Aug 11, 2007 - 09:00 AM

By Izabela Jaroszynski

DURHAM -- Kathryn Somers fell into staging almost by accident.

Her good friends were in the process of selling their house and, while they had a lot of showings, they weren’t getting any offers.

“So I came over and played the part of the stager without really knowing I was being a stager,” she said. “I helped them choose colours and told them what they needed to edit, where to place furniture, which wallpaper to remove, things like that.”

At the first open house following Ms. Somers’ home staging, the house sold.

“And I thought, ‘wow, I love doing this,’” she said. “So I started looking into it.”

A trained esthetician and make-up artist, Ms. Somers put her eye for colour to use by completing the Staging Diva Home Staging business training program. With the opening of her home-based business, Stage it First, Ms. Somers jumped into the increasingly popular home staging industry.

With a barrage of television shows focussing on preparing homes for sale, home staging is quickly becoming a growing sector. The Canadian Staging Professionals website alone lists at least a dozen local stagers located all across the region.

Ms. Somers says staging has been popular in the United States since the early 90s but is just now becoming known in Canada.

But what exactly does a home stager do?

“The whole purpose of staging is to make the home visually appealing to the majority of buyers,” Ms. Somers said. “But also to make it so that they don’t remember that someone else lives there -- so that it’s almost like going into a show home. That’s the real target.”

Creating a warm and inviting environment that also feels generic can be difficult.

“It’s a real delicate balance because you don’t want the home to appear overly staged so that people walk in and go ‘oh, it’s staged,’” she said.

In her business, Ms. Somers offers a number of services including an initial two-to-three hour consultation during which she walks through the entire home with the owner.

“I come into the home and look at it from the perspective of a potential buyer,” she said.

While the homeowner is given a clipboard to take notes, Ms. Somers makes comments and suggestions about everything from creating appealing colour schemes to dealing with unpleasant odours.

For some homes, it is just a matter of decluttering, she says, and for others it can mean adding furniture or decorative accents. With ties to the local business community, home stagers will often refer their clients to furniture rental places, carpet cleaners and other home services that they know will do a good job.

“When you are living in the place, you don’t always notice what’s missing,” she said.

During that initial consultation -- which costs homeowners $250 -- Ms. Somers will also do some spot staging, if the client requests it.

“If they would like me to I can show them how to stage things,” she said. “For example, if they have a bookshelf and it’s full of clutter, I can show them how to do one shelf so it is more visually appealing.”

After the consultation, clients can choose to do all of the work themselves or hire their home stager for further help to get the house ready for sale.

Even if her clients choose to do most of the work themselves, Ms. Somers says she likes to come into the house one more time right before the open house to add some special touches.

“Like place out a loaf of bread on the bread board, things like that,” she says. “I like to be there for that. I really enjoy it.”

But while home staging can certainly make a difference in the look of a home, does it help in its sale?

“There are statistics that say homes will sell faster and for more money, but the problem is you’d have to have two exact houses to know if that actually is accurate,” Ms. Somers said. “But the consensus is that they do sell quicker than unstaged homes and they usually sell for close to asking price. They are not usually ones that sit on the market for ever and ever.”

She said that it all depends on the house and the market -- nothing about selling homes is guaranteed.

“My goal is to get your house sold quicker and for top dollar,” she said. “Because it’s one of the largest investments you make in your life.”