Humans make a house for sale feel more like home
About a year ago, Cora Blinsman’s mom passed away. Needless to say, it was a really hard on her. She started taking stock of her own life. Blinsman had been a full-time, stay-at-home mom for 20 years, and she was feeling burnt out. She needed space.
So she got a lot of it.
Blinsman applied to be a home manager with Showhomes, a nationwide home staging company. Basically, she pays a monthly fee to live in a really nice house for sale in one of the nicest upscale communities in Chapel Hill, N.C. Her latest is currently going for $430,000. It’s got four bedrooms, two baths. The kitchen has two cooking surfaces; gas and electric. The backyard has three descending layers of gardens.
The idea behind Showhomes is that when someone lives in a home, it just feels warmer. More attractive to buyers.
“You’ve got your slippers by the bed,” Blinsman said. “I mean, I kept it very neat, but you could tell somebody lived there.”
Fred Pierson is the franchise manager for Showhomes in the Chapel Hill area. Pierson says the home manager method is the company’s most effective service. Seventy percent of the homes with managers living in them get an offer.
“Buyers are smart. They can tell when they’re walking into a staged home,” said Pierson.
These are not always easy homes to sell — they’re often worth more than $1 million. The home Blinsman is in had been on the market a year before she moved in two months ago. Now, she pays $1,100 a month for a home that would normally have mortgage payments two or three times that amount. So, it’s a good deal. But there are drawbacks.
“If home managers are doing this just for the savings, it will not work,” said Pierson. “It has to be a lifestyle they are willing to compromise.”
For example, Blinsman only lived in her first home for five weeks before it sold. Some managers can move up to five times a year. And there are rules.
“They’re very basic,” said Pierson. “You make your bed every day. Towels are not hung up over the shower, they’re placed in the dryer… You know, pick your stuff up and make sure it looks nice… The stuff I was always telling my kids,” said Blinsman.
Also, home managers can’t keep anything too personal lying around. No religious insignia. No family photos. One of Pierson’s homes had a mural of the Dallas Cowboys up on the wall. Showhomes needed to remove it because there’s always the chance someone looking to buy a home might love the house, but hate the Cowboys.
Blinsman says the rules haven’t been so bad. On the contrary, she says, being in this kind of home at this kind of time has been really good for her. Living in a wealthy community has opened her eyes to an entirely different lifestyle.
“I can be a part of the community and I can fit in pretty well,” she explained. “But if I had a little broken down car, I could never drive through this neighborhood. I’d be like, ‘Oh my God, they’re gonna want to throw me out.’”
This is the real trick behind Showhomes. It’s not just about giving those looking for a home a look into someone else’s life – it’s about doing the same for the home manager. Giving them a chance to be someone else, if only for a little while.
Clarification: An earlier version of this story used the phrase “buyers” to describe situations home managers find themselves as part of their arrangement with Showhomes, as opposed to those looking to buy a home that is on the market. The text has been clarified throughout the story.
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