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Eduardo Jose Bernardino

Paying attention to the details can make all the difference in selling a house, according to design consultant Shannon Thorson, owner of Ugly Duckling Design in McMinnville. It isn’t just about getting that stack of mail off the table, brightening the paint job and adding some artwork, Thorson said, but about taking note of every aspect of the house, from the doorknobs to the houseplants and artwork.

Devri Doty, principal broker and owner at Windermere Pacific Crest Realty, agreed.

Not only should the house look tidy and well-cared for throughout, she said, it should also smell good and be well-lit.

“I look at staging as sort of a three-pronged process,” Thorson said. “You’ve got repair, which is just addressing deferred maintenance — the gate latch to the back gate that doesn’t latch ... the door knob that rattles when people open the door.

You’ve got renovation, where you look at things that might be dated. Then there’s the decorating. The real goal is to make the home seem logical and functional.”

There’s more to attracting buyers than just competing with a large pool of housing on the market, Thorson said.

“As lending guidelines tighten, and they will continue to tighten, I predict, for the next 12 to 18 months, buyers are having to come to the table with more money than they expected,” she said. “So they’re less likely to want to move into a home that needs obvious repairs. If a home has orange carpet, or orange countertops, it’s more and more common for them to say they’re not moving in until those issues are addressed.”

In some cases, Doty said, “The seller can also have an inspection performed upfront and complete necessary repairs in an effort to reduce the chances of a transaction falling apart due to needed repairs. In addition, the seller can offer to purchase a year’s home warranty for a buyer, which is an attractive feature to a sale.” 

The renovation prong, Thorson said, is “kind of a mini-remodel focused on what will add buyer appeal.” Look at door knobs, window coverings, cabinets, drawer pulls, “things that are dated, unattractive, tattered,” she said.

At one home, Thorson installed doors to separate a potential dining room from an area being used as a home gym. She upgraded lighting, shades and backsplashes in a tired kitchen in another home, along with fresh paint and accessories. She added a few restrained accent pieces — a throw rug in front of a window, a bonsai tree near the kitchen sink, an attractive small table. It was enough to make a dramatic difference at a cost of less than $1,000.

“This wasn’t a bad kitchen, but it served a fairly high-end home and really needed some updating to maximize profits for the seller,” Thorson said. “The results aren’t a dream kitchen, but that’s not the goal.

“In this case, the goal was to update the space so it wouldn’t be considered a negative to the overall impression of the home. I think we achieved that.”

Finding the entryway to a third home “not bad, just a little drab,” Thorson redid it. She replaced the door hardware and lighting, removed shrubs and replaced them with ornamental grasses and large rocks, added bark mulch and put in accents — a comfortable chair, large urn planters, a single statue — to create a crisp difference and grab buyers’ attention.

A former division chief with the McMinnville Fire Department, Thorson now specializes in design and consultation, as well as staging homes for sale and advising homeowners on how to improve their homes for sale. She also has experience as a licensed contractor.

She has done everything from simply changing faucets and drawer pulls to redoing the landscaping.

Before beginning however, she said that the first thing a seller needs to decide is whether the goal is to sell the home quickly or maximize profit. Answering that question is going to help determine the work list, she said.

“There’s no set answer on exactly how much money you should put into a home, but sellers should have very clear goals,” she said. “I wouldn’t recommend that sellers just jump in and work on the home until they think it’s good enough, and then add up all the receipts.”

Rather, she said, inventory the house first, make a list of all the proposed changes, and then figure out the cost. From there, trim the list to fit both your goals and budget.

“Even if sellers want do most of the work themselves, if they’re not real savvy with home renovations, and the cost and complexity of home renovations, it might be worth spending a couple hundred dollars to have a stager come in who can help them zero in on the best bang for their buck,” she said.

Repainting rooms is often touted as one of the easiest ways to freshen a home, and Thorson agrees with that assessment — with a caveat.

“Paint is one of the most important things you can do,” she said. “You can make miles and miles of headway with paint.
“But people need to do a good job of painting. The paint needs to be clean and crisp, and well-applied.”

She said, “It’s certainly something an average homeowner can do, but if they don’t paint a lot, it probably makes sense to bone up on a few tips, make sure they have a good quality brush and dedicate some time to the project so they can do good job on it.”

While she certainly advocates removing many of a seller’s possessions from the home, if not most, Thorson believes it’s also important to add furnishings — to show, for example, how well a particular area might function as a dining room or reading nook.

“The decorating piece is to help make your home not only look attractive, but also functional, so each space has a clear purpose,” she said.

Thorson’s website is online at www.shannonthorson.com.