Extreme Home Staging

It seems Americans are hard wired to produce the tawdriest marketing schmaltz conceivable.
But this story of ‘extreme home staging’ is so gag worthy that I’m almost reluctant to repeat it here. So if anyone has a particular aversion to ‘lifestyle’ peddling, please navigate away from this blog, you have been warned.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Home sellers long ago discovered that small touches could boost selling prices - fresh flowers, the smell of freshly baked cookies. Now a real estate developer, Centex of Dallas, is adding in beautiful people.

The experiment in what's called "staging" is simple: Home buyers enter a home and see not just furniture but real people - actors - playing out the life they might lead there. "Staged model homes tend to be sterile and dry - this was a way to put the heartbeat back into the home," said Jim Garfield, spokesman for Roddan Paolucci Roddan, Centex's publicist.

In one performance, the 'model' family spent about three hours pretending it was Mom's birthday. They baked a cake, sang happy birthday and the children drew and framed a picture - of a Centex house. The original cast included a former Baywatch hunk, Jaason Simmons, in the role of Dad.

"It's physically manifesting somebody's dream," said Garfield.

Amanda Larson, a marketing director for Centex, says the idea came about when she sat down with Roddan's creative people and worked out an idea to make the visiting-a-model-home experience "more interactive and more
memorable."

http://money.cnn.com/2006/07/03/real_estate/

I warned you didn’t I.

This ‘extreme home staging’ will no doubt hit our shores as the market slows. Expect to encounter actors in pristine show homes in Mullingar, possibly partaking in a game of familial Monopoly, the child exclaiming, ‘Mammy, Daddy I landed on the Glens Executive Housing Development in Mullingar, I’ve won, I’ve won!’