Today’s post is a proverbial tip of the cap to #8 Yogi Berra.  Writers write what they know about, and regular readers know I love baseball.

Have had this analogy in my mind for months, planning to run it for Yogi’s birthday in May. Today instead I join legions of heavy-hearted  NY Yankee fans saying thank you for the memories.

Analogies can connect the dots, making the seemingly irrelevant relevant. Baseball might have little to do with Home Staging or Decorating,  after three-plus decades of working with people in their homes, and with their stuff I can tell you nothing rings truer about the process than this Yogi-ism. 

I came into the home furnishing business during the acquisition-driven status-seeking buying orgies of the early 1980s (I know,  how do I really feel?!). It was the rest of my tenure helped incubate more mindful ideals,  shaping my more organic beliefs about our spaces, and our possessions, leading to the launch of The Refreshed Home in 2007.

OF COURSE  Home Staging is about how a property looks. But it’s a fatal error to consider Home Staging solely as a standardized process, or an aesthetically-centric deliverable.  

Getting a property to the closing table is chock-full of twists and turns. Why open this messy emotional can of worms?  Another favorite Yogi-ism comes to mind-“If you don’t know where you’re going, you may wind up someplace else“.  Ignore that 90%, that mental game at great risk of ending up someplace else.

Minimizing or dismissing seller issues will often come back to derail the process, manifested as cancelled showing appointments, spaces intentionally unkempt, and pulling out of deals at the 11th hour. Similarly, buyers will pass on, or low-ball  a property that does not look its best.

Lessons of the last decade have shaped our current mindset. Change, and economic uncertainty weigh on everyones mind.  Home Staging may be really hard to explain, but here’s a definition I think everyone can understand, and get behind:

Home Staging is WHATEVER you can do to better the market position of a property, while easing the minds of all the parties.

Done correctly, Home Staging will:

• Comfort and guide sellers,  making sense for their market and goals
• Attract, engage and motivate buyers- making it easier for them to say YES
• Support asking price of correctly-priced properties

Picking the right color of paint, knowing where to put the furniture is the easy half of the game. It’s that 90%, that mental part of the game where The Refreshed Home shines.  Whether planning for Spring Market, or need to get to the closing table by the end of the year, talk to me today about getting your property noticed, and SOLD!

   Thanks Yogi, you were one of a kind, and will be missed terribly.