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I’ve partnered with. By joining retailer’s interior designer programs, I can set up accounts offering me designer dis- counts and then pass those savings on to my clients.” In the beginning when Cat was still filling the ranks of the Setting the Stage team she took on roles that weren’t exactly in her wheelhouse. “Initially I was taking the photographs myself,” she laughed. “I didn’t do too badly, but now I’ve hired particular professional photographers to come to my staging properties and they do before and after pictures which are then shared with the client and with the realtor.” And now that all the i’s are dotted and the t’s crossed in Setting the Stage, Cat is more free than ever to flex her artistic muscles. “There’s definitely a lot of artistic and aesthetic creativity involved in successfully staging or redesigning any home,” she explained. “With Staging you also have to really under- stand the real estate market. You have to grasp the current trends and you also have to understand your target market in the particular communities where you are Home Staging. Stats show that 65 per cent or more of home buyers are mil- lennials with a few Gen-xers mixed in and a percentage of them have young families. That’s going to ‘set the stage’ on how I style the home for the market; it has to be modern but functional, livable. But if I’m staging a condo in Downtown Halifax for professionals let’s say, the mood, the atmo- sphere I’d go for is likely going to be different. In either case, both (very busy) generations are looking for ‘move in
ready’. I ‘set the stage’ to help homebuyers envision them- selves already living there.” “It’s been quite an intense year but it’s been quite a rewarding one, too.” “One particular condo project I staged that went very well in terms of the transformation belonged to a widow who was looking to put her home of many years on the market,” Cat continued. “It was a well-loved home, but as soon as I had a grasp of the new demographic in the neighbourhood I was able to give it a nice modern, but comfortable lived in look and feel. I did the same thing with a bare and boring balcony at another condo recently. I haven’t worked a lot on exteriors but that was a Staging project that really exer- cised my creativity – and it turned out beautifully! In that particular case the problem was the view of an ugly lower roof top connected to another condo building. My job was to ‘minimize the ugly and accentuate or maximize the pretty drawing the eye to the treescape and lake across the street. I reached that objective and met the client’s expectations. How do I know that? I received a lovely message that said, “Cathryn I and my sellers are so pleased with this outcome! It’s exactly what I had in my mind’s eye! So beautiful!”
It is wonderful, especially considering the stoicism and versatility required to excel literally outside of her comfort
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OCTOBER 2018 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
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