Kevin Grant: Stage to Sell Realty Unique Marketing Position

racy Hayes  1:06  
Hey, welcome back to real estate excellence Podcast. Today is a little unique show. I always have the best of the best. Well, I have a company here today who's not only our sponsor, but they have a unique marketing concept of stage to sell Realty, the merger of two individuals, Adrian and Kevin, who's sitting here with me today, husband and wife are not only obviously married, but they're also business partners as well. And Adrian is your expert stager, and Kevin is your highly experienced real estate agent. And we have them here, and I want to welcome Kevin to the set. Kevin Grant, thank you for

Kevin Grant  1:44  
coming all right. Show today. Hey, thanks. Great introduction. It's exciting to be here. Appreciate

Tracy Hayes  1:49  
you coming by. And as I mentioned, stage to sell provided this great furniture, this great artwork for our set. So those of you guys on Facebook Live this morning, stage to sell, stage to sell Realty. Definitely want to look them up. Adrian did a great job when she came in and evaluated our makeshift set here. I mean, we're putting it together, but it looks great. Everyone has been really amazed

Kevin Grant  2:11  
by it, yeah. Well, we love to make any space look great, yeah. So we love to make homes look great. And when we came in here, wanted to help Tracy out and and, you know, small space, but you want to maximize it and have everyone feel comfortable. So we're happy to

Tracy Hayes  2:24  
do it. Excellent. So Kevin, just tap in a little bit to get to know you as we're talking my normal retuning of the show, I want the audience to know where you're from. You said I think we were talking pre show here. You actually went to high school in Pittsburgh.

Kevin Grant  2:38  
I did, yeah, about 20 miles east of Pittsburgh, small town, and I've been a Steeler fan for many, many years. So yeah, I'll root for the Jags when every time,

Tracy Hayes  2:53  
Exactly Okay. And then Kevin goes on. I'm reading his bio. There another Southern Conference. Everyone knows I graduated from the Citadel. Kevin actually went to Furman University.

Kevin Grant  3:07  
Yeah, go paladins. I should have worn my purple shirt today. I almost did, just to rub it in his face a little. But yeah, go paladins, Furman University, 88

Tracy Hayes  3:14  
that Furman is a obviously very highly respected institution in the upstate of South Carolina. What brought you there from from the Pennsylvania

Kevin Grant  3:24  
area? Yeah, good, yeah. Good. Question. I was a tennis player growing up, and I was looking at a lot of different schools to play tennis, and so that kind of put me south. And, yeah, hey, I'll be honest, I just didn't really like the weather much in Pittsburgh, so I wanted to get the heck out of there and and come to the south. And Furman was the right kind of school wealth to coach the right size team for me. So I wanted to get down there, play some tennis and go to a small school in the south,

Tracy Hayes  3:48  
right? The experience you had, you know, I've had quite a few, actually had a great show couple episodes ago with a professional baseball player, obviously, was actually a classmate of mine tennis playing at that level. I mean, what? What's some of those experiences that you've taken on, I mean, through your life now? Oh,

Kevin Grant  4:09  
absolutely, it's, you know, handful of things. I mean, in tennis, you're, you're an individual sport, so you do rely on yourself. One of the great things, though, is that you do have that team aspect when you play at a school, when a, you know, Division One school like Furman, where you you have to learn how to compete, you have to learn how to accept rejection and then move on. And you also learn how to cheer on your team. So you know that kind of stuff takes you through life, any anyway, and you, you know, you learn how to set a goal, work hard to achieve that goal. And one of the biggest things about tennis is that anywhere you go, you've got a built in community that you can join, sure, and and, you know, build referrals and, you know, so all this really ties in very well to the business

Tracy Hayes  4:57  
world. Yeah, it's tennis is one of those life. Time sports. There's no doubt about that. I didn't play anywhere at the level you did, but my father, you know, had me taking lessons in seventh and eighth grade and and I still enjoy when I have time, although I can't remember the last time I picked up a racket. But, you know, my kids are now at that age, and I think I'm going to take them and just to give them that lifetime sport, whether they go on to play collegiately or anything like that, really doesn't matter. It's just the understand the sport, watch it, you know, it's too much like golf, right? You know, from that standpoint. But, you know, you brought up a great analogy there, of you're an individual, but yet you're part of a team. And do you see that a lot in real estate?

