Technique can bring top dollar

Lucky for Cynthia Pulsifer, just 10 percent of home perusers can visualize an interior without furniture, and she's among the 1 in 10 who can.

Pulsifer, who has 15 years' background in interior design, runs A Charleston House! which handles home staging, as well as interior redesign. She started the venture early this year.

Home staging is a real estate speciality involving houses, condos or townhomes for sale. The owner has moved or otherwise vacates the dwelling, and the home stager brings in furniture or uses existing items to make the house as appealing as possible from the standpoint of people interested in making a purchase.

"Staged homes sell 50 percent faster than nonstaged homes," she says, and the sale price is 7 percent higher than for homes that aren't staged.

Home staging is particularly important in a market such as the Charleston area, which is transitional, so a sizable number of houses are for sale at any one time. Staging has become trendy in recent times as the real estate market sags.

"It puts an edge on the competition," says Pulsifer, who previously worked for the interior design arm of a major retailer. "Staging actually accentuates the positive features."

Pulsifer has a few tips about home staging. Notably, just about any house can be staged, even dwellings such as an already-beautiful home she's staging in Park West east of the Cooper.

Home staging isn't the same as keeping up a nice house, she points out. It's aimed at home shoppers to make a house just what they want. That can include eliminating clutter, even if furniture or household goods must be stored for a time.

She typically uses her own furniture, purchasing new sofas, lamps, chairs or beds when needed.

Pulsifer was reluctant to go into specifics on how much she charges customers, but noted that her minimum time frame for a home staging is three months, adding that a typical assignment can cost $5,000. She can usually set up a home for staging in three hours or so, doing much of the effort shifting furniture around herself. She relies on part-time help to truck heavy items to households and help place them in the homes.

As a general rule, Pulsifer tries to limit the pieces of furniture in a room. The screen porch in the Park West home, for instance, has just two sets of props: porch chairs and a table with a flower arrangement, and a grill in one corner. She seeks small highlights, such as a vase, pottery or clear vessel of foodstuffs on a table or countertop.

She uses artificial flowers, although some homeowners will agree to water real plants. Sometimes, she sets out wooden lettering on a counter, such as KITCHEN or RELAX.

Pulsifer also specializes in interior redesign, which is similar to home staging, but, instead, the homeowner still lives in the house and it just needs some sprucing up to get ready to sell or get a new look. In those cases, she would design a look for the owner that's functional and practical. For a house that's not for sale, the work might not take more than a day and cost $300 to $700.

On a staged home or any house for sale, Pulsifer says she tries to conceptualize a house while working with the homeowner when possible. But she has a definite plan to make the house as attractive as possible to a buyer, not to the seller. "There's a way we live," she says, that's different from how the home should look for a home staging. "It's become a commodity."

Reach Jim Parker at 937-5542 or jparker@postandcourier.com.