How Home Staging Is Like Dancing with the Stars - Part 1 of 2

One of my favorite programs is Dancing with the Stars.  While I was watching this last week’s episode, I realized that the challenges that some of the stars have with learning their dances is similar to the challenges that Home Stagers, realtors and home sellers face when staging a property. The judge’s critique of Ty Murray’s dance was that “he got all the steps, they were all there, but it was too robotic and there was no feeling“.  Lawrence Taylor’s  dance suffered a similar review saying that “he had the aggression, the steps were all there, but there was a disconnect with him and the dance that they couldn’t quite put their finger on”.

How is this like staging you ask?  Stay with me…let me explain.  I often say that there are a lot of misnomers about home staging. There are a lot of people that can make a house look pretty, but pretty doesn’t get your house sold. Truly professional staging is more strategic.  For home staging to be effective, the  psychology behind it must be kept in mind.  You must be clear about who the target buyer is, what their lifestyle is, what the price range of the property is and what the buyer’s expectations are, then you design a lifestyle around all those things.  Sure, decluttering, and cleaning is a component of home staging, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

So again, how does this relate to Dancing with the Stars?  Well, first, like Ty and Lawrence, although they know the steps and was able to execute it, that’s only a part of the dance.  The rest of it is really understanding the dance and being able to perform it while projecting and evoking emotion.  Unfortunately, many homes that are staged suffer from a similar problem.  The house has been decluttered and cleaned up and it may even be decorated, but it’s lacking emotion.  I often see the concept of depersonalization taken to the extreme.  Yes, you want to depersonalize, but you don’t want the space to be void of any personality at all. Vanilla boxes do nothing to tug at your potential buyer’s heart strings.

To be continued…