Kevin Grant  5:42  
Well, yeah, so absolutely. I mean, real estate is certainly a one on one relationship with your customer or with your client, whatever it might be. And there's all different aspects of real estate. You know, you're on the lending side, we're on the buying and selling side, but you certainly have that one to one relationship, but everyone is a part of some kind of team. You know, I'm the broker for my business stage to sell Realty, and so I'm there to support my team, to cheer them on, to celebrate the successes and learn from some of the failures, and help them to really be be better as they grow their individual business. So it absolutely applies very well to this, you know, industry that we're both in,

Tracy Hayes  6:29  
really all right, so you move on from Furman, you go to graduate school at Emory, which is also a very highly respected institution, yeah, what were your what were your thoughts of what you wanted to do at

Kevin Grant  6:41  
this time. Yeah, well, Furman, I was a psychology major at Furman, just, you know, kind of liked that degree, and liked the professors, like the people I was working with there, but, but always wanted to go and be in business in some way. And so that was the impetus to go get my MBA in marketing. And when I was at Emory, it was really looking at marketing and working for either a, you know, like a brand company, like a Proctor and Gamble or something like that. I was more in the marketing bent, and really ended up being more into entrepreneurial companies for a few years, until I got to the, you know, Comcast spent a number of years there, so it was really kind of that marketing push that I was trying to do.

Tracy Hayes  7:28  
So you spent a good chunk of your professional career at Comcast, 17 years. If I saw that correct, right, that's right. So to kind of like, make that leap from these great institutions, playing high level tennis, 17 years at Comcast. What breaks she had a Comcast because you go, you go into real estate from Comcast. That's correct. That's correct. What? What kind of ended your your time there, besides pulling out your hair?

Kevin Grant  7:57  
Well, that went out on its own. Yeah. That was early on. But, and I was a trendsetter. This is a good look these days, right here, right those of you're watching on Facebook Live. So, yeah, it was 2015 and was one of those things where it was a transitional time that, you know, Comcast, over the years, went from a very decentralized company, that the the GM in a particular market like Jacksonville would really control all aspects of the business. And then over the years, like a lot of businesses do, became very centralized. So the decision had to be either moved to Atlanta or Philadelphia to continue the career at the same time, Adrian had morphed a handyman business into a staging business, and was starting to see that, hey, these people were doing handyman work in order to sell their house. I was really kind of doing the handyman work to help stage the house, to get it to look its best, right? So it turned into a real staging business, and then she added real estate. So all of this kind of, Do I Do I go to the next level with Comcast and go to a city like Atlanta or Philadelphia? Or do we take that leap and start what we think was, or we thought at the time, and still think, is a very unique way to look at real estate and put staging and real estate together? Because, you know, the crux of that is that we feel staging is the only way to sell and merchandise a home, the best way. So we really made that decision, and we're going to go all in and grow this business at that time. So it was a real transition.

Tracy Hayes  9:33  
I totally agree, and we'll definitely dig into that, that that thought more and why? Sure agents don't, yeah, but you now, what year we talking about, you know, 2015 2015 you're getting

Kevin Grant  9:45  
your license. 2015 got my license. Yeah, Adrian got hers. I got mine. And with Better Homes were all going in. Well, we started with Coldwell Banker. Okay, actually, and loved Coldwell Banker did very well with them. For you know. About two years, and then then did go to Better Homes and Gardens. Great experience with them. Love the people at Better Homes. But decided that with our business model, and we always had in our mind to open our own brokerage, okay? And so when, after the two years, we decided to do that, and I got my broker's license.

Tracy Hayes  10:19  
Awesome, awesome. So diving right in. She has, she has a business level. You You're helping her out while you're still working at Comcast. A little bit. Yep, yeah, you dive in. Do we go through a kind of a lean period of time there? Now we go from the dual income sure to now we're all trying to be self employed. How did you get through that? How did you transition up to?

Kevin Grant  10:44  
Well, yeah, it's, it's not easy. And, I mean, I'm not making as much money now as I probably was at Comcast, but you know what? I got a better lifestyle, and I enjoy what we're doing, and you're really passionate about it, so you don't work a day in your life if you love what you're doing, right? And, and so, yeah, sure, there's, there's lean times there, but we had this vision and this passion, and we knew it was a long term opportunity for us, great, you know, more to grow a business than to just kind of create another job.

