CHOPPED: The Home Version!  It’s not a game where you draw ingredient cards and advance on a board filled with different culinary challenges. And it’s not an app either. (Not sure how that could even work, but there’s an app for everything else, so let’s just take that off the table now)

I think consumers and real estate pros would be hard-pressed to find a better parallel to a design or pre-listing staging consult than CHOPPED: The Home Version.

• Contestants and stagers are both presented with a surprise collection of unlikely ingredients/elements and conditions.
• With the clock ticking and big bucks on the line, they need to figure out how to make the best of what they’re given. The goal is to create something visually engaging and satisfying to critics and audiences (friends and relatives, or agents and buyers)

Also, consider what makes a good contestant/design or staging pro: 

• Range and Vision: Deep familiarity with a variety of disparate elements so as to create a harmonious and novel product
• Quick-thinking, and resourceful: Able to make big decisions; also knows how to maximize all resources, including time
• Confidence, and expertise: Understands process, has a mastery of techniques for excellent execution

My first career was in corporate design and management.  I launched TRH in 2007 as a design consultancy; staging entered the picture almost immediately.

When that bubble burst, the choreography of design work, as well as selling, buying, and moving changed overnight. Improvements and updates were re-considered.  Housing values dropped as houses just did not automatically sell. Financing tightened mightily, necessitating a new idea of selling before buying for many.

Our market not only recovered but shot into overdrive during COVID. In real life, as in the show, challenges change…and there will always be challenges. Just SO much easier if you know someone who knows what to do with the design or real estate equivalent of grouper fish, bread cheese and mustard greens!

Buying, selling, or staying and improving, TRH works with you.  No matter if you’re just starting, or looking to change up something that hasn’t worked: Together we untangle the thought process, evaluate and prioritize. We create a plan that aligns with your goals and circumstances and brings out the best of your space, your things, and by extension, YOU!

And no matter if you’re just starting the process, or re-evaluating what hasn’t worked. Change happens; it can be a good thing. Just start the conversation!