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Home is where the art is
The housing market is undoubtedly coming to a slowdown. Homes are lingering on the market for months and months, with no prospects of potential buyers in sight.
But everyone knows that drastic times call for drastic measures, and many are going to great lengths to make their home stand out from the crowd.
One of the ways that people are sprucing up their homes to entice buyers is by renting art from museums and galleries and “staging” their home.
The August 18, 206 article by Kelly Crow, of The Wall Street Journal, looks into the growing trend of renting art to people who want their homes to stand out in a slow market.
People in the industry have long held the belief that “staging” a home to look like the perfect abode will help to entice people to buy the property if they could picture themselves living there. Now, with the recent trend in renting art, homes are becoming like showrooms and galleries.
“As home sales slow in many areas and more houses linger on the market, some sellers are going to greater lengths to catch the buyer's eye -- by installing splatter paintings by emerging artists, 7-foot-tall metal sculptures, even works by Calder and Dali. It's a pronounced shift in the strategy of staging, which traditionally held that the fastest way to sell homes, and get the highest price, was to give them a toned-down, hotel-style makeover. Now, rather than merely boxing up family knick-knacks, adding a new couch or repainting the bedroom in jewel tones, stagers are experimenting with a riskier approach.”
Not only is this new trend hopefully getting homes off the market quicker, it is also generating a tremendous amount of revenue for art museums and galleries.
The price to rent art varies from place to place, but generally, most art institutions employ some sort of a lending program.
“Loaner art is fairly easy to come by. A handful of museums and a host of galleries and leasing services nationwide rent art for temporary use, with monthly fees from $25 to $8,000 per work and rentals allowed, in some cases, for up to two years.”
Residential home sales are slowing more than they have in years, so this is prompting more and more people to jump on this art bandwagon.
“At the end of June, unsold U.S. homes numbered 3.7 million, a 42% increase compared with a year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors. Sales of new homes are expected to drop this year by 12%, to 1.1 million, in part because of rising interest rates. And some high-end markets have a glut of available properties -- some on the market for more than a year.”
Although there is really no way to see if renting art really helps to sell a home, many say it does. Not everyone agrees though, and the reactions to “art-staging” vary widely; with some people saying it helps tremendously and others saying they can see right through the staging.
Whatever you decide it is important that you choose a piece of work that is right for your home, or else things could look off.
“Choosing the right work can be tricky. Seattle stager Jan Sewell, who uses about 100 pieces a month in clients' houses, prefers contemporary abstracts with a lot of color. Other effective choices include landscapes and paintings with primary-color palettes, pared-down modern sculptures and detailed botanicals. Stagers steer clear of works with nudity or religious themes. Presentation matters, too: A canvas that's too large or small for a space will detract from the look of a room.”