Tracy Hayes  11:14  
So I think this question you must get asked a lot, I can't imagine. I mean, it's first thing I thought of when you know you see stage to sell, I love the name, and it's stage to sell Realty. So I would you would think at least a common person would think, okay, you have a stager. A stager is marketing to all agents and home buyers and sellers, sure, but now you've brought in the realty part. Does that affect your your business, your business model? Does that affect a little bit of from the marketing standpoint, of marketing to some of the agents?

Kevin Grant  11:50  
Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And that was a conscious decision that we made. Is we did start the business where the first couple years, a significant part of our revenue was staging for other real estate agents, for other realtors, but we felt that really to grow and become what we wanted to be, is that we wanted to go all in with staging our own listings and really becoming a real estate company first, and A staging company second. So, you know, it went from probably 80% staging business, 20% real estate, to now it's vice versa. And that was a conscious decision. We do staging work for other realtors, and we want to encourage and do that. So we market that a little bit. Adrian does classes and does CE education. But that was a conscious decision, because, you know, to be honest, yeah, we might do a four or $5,000 staging job and make for, you know, four or $500 profit, you know, maybe $1,000 profit. Or we could sell a house for $500,000 and make several $1,000 right? Yeah. So it's one of those kind of Yeah, just to say, No,

Tracy Hayes  13:04  
I wish more I never priced out staging a home. So I don't right how that goes out. Maybe that something you can explain to us. But from my side, looking at the industry, seeing something now, right now, yeah, could you get those lot of houses are sold before they even, are even listed. Absolutely, the agents are already calling say, Hey, I got a home coming up for sale next week. And, you know, there are, everyone's already got it on their map, either to go buy, or they're already making an offer something. And we are getting offers sight unseen, absolutely, you know, from up north and so forth, but state during normal times, why someone doesn't stage a home, or I watched a gene, even just how she came into our little studio here, and her evaluation of what's going to look good. And I could see her and looking on your social media, in website and so forth, how she comes into a home, and even using the furniture that's in there, right? You know, hey, we need to take some of this out. We need to take, you know, whatever it is. And not every realtor can do that, right? There are some realtors that are gifted, like Adrian does and sees that vision, sees what the picture is going to look like, where others are just going in there and going, okay, oh, you want to, okay, well, go ahead and vacuum and pick up the Riff Raff, and we're ready to show we really there's a little more to that. Yeah, and while presenting a

Kevin Grant  14:30  
house where it should be, yeah, well, there's a that's, that's a big question. And you could go ahead and go get lunch, and I could sit here and riff for an hour on that question, if you want, but we'll try to take a few nuggets out of there. Yeah, absolutely we we really want to challenge the realtors and real estate agents, anyone who's selling, selling and buying real estate to up their game a little bit. Is because we feel. It's it's disrespectful to sell a home without it looking its best, right? Even in this market you mentioned, yeah, things are selling fast, even in this market, when you make a home look its best, and the first showing is always online, so you're seeing it on a little phone or a tablet, maybe your computer Exactly. And if the pictures aren't perfect, and if that room doesn't look great, or there's something offensive in that in that room, you know, a lot of people getting offended by a lot of things. So you don't want anything offensive as easy as it is. So so all of those things are going to cause that person to go to the next house instead of staying and looking at that current one. So even in this market, staging is able to get more people looking at the home, which means you get more people into the home, which means you're getting more offers, which means you're getting more for the house. Even in this one, I like to give a baseball analogy. I've heard you talk about that in your other podcast. What we're looking to do is get more at bats. Every at bat is a person in the house. That means you're going to get more hits, and eventually you maybe get a home run, and you get a great offer,

Kevin Grant  16:10  
more offers,

Kevin Grant  16:11  
competitor offers, yeah, bidding war. So that's what, absolutely so that's what, that's what our staging will do. And you're absolutely right. It's, it's pre packing, it's decluttering, it's removing some furniture, and it's coupled with professional photography. If you don't, if you stage a house and then use a camera phone, it's a waste of time to stage it, okay? And if you don't stage but use professional photography. Why? Because the house doesn't really look as good as it as it

