RISMEDIA, November 20, 2009—With a $569,000 Tampa home sitting on
the market for a year and a half and no signs of a sale, Tracy Truitt was a
disheartened Realtor looking for a new approach that
would help her sell her listing.
Truitt, a Realtor with Century 21 Elite in Tampa, discovered Showhomes, a
home staging company, with what it calls a unique spin on traditional home
staging: the nationally franchised company finds people to live in and help
stage vacant homes so that they show better and sell faster. Given the declining
real estate market, mansions and just about every other type of home are
difficult to sell, the company reports.
Showhomes says it staged Truitt’s home and it sold in eight days. “I had an
almost full price offer within a week of Showhomes’ staging, and a 25% higher
offer than the two offers that had come in previously to the home being staged,”
Truitt says.
Showhomes Tampa owner Linda Saavedra says Truitt’s experience isn’t a
fluke.
She says the company’s staged homes are selling in a fraction of the time
most homes are taking to sell. So are homes all over the country staged with
Showhomes’ system, she adds. According to the company, a typical $850,000 home
in Florida is taking well over a year to sell in today’s market and the average
time it has taken Showhomes to sell these homes is 132 days.
“Recently we’ve had six major success stories with homes that have lingered
on the market for over a year,” she says. “Three homes sold within 35 days and
two others were contracted within seven days of staging. The home that sold in 8
days has been on the market for over two years and the sale price was 20% more
than the offers they received when the home was vacant.”
“Our approach is working,” says Thomas Scott, VP of operations at the
Nashville-based corporate headquarters of Showhomes. “We are experiencing
similar home sales results in southern California, the Midwest and Northeast.
Despite the glut of inventory, there are buyers in the market and they are
choosing to purchase homes we have staged.”
For more information, visit www.showhomes.com
