The house and garden might look picture perfect, but on closer inspection the carefully selected furniture indoors and large immaculate potted plants outdoors might be a little too perfect to have just been put there by the owners.
While home staging is becoming commonplace, some homeowners are taking it a step further and getting expert help to stage the outside too with temporary planters, troughs, fancy trees and outdoor furniture to get their properties sold.
Former Bayleys real estate agent Tanya Ibbetson used to drag her own plants and pots to decorate a house she was selling, but now she's created a business doing it for others.
Instead of getting an often-costly landscaper to transform a garden before putting it on the market, the Mobile Gardens owner said she can do it for a fraction of the cost.
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The service is similar to home staging, but for the garden.
Ibbetson meets with homeowners to discuss their needs and provides a quote before installing light weight fibre cement pots, plants and other garden furniture the day before the professional photographs are due to be taken.
“It’s kind of smoke and mirrors just like interior home staging. Just making it look beautiful, but not making it feel staged either.”
The hire fee starts from $110 a week for a minimum of five weeks and this could include a feature tree and two of three small planters or a feature tree, a trough, a small planter and a table top.
It also includes a weekly service of the plants, which are set into the pots and covered with coconut fibre, on a Friday to make sure they look perfect before the weekend open homes.
Ibbetson said garden staging saves homeowners thousands of dollars in landscaping and planting that they otherwise wouldn’t get back, especially with the rising cost of plants. It is also instant.
Mobile Gardens chief Tanya Ibbetson: “It’s kind of smoke and mirrors, just like interior home staging.” Photo / Supplied
“There is no time to find the chosen plants, plant them and wait for them to grow to the desired size, and no certainty that flowering would coincide with the marketing timetable.”
The key to a good-looking garden, she said, was keeping it simple by creating clean lines.
She recommends that anyone getting their house ready for sale declutter the area by removing things such as small pots and water blast the area. Using Dalton’s black mulch is also a good trick of Ibbetson’s and “covers a lot of sins” along with some grass.
The majority of houses whose gardens she stages are priced between $2 million and $5m in central Auckland, the eastern suburbs and the North Shore, where the owners haven’t got around to doing the landscaping or getting the right outdoor furniture, she said.
With the large number of apartments in Auckland, Mobile Gardens is increasingly getting called on to stage their small balconies by using a double trough and hedges.
Well-placed pot plants can make a statement. Photo / Mobile Gardens
An untidy garden can sink a sale. Photo / Getty Images
“There’s so many apartments and when they’ve got a yucky view, if you just put a trough in or double it and put hedging in, it hides it and then the people can also buy it if they want to afterwards.”
In the last few months, she has recently started providing real indoor plants on the request of real estate agents who felt plastic plants didn’t do a multi-million-dollar home justice.
“You’re selling a $15m home and you’ve got plastic, it’s just like ‘OK’,” she said.
“Plastic plants may be good for a dark area where you can’t put a live one, but in a living room you want a beautiful palm or something that’s very gracious and not plastic.”
Harcourts Greenhithe agent Leigh Mosley said having a good outside setting is just as important as the inside, and takes away any negatives.
“I think that our outdoor living areas particularly have become an extension to the house – it's another living room and therefore it has to be treated in the same way.”
Mosley recently used Mobile Gardens to transform an ordinary entrance way of a property she is selling at 25 Kingfisher Grove to an attractive one with some plants, containers and vessels. Loungers were also placed around the pool.
Green touch: A five-bedroom home at 25 Kingfisher Grove, in Greenhithe, on Auckland's North Shore, has a $3.475m price tag. Photo / Supplied
A brighter outlook: A six-bedroom home at 27 Almond Grove, in Greenhithe, is priced at $3.025m. Photo / Supplied
“So, it’s taking away any negatives that otherwise people would think, ‘oh god’.”
A beautiful pot was also placed on the vendor’s concrete table and Mosley said it just made the area look a whole new level of beautiful.
A property for sale at 27 Almond Grove also had staging to brighten up the outdoor area.
“It just lushes up what could be plain areas.”
Mosley said staging inside and out “gave buyers no excuse not to buy”.
“I think the more visual enhancements you can give a home to show it in its very best light enhances a sale. It’s just like staging, more people fall in love with it, more people think it’s amazing.”
While some home staging companies now supply outdoor furniture, Mosley said it often isn’t enough and also needs to be enhanced with greenery.
She had also used garden staging to block out another house and create more privacy by using a trough with a large living hedge.
“It’s amazing what it can do. You’re not saying they are not there, but you are saying this is a way even as you move in – and that’s if you notice it – that you can do it.”
Zones Landscaping director Chris Caiger said good garden design now played a big factor in people's decisions when buying a house because it made a small garden functional and created privacy.
"In the old days a quarter acre section didn't need much design input: There was plenty of space to enjoy. Now that sections are smaller and more expensive, a good design is required to create a garden that is fun and attractive to spend time in."
With section sizes shrinking and houses being built closer to each other, Caiger said a lot more thought into how a garden was laid out was needed.
"If you don't plan your garden it feels as though your neighbours are camping in your space. Good garden design will improve your privacy inside your own home as well as making the garden a private space for you to relax in."