Tracy Hayes  16:41  
should. You know, it's very interesting. You brought that up because I this morning I was I said, Let me, you know what? Let me go see if there's some staging podcasts. Let me go see if they tell me something that maybe I'm not thinking about, that might create a great question or a conversational piece. And I was surprised they sounded like where they presented themselves, or they were guests on the podcast as very highly respected stagers. They do training internationally. They've got master's degrees. One of them went the master's degree was in they use several different terms, but basically photography at a level, you know, for that presentation, it's like you're saying. I think the builders will tell you, the average person that comes into their model has already viewed it like three times online or Absolutely. And obviously they have professional setting up there the model homes for the builders that they look their best and give it the great space. So you're, you're 100% I guess, obviously the number one thing. And this was on the, you know, I started listening to different clips of podcasts because I was like, Okay, well, that's subject matter. Let me look over here see if the subject matter is a little different. But one of them was, was objection. And obviously the biggest objection is, what it cost, right? You know, what is the cost? And I'm sure you have some stats on right? Yo, how much faster it sells, how much more they get. And then versus, obviously the number one objection is, well, it costs me money, right, right? You know how much is going to take out of

Kevin Grant  18:11  
my proceeds? Here's a one sentence answer to that, maybe more applicable in 2020 and before than our wacky world 2021 is staging is always less than your first price reduction. Okay, you think about how much you're going to reduce a price, you know, average home, $300,000 in Jacksonville if you do a price reduction. I mean, how much, how much you're going to do, five grand, 10 grand, right? Okay, somewhere in the 290s Right, right. So, so staging is never going to be five or $10,000 to stage that $300,000 house. Okay, so we talk about that, and you know, there's another way to think about is, is, you know, if you're going to go so your car, okay, you're not going to just drive it the way it is right now, to the dealership and say, give me some money. You're at least going to go detail. The thing

Tracy Hayes  19:01  
you know, I don't know why my wife insists on doing that. I'm like, Honey, they don't care.

Kevin Grant  19:05  
Okay, well, everyone cleans their car, maybe to the dealer. Yeah, the dealer, because if you're selling it to your buddy, you're selling it. Yes, for sure, people will spend time doing that, but they won't spend time making their house, which is their largest investment that they will make in their in their life, their largest source of equity. And the part of the issue is that when people hear staging, they think, Okay, I'm going to just get all my stuff out, and you're going to bring all your stuff in, because they watch a lot of HGTV, right? So they, you know, they see Flip or Flop, or they see whoever listed, or see whatever unsellable houses. There's a whole list that's my homework every night, yeah, and so, so, so they see this, and they see, okay, they brought all this stuff in, and they made it look great. Well, most staging is like you say, occupied home, and so you're just maximizing the look of that home. Sometimes it's. Paint. Sometimes it's, you know, we, we, we do an analysis from the front curb to the end of the backyard all the way through the house, and say, here's what you need to do. It's our market ready report to get that house ready. And so it's more than just a, you know, putting all new stuff into the house,

Tracy Hayes  20:18  
right, right? I think a lot of people in your in your life, you do, you do certain things. And I go to start this podcast, you know, I consulted some professionals, and there's some real estate agents that are good. They could be stagers too, because they're good, but the majority of them are not, yeah, and in the majority of them, I wouldn't say majority, a good percentage of them actually don't have that heart to heart conversation with that homeowner that hey, you know what? We really do need to remove grandma's photo from over here, right for now. You know whatever that to have that conversation, that some things need to be done to set it up and to have someone take a few moments. Yes, it's going to cost a little bit of money, but when it, when it that end game, like you said, your first price reduction is probably going to go from 300 to 295, yeah, where, if you staged it, didn't even spend $5,000 you're probably going to get a second offer anyway, full boat right to begin with, you're going to, yeah, you're going to

Kevin Grant  21:18  
get, you know, get, get it for more than 300 potentially. I was thinking about this morning. It's just

Tracy Hayes  21:23  
kind of that, that that for that saying, you know, do you you hear the tree fall in the woods if you're not there in the woods, right? And you don't know what it could or could not bring and, you know, people wondering, well, yeah, he got that much for it, but the listing, did the staging do that for them. You know, I could see people go through this thought process. The statistics are. There.

