{"id":575,"date":"2016-01-03T19:27:31","date_gmt":"2016-01-03T12:27:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/?p=575"},"modified":"2016-01-03T16:39:16","modified_gmt":"2016-01-03T09:39:16","slug":"dubai-entrepreneur-takes-property-selling-a-stage-further","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/dubai-entrepreneur-takes-property-selling-a-stage-further\/","title":{"rendered":"Dubai entrepreneur takes property selling a stage further"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\nMathieu Nakkach was attending home viewings in the most exclusive areas of Dubai when he noticed something was badly wrong with the way many of the properties were being presented.Some of the houses, which cost Dh30million and up, were empty. A few had cockroaches on the floor, yellow grass on the lawn or unfilled pools. Many did not even have any electricity, leaving everyone who was looking around drenched in sweat.
\n\u201cI was trying to imagine a guy with millions coming here with his wife to buy their new house and this was what they were facing,\u201d says Mr Nakkach, 38, who is half Lebanese and half French from Lebanon.\u201cSo I did a little research and I found something called home staging.\u201dHome staging is the act of preparing and showcasing residential or commercial property for sale, according to the Real Estate Staging Association (Resa) in the United States.
\nResa says on average, staged homes in the US spend 77 per cent less time on the market. \u201cStaging helps you to secure a contract more quickly,\u201d says The Consumer\u2019s Guide to Real Estate Staging, produced by Resa.There are no figures available for the UAE, and no association exists here, but the industry is developing and there are companies which rent out everything from furniture to candles, towels and bed sheets for the purposes of home staging. And brokers expect the industry to grow over the next couple of years.
\n\u201cObviously the market has softened and to make your property stand out more and to help it sell is only a positive,\u201d says Leigh Borg, sales director of Belleview Real Estate Broker in Dubai. \u201cThe amount of apartments and villas I have seen where the owner hasn\u2019t even cleaned it properly, and you are trying to showcase that property. In this market you need to show your property in the best light.\u201dTo set up a home staging company Mr Nakkach realised he would need to invest in a warehouse and fill it with furniture. While he did not have the funds, he did have an idea: to partner with some of the largest showrooms in town, which would showcase their furniture in the staged homes.
\n\u201cThe reality is Signature Stagers is a marketing company,\u201d says Mr Nakkach. \u201cI take their furniture and I use it to stage with, so we basically market their showrooms and we market their stock and their brands, as well as market the homes we stage.\u201dSignature Stagers only stages homes worth $10 million or more, but the service is not cheap. It costs anywhere from Dh150,000 to Dh250,000 per home depending on the property. The open house, which Mr Nakkach calls an \u201cindustry event\u201d, that includes live entertainment and food, costs another Dh50,000 to Dh75,000.
\nIt takes about five days to stage a home once contracting work such as painting is completed. The furniture suppliers design the rooms and the home remains \u201cstaged\u201d for 90 days.Mr Nakkach has staged six homes since the company started 18 months ago, the latest of which is a full-floor penthouse with an area of 14,000 square feet in Le Reve, a luxury 50-floor, 80-apartment tower in Dubai Marina. The company tied up with Verzun, a property brokerage and Nakkash Gallery, which supplied the furniture. The apartment had languished on the market for three years when Signature Stagers took it on.
\n\u201cIt was furnished but the furniture was outdated and not matching. And there was wallpaper from 10 years old with holes in it. The house hadn\u2019t been lived in for three years, so you can imagine the state it was in,\u201d says Mr Nakkach. \u201cWe stored everything, ripped off all the wallpaper, repainted and furnished it. It went from an ageing house to a brand new designer home.\u201dThe apartment received three offers at the open-house event held for the property last month, which included a DJ, self-playing piano and 3D virtual reality glasses experience, a service Verzun offers for sales of homes worth more than $10 million. One of the offers was accepted and is now the subject of negotiations.
\nIf the sale goes through it will be the quickest for a Signature Stagers home, a title currently held by a property in Emirates Hills. That had been on the market for 18 months when it was sold at the open house last summer during Ramadan for the asking price, just 30 days into the staging.The least successful was an apartment in Infinity Tower in Dubai last November, which attracted an offer of Dh45m, Dh5m less than the asking price. The offer was rejected at the time but the apartment later sold for Dh25m.
\n\u201cPeople turn around and blame the stager [when it doesn\u2019t sell] saying your service doesn\u2019t work, but there are three factors to a successful sale,\u201d says Mr Nakkach. \u201cOne is a beautiful house. I take care of that. And then you need a good agent, obviously, and you need it to be properly priced. If these three are dancing to the same song, then that equals a successful sale and everybody is happy.\u201dbusiness@thenational.ae
\n
\nSource : thenational.ae
\nRead more…Dubai entrepreneur takes property selling a stage further<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mathieu Nakkach was attending home viewings in the most exclusive areas of Dubai when...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-property-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p75ss1-9h","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":129022,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/al-ansari-said-to-pick-efg-hermes-emirates-nbd-to-lead-dubai-ipo\/","url_meta":{"origin":575,"position":0},"title":"Al Ansari said to pick EFG-Hermes, Emirates NBD to lead Dubai IPO","date":"August 22, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"\r When it happens, Al Ansari follows a spate of companies staging IPOs in Dubai and the wider Arabian Gulf. 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