well, almost ? we got to the hospital just in the nick of time!) When the apartment next door came on the market we borrowed money to connect the two spaces; Roger and I had ample workspace, and our kids could run and play.
We were two country kids at heart, lucky in love and real estate, living our dream in Manhattan with a spectacular river view.
Thirty-seven years later we knew it was time to cash in our asset and (gulp) move on. Our kids had been happily independent for years, and even with two grandchildren FIVE bedrooms was ridiculous.?
I hated the idea. One theatrical truth I?ve learned over the years is that specificity makes a landscape universal;?removing specificity makes it generic. Yet Deanna advised that staging could increase the selling price from 5 to 125 times the cost of staging (!) Well,?Roger and I agreed that?this was real estate, not theatre, and we got to work.
? Samuel Morgan Photography
Plasterers, painters, window-washers, rented furniture (beige), lamps (square), towels (ugly) and chatchkas (weird) invaded our turf. Amanda Wiss and her company?Urban Clarity?got us organized,?and our son Sam,?an architectural photographer, did a photo-shoot of the results. The fine photos didn?t resemble the comfy home in which we?d raised our family. But it was ready to sell.?
Preparing to show the apartment reminded us of the union-half-hour-call that precedes every performance: it looks hectic but really isn?t. It?s a meticulous routine.
Our meticulous routine: make beds, poof pillows, empty wastebaskets, clear every surface, vacuum (Roger), arrange fresh flowers (me), leave no traces of normal life, exit to the Metro Diner. Contemplate our future, wait for Deanna?s ?all clear? text, then head on home.?
Eventually the perfect buyers arrived. And as the lovely young mother described how her family would live in our space, I knew the staging had worked.?
But there?s another chapter to our story? where did we go??
HA! ?Not very far: we are now living 10 feet 2 inches below our former home. And here?s the beauty part: our new apartment was?NOT staged,?which I believe is the reason we got it. ?
We were always fond of the elderly couple downstairs ? they were good neighbors. Distinguished college professors who loved world travel and NY?s Upper West Side, they often gathered students in their book-lined home, and engaged in heady discussions of physics, language and art.
It seemed natural that when our dear neighbors died (a couple of years apart) it was in the home they loved. In fact, their clothes were still hanging in the closets when the apartment was being shown, and their books and paintings were everywhere. It looked as if one of their salons was about to begin. Their apartment reflected a highly specific way of life; in other words, it was staged according to the theatrical definition of the word. And it simply did not sell.
We knew that our neighbors? apartment was for sale six months before ours. We would?ve bought it immediately if we didn?t have to sell ours first (we couldn?t make an offer contingent upon a sale) and we were convinced we?d miss the opportunity. We were wrong. ?428 days after it came on the market?our offer was accepted.
I will forever recommend real-estate-staging to anyone who wants to sell their apartment.
Theatrical staging? Nope. Though it sure worked in our favor!
In the meantime, the Hudson River?is a most inspiring setting. Roger and I thank our lucky stars for it every day.?
We may have moved? but we?re still here.?
?
?
Tags: Deanna Kory, Roger Morgan, Staging, Urban Clarity
Source: http://theatricalintelligence.com/theatrical-staging-or-real-estate-staging-a-lesson-learned/
theraflu masters leaderboard frozen four joe avezzano kanye west theraflu joey votto the masters live
No comments:
Post a Comment