Kevin Grant  21:46  
They are. I mean, Staged homes sell 80% faster. Again, that's a little bit more historical, because how do you sell 80% faster than a day? Okay, right? But the things to think about, even in our world, and I, you know, if your realtors, you know, watching this homeowners, and take a look. Because in even in our world today, homes are either selling in a couple days or they're selling in like, two or three months. And the difference there is there's three things that affect that price, appearance and location. Okay, can't affect the location the market is determining the price. The thing that we have the impact on is the appearance. So what we see lots of times is that is those homes that don't sell in a couple days, because that's what our market is dictating. Means that they haven't done what they needed to do on the appearance. Yeah, maybe they look controllables, and that's the appearance, right? And, you know? And maybe they've put the price so high that it's unreasonable. Sure that happens because they're, you know, it's a crazy market. Someone's gonna see what's gonna happen, but, but what I'm generally seeing is that they haven't taken care of the appearance. So that's not going to get them the price that the market should be giving you for that home. So once it sits there for a few weeks and a few more weeks now, all of a sudden it's why is it sitting there that long? Okay? And becomes kind of this, this home that that has a stigma to it. So now you're going to start reducing the price, and you're going to just shoot way past where you should have sold it

Tracy Hayes  23:14  
anyway, right? Right? 100% and I've watched some of those shows you're talking about when you they put the hidden cameras in when they're showing the house. And it's amazing how people go through a home. And you guys, you see that. You see people with any agent out here right now, it's done an open house. Sees it. There's something about it. Could be the painting, the color of room, sure paint which can be changed within hours, right? But there that is something that turns them off about a home, yeah? And it just blows my mind that we see this on a daily basis, and then you go back control, the controllables of the appearance. And the littlest thing could set that customer off. Bring in a professional you may like that olive green room and right? God bless you. However you're trying to sell your home, we're talking about olive green money.

Kevin Grant  24:12  
Okay, there you go.

Tracy Hayes  24:17  
So it's all about the dollars. Take yourself out of it as a seller. Now, here's the here's the thing. Also, I thought about too, one of the things, when someone goes to a home and they look the way it's being taken care of the appearance, the presentation, right? And they think about the seller if they don't like something, and they think less of you as a seller, or whatever it may be, and now they're like, Okay, am I buying a house from a seller who cared about their house? Right? Maybe they don't care about their house. Should I buy this house? Because maybe they didn't take care of something I can't actually see right now, that's right, that type of thing, versus making it like I said, it's. It's how you present it you're selling. If you were selling it to your friend that car, you would go and have it cleaned up, you know, shined up, make it look the best you could reasonably do, and present it to your friend, even though your friends probably driven around it when you had trash and everything else, right? Sure. So you're going to present it that way, because now it looks like, Hey, this guy takes care of his car. This guy takes care of his house. And it's in, it's in, it's presented just like it would be on HGTV by spending a minor amount of money to have a professional

Kevin Grant  25:27  
doing over and sometimes it's not much money, you know, a couple couple of things there is, buying a home is a very emotional decision. Sure you you have some some facts, you know, what's my mortgage rate to tell me how much I can afford? You know, come to you, get that information, how much I can afford? Great, then you then you've got that those parameters, but then it's an emotional decision many times. So we you want to make sure, as a home seller, that you provide the best look. And what we like to call it is merchandising. I don't like to talk about I'm marketing a home or I'm selling a home. I like to get that home seller to realize that this is now a marketable product, and we are merchandising your home for sale, similar to the way a Walmart or a Nordstrom merchandise things. They merchandise things very differently, and you get different pricing at those two places for what might be a very similar product, right? Okay? Because they're merchandise more effectively at one than the other. They

Kevin Grant  26:27  
spend millions of dollars, billions of dollars, absolutely, you know.

Kevin Grant  26:30  
And so we have a tough conversation. And any realtor has a tough conversation, that's why you do bring in that professional to have that conversation for you as a realtor, bring in stage to sell design, to have that conversation about, hey, this is now a marketable product. We're going to merchandise the home by doing X, Y, Z, yeah. You need to get the velvet Elvis off of the wall, because that might not be preferable. Love Elvis the most number of buyers, right? You know, the dogs playing poker, yeah? You know, it's

Tracy Hayes  26:58  
kind of carpet might need to come up,

Kevin Grant  27:01  
you know, and then there's trigger covers too. You know that there's a reason why you see a lot of grays and beiges, you know, in homes, because they're not offensive to anybody, right, right? Exactly.

