Estate Of Mind Podcast Highlights: Luxury Staging With Lori Pedersen and Kofi Nartey

Joining us in our latest episode of Estate of Mind are two brilliant minds in luxury real estate, Lori Pedersen, and Kofi Nartey. Lori is a highly sought after stager in the greater Toronto area, while Kofi is a luxury real estate professional based in Los Angeles, specializing in finding the right luxury home for high-profile athletes and celebrities. They bring their unique points of view and real estate expertise to discuss luxury real estate marketing strategy and steps to bringing a home to market. This episode was recorded just before our current situation changed the way we practice real estate for the time being, but everything you’ll discover in this episode will help get your next luxury home listing buyer-ready before its big debut on the market.  In this episode, Kofi addresses how luxury buyer expectations have changed, making staging more important than ever. Today’s luxury buyer expects a luxury home to offer a turnkey experience, making move-in as easy as showing up with their luggage and feeling right at home. They’re less willing to take on a fixer-upper, or a place with “potential” like they used to. And with competition on the market growing rapidly, it’s harder to capture their attention at first sight. At the core of this shift towards a turnkey experience is an even greater unignorable appreciation for time and experiences over material assets. If a home presents a huge time investment and takes away from time available to spend on things like travel, culture, and entertainment, today’s buyer simply isn’t quite as interested.

In this episode, you’ll discover…

• Why rapport is not enough to convince sellers to price their luxury home effectively 
• The importance of including your stager early on in the marketing process
• How to “reverse engineer” the staging process so that the right buyer can walk in and actually picture themselves living in that luxury home
• The secret to helping sellers see staging as a smart investment 
• Strategies for creating urgency around new luxury home listings 

Episode Highlights

1. The Magic Is In the Delivery

How do you tell a seller their luxury home isn’t as appealing as they believe it is? How do you let them know there are improvements needed before the home is ready for market?

Kofi explains the best way to deliver any challenging information is to set the stage first. Ask permission to share the truth with your seller. Remind them you’re on their team and work towards getting on the same page above all else. 

Having a few ways to deliver the same guidance is key, he says, since some people will hear it the first time…but others may not hear it until it’s said again, or said with a story, or said with a visual example. 

2. Create An Emotional Response In Potential Buyers

Does anyone truly respond to a blank, white box? Lori says even homes featuring incredible views and other coveted luxury features simply don’t resonate with buyers as well as a home with staging. 

It could have the right amount of space, parking spaces, a gorgeous yard, and more… 

But if the buyer doesn’t feel right in the home, there’s no offer. 

Staging helps set the tone of a home and gives prospects an easier time picturing themselves living in it. 

It’s also important to note, staging isn’t just limited to furniture and decor. It also incorporates scents, sounds, and temperature. To go one step further, staging starts the second the potential buyer arrives at the home, which is why it’s so important to let the prospect park their own car in the driveway.

Let them experience the entire property as if they already live there, or as if they’re a guest coming to visit them in their new home. What will that experience be like? The right staging creates a seamless experience, invoking an emotional response before a logical one, which is exactly what sells luxury homes.

So when you walk through a home with your seller, decide on the feeling you want to convey. Is it warm? Edgy? Relaxing? Bright? The right stager will know how to communicate these through the space they’re given.

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