Real-estate staging was once a foreign term to Sue Lunsford.

“You need to do what?” That was Lunsford’s reply to the Realtor friend who asked her to stage a home.

It was the friend’s first listing, and she needed to fill the empty house. She thought of Lunsford’s Kennydale garage full of furniture and home accessories, collected over her 10 years as a representative for a home decor marketing company. Lunsford also has a degree in the fashion industry, with a minor in interior design.

Lunsford added some furniture, and the house sold in two days.

“I thought to myself, ‘Ooh, there might be something to this,’” Lunsford recalls.

So she took some staging classes and started building clients.

Her company, There’s No Place Like HOME Staging, is now a 100-percent referral business. Most her business is with real-estate agents, but she also works with real-estate investment firms, and individuals inspired by shows like A&E’s “Flip this House.”

She stages all over, in Carnation, Duvall, Federal Way,

West Seattle, Bellevue, Renton and Auburn. A current client has a 6,000-square-foot estate in Carnation.

Her 1,000-square-foot warehouse in Renton has enough furniture and accessories to stage 12 homes at once. Included in the jigsaw-puzzle jumble of decor are 27 silk ficus trees — she usually puts one in every major room — and 10 or 11 telescopes, for homes with a view.

The Burien rambler she staged in late June has a ficus in the living room, near the gray stone fireplace, with a vibrant sunflower painting overhead. A cinnamon-colored couch sits nearby, with a coffee table and bowl of pears within reach.

A laptop sits on the desk in the kitchen, and a wine rack and biscotti jar on the counter. The wine rack stores a bottle of wine and the biscotti jar biscotti. Two coffee cups sit nearby.

A flat-screen TV and a couple of comfy chairs sit in the bonus room, and a queen-sized bed, nightstand and another ficus tree fill the master bedroom.

A pot of fresh pansies greet guests on the front stoop.

Everything in the house, besides the permanent fixtures like the appliances and fireplace, are Lunsford’s. Even the laptop and TV. Both are fakes, but they look real. And that’s really the point of staging.

“It’s difficult for people to imagine themselves in a room without furnishings,” Lunsford says.

Her Burien house furnishing package has been used in six stagings. Furnishings make the home feel warm and inviting, and also show the size of and potential use for space, she adds.

Potential buyers will decide within the first three minutes whether a home is right for them, Lunsford says.

“We want there to be a lasting first impression,” she says.

That goal is even the tag line for her company, whose full name is: “There’s No Place Like Home Staging … for that lasting first impression.”

Lunsford starts with the spots potential buyers first see: the front door and the front room. The rambler’s pot of pansies she placed deliberately on the front stoop, to “romance the front entry.”

Romancing usually goes on in the master bedroom, so Lunsford aims to create a serene space. “A getaway oasis,” she says.

Although some clients want all of a home’s rooms staged, Lunsford usually doesn’t fill all the rooms — just the important ones.

She’ll decorate the entry, the first indoor room, the living room, the kitchen, the dining room, the powder room, the master bedroom and bathroom, the family or bonus room and any uniquely shaped rooms.

Her decor style is Crate & Barrel and Pottery Barn, which she says have the widest appeal. That style’s also current, and not too trendy, she says. She sticks with neutral colors.

She works with a team to recarpet and repaint homes. She also does what she calls “depersonalizing and decluttering.”

Many of her clients are still living in their homes while trying to sell them. But buyers don’t want to see their personals around. So Lunsford removes them. Personals include certificates, toys, photographs.

“The buyer gets distracted,” Lunsford explains. “They need to be focused on the living space, not the photographs.”

Lunsford typically maintains eight to nine stagings at once. She takes three to five days on each staging. That gives her time to design, plan and move. She leaves the decor in place through the appraisal process, to increase the perceived value. She charges monthly rent on decor.

Houses she stages usually sell in 30 to 60 days. But the Burien rambler just sold, in only 27 days. Lunsford says most houses in the current market sell in 60 to 90 days. Many factors play into selling homes, like price and location. But Lunsford says staging is also an important part, especially in today’s competitive housing market.

“Really in this market, perfect is what sells. You’ve got to stand out,” she says.

That’s why Windermere Realtor and associate broker Kent Morrison uses Lunsford on every home he sells, as he has since first calling her in fall 2006.

“I called Sue and just yelled, ‘Help!’” Morrison recounts. “Then I identified myself and told her my circumstances.”

The home Morrison was trying to sell was beautiful, but the family wasn’t keeping it clean. And his limited staging experience wasn’t helping.

He didn’t know Lunsford; she had been referred by a real-estate agent friend. But she arrived at the Auburn home that very afternoon.

The house took 44 days to sell, but 20 of those days were consumed by snow, wind and power outages. And the house sold for $20,000 more than a similar unstaged house just across the street.

Morrison has been a real-estate agent since 2000. His staging technique was mostly clearing the counters of clutter and wiping them clean.

“She knows how to provide a warming factor that I don’t,” he says of Lunsford.

Builders have staged homes for hundreds of years, Lunsford says. You can’t go into a housing development and not see a model home, she says. But she says staging by real-estate agents really only started in the last 10 to 15 years.

Although it’s becoming more common, Morrison says staging is still “the exception.” Probably 1 or 2 percent of agents use it, he estimates.

But he sees staging as a vital part of the selling effort. So much so that he pays for clients’ consultation with Lunsford.

In addition to pricing the home correctly, Morrison says preparing the home correctly helps make the sale.

“… And staging is an intricate part of the preparation,” he says. “You’re competing with all the other listings, like a footrace or baseball game.”

“She’s what makes the difference,” he says.

Home staging

Sue Lunsford of There’s No Place Like Home Staging does home staging and consultations on occupied, vacant and model homes as well as rentals. She also does room redesigns and makeovers, and teaches staging classes. For more information, visit www.theresnoplacelikehomestaging.com, or contact her at 206-390-7578 or productconcepts@comcast.net.