Tracy Hayes  27:12  
You know, that's a very great analogy. You know, we walk into these stores every day, these stores, whether it's, it's the supermarket or it's Saks, Fifth Avenue, Dillards, whatever your your they are merchandise a certain way, set up a certain way, to get you the music playing Sure, absolutely is designed to get you to spend money. And why would you not spend a little bit on that big, the biggest ticket item for 99.9% of the people, and that's their home. Would they spend an extra $2,000 because your home just looks that much better,

Kevin Grant  27:51  
that's right, and people will and yet. And it's not always money. Sometimes it's time. In fact, most of the time it's just putting a little extra time. When we list a house, it never goes for for sale a couple days after we've gotten the listing agreement, it's a two week, four week process, even today, to get that house ready. It's a whole list of things. And we sit down and we have an agreement with the the homeowner about what they're willing to do that's fine, and then we work within that. That

Tracy Hayes  28:23  
brings up a great transition. So let's we talked a lot about staging and the importance of that. I mean, definitely could carry on for hours whether. But let's transition over to the realty side. Because you have this, you know, this marketing, you'll stage a home. If they hire you for the listing side of it you'll go through. You have a professional valuation stage it as necessary, right?

Kevin Grant  28:44  
For free, for no cost.

Tracy Hayes  28:46  
Yeah, it's coming, right? The furniture does cost money. You have a warehouse that has furniture ready. It's not like you're going out and finding this stuff and scrambling together. You guys have a warehouse, which you brought these beautiful chairs from. Tell us about. You've got a potential client may be watching this Facebook Live right now. There might be, hey, we're gonna, maybe this fall, sell our home. What's this process? What they want to contact you? What should they what are they going to expect from you?

Kevin Grant  29:13  
And ad, what do you appreciate that? Yeah. Kevin again. Kevin grant, stage sell, real team. If you want to contact me, it's 904-478-1713, you can go to stage to sell jacks.com. Is our website. You can also look up stage to sell on Facebook. But we are unique in that at no charge to the customer. And by the way, no charge to our Realtors, and we call them staging agents, for the for the cost of staging is that's all something that's part of what we feel is the way to merchandise a home. So if you call us, we'll sit down and we'll do a market ready report, which is beginning of the house. So you know, front of the house to back of the house, through all the rooms, a detailed list of what to do to get that house ready. It could be as simple as prepay. Packing, doing some movement of furniture. Sometimes it's just putting some things in the garage so that you've got better flow in the house. Ultimately, our goal is to have your house look its best for that first showing, which is always online. Very first showing. Think about it. The first time someone that is going to potentially buy your house is going to see it on their phone. They're on Zillow, they're on Redfin, they're on realtor, etc. They see your home. You want it to be the one that they stay on, then decide to come in and see it so you get more offers and you get more money. So it's that process that we go through. Sounds a little daunting, but I think you'll see that our customers are ones that appreciate what they have been able to do. And we've been certainly a lot of customers that refer us to others because of the process that we take them through.

Tracy Hayes  30:49  
They get that they get that extra dollar. It's amazing that people don't, the agents aren't, aren't more regularly doing it. There's some stages around town that are that are good, like yourself, absolutely. And you know, you made a good point. People are looking at it online. We mentioned that a few minutes ago. There's people buying houses on unseen we've got Realtors walking through homes with their cell phones doing a FaceTime video call with clients that are in other states. Absolutely. Why do you not want your home to look its ideal best to get so they're not, when you ask them the price, everyone always wants a discount, right? They want to be sold into it. But isn't it? How many times have you walked into a place and it's just like, you feel like a million bucks, but they're not charging you a million bucks, and you're like, No problem, right? You know, because you already perceive the value to be more than what they're actually charging anyway, because of the presence of what it looked like, it looks like a million bucks, but they're only charging me 300,000 for it. Great. They don't even negotiate just a full price offer.

Kevin Grant  31:58  
Yeah. And a lot of the things that you'll see on our Facebook page. You probably saw this Tracy is you want might not necessarily know what price point house that came from. We've got some photos on there that are absolutely gorgeous, that are flip homes in Murray Hill. That price sold for $150,000 okay? And we make every house look its absolute best. You get back to the model homes. Builders are the best at it. Okay? They furnish that model home for an emotional experience. You know? They'll, they'll, they'll have the kids room look, just so they have a little stop and drop with the cute little flip flops and mud boots there, right? Because you have that emotional experience, right? Well, that's, that's all part of selling that home, and it's very simple things. And yes, we are trying to kind of lift all boats by encouraging staging. And we have seen over the last seven years a huge increase in the amount of realtors that are using staging. It's still in its infancy in this area, yeah, and we want to continue to encourage that, and we're here to help any realtor who wants to bring us in to have that difficult conversation with their customer. We're not trying to take your business. We're trying to stage a home and and, and just do better for the whole industry, right? Is really a lot of

Tracy Hayes  33:16  
you talk to a lot of agents. Think a lot any agents listening to this, or we you would talk to say, Oh, I treat the $100,000 customer the same way I treat the $750,000 million dollar customer. You know, I give them the same amount of attention and so forth, the $750 million home. Are you staging that? Probably it's empty.

Kevin Grant  33:37  
Are you not even in $125,000 home?

Tracy Hayes  33:40  
Or you just skipping over it and saying, oh, whatever, there's plenty of buyers here, right?

Kevin Grant  33:45  
Yeah, we staged a 27 room house on Ponte Vedra Boulevard a couple years ago. All 27 rooms, they had a few rooms that had some of their stuff in, but we still put our stuff in. Okay, six beds, six baths, some living spaces, little outdoor space. It's what was necessary. I

Tracy Hayes  34:01  
always make this. I always make the, you know, the Joker, how many people walk into an empty room, bedrooms, especially, and they're like, oh, I don't know if my king size bed will fit in here. I mean, how many or the couch? I don't know if my couch is good. We literally have people buying homes to fit their furniture, right? Versus the furniture to fit the home? Yeah, yeah. So having it staged gives them, takes that doubt away, right? Yes, the king size bed does fit in here. Your couch is roughly the same size as this couch I've got in here. It'll fit, you know, those, those little things, right? And we're only talking getting to make up for what you're charging a couple $1,000 on a $300,000 it's not that big of a deal.

Kevin Grant  34:47  
It's not at all. In fact, it pays for itself. I mean, it really does pay for itself in in getting more offers, which is going to bid it up a little bit, and being able to have people visualize themselves in the home. It. And in a lot of our newer homes, they're a lot more open. So sometimes people have trouble kind of visualizing, how do I use this space? You know? What do I use this for? Is this a dining room or a living room? Or is this or how would I situate my couch in here? Where does my TV go? Right? Right? I mean, so all of those things you can answer with setting the home up and merchandising it properly.

Tracy Hayes  35:22  
My now, my wife is only, you know, couple years into the she's an agent as well, and she has noticed the homes that she has staged Do not get so many of the pushback on the home inspections. There may be a ding in the wall or whatever. And it's not like you're hiding it, right? But when you have an empty room and people have all the only things they can stare at are the abnormalities in the room that may be a little scratch on the wall, that may be a little blemish in the flooring or something like that, and the staging just takes their eyes off of that, and they're getting less pushback on that.

Kevin Grant  36:00  
That's a good point. Takes their eyes off it. You're not hiding stuff. That's not the goal of staging is, you know, just put it over the hole in the floor or something. No. Fact, that's not what you want to do, but, but you're right. It brings the eye to certain place. It takes them to that emotional piece, and it makes the look it makes it look like the home is taken care of, if maybe there's a little deferred maintenance, right? It's not as obvious,

Tracy Hayes  36:22  
right? They're not well. He takes care of everything else, so that's not a big deal. I'm not gonna hit him for that, right? I don't know if have you read Ryan's book? I have not read this book, so, yeah, this is my my gift to all my guests. I've read both of Ryan sir Hayes book. Everyone listen to my podcast. I mentioned them all the time. Obviously, I love his show, extremely entertainment, but his books are written really well. And I'm going to, actually, I'm going to order some more big money, and I'm also going to order the original book because a lot of people haven't written it as real selling like Sirhan, okay, which is really good read, but this is my gift to you.

Kevin Grant  36:57  
Well, I appreciate for coming by. Thank you very much. No problem. Thank you. So you've

Tracy Hayes  37:00  
mentioned, you want to mention one more. Mention one more time how, what's the best way to reach you and Adrian?

Kevin Grant  37:05  
Thank you. Yes, absolutely. Again. Kevin grant and Adrian Lord the broker with stage to sell Realty. My direct nine direct line is 904-478-1713, we're located on Phillips highway, right near the sets building halfway between Bay meadows and Phillips and sorry and Butler Boulevard. Come see us if you're in that area, because we've got a 5000 square foot office and showroom that we would love to take you on a tour and see all of our tools that we use to stage home. So yeah. Kevin grant, 904-478-1713,

Kevin Grant  37:42  
appreciate it. Thanks, Kevin. Thank you.