It’s not news that San Francisco home sales have been rocketing above expectations since the beginning of the year. Bay area buyers have seen themselves outbid by the cost of a mansion in their home towns; sellers have found that even an unstaged home, or even raw fixer-upper, will sell above asking within a week.

You might think this’d encourage laziness among sellers, but at least one boutique agency is thinking just the opposite: a little extra effort might result in record sales within record times. They call it simple marketing, but I call it “uberstaging.”

Climb Real Estate has been creating a niche for itself with its rolling Airstream satellite office. Now they’re talking their sellers into spending as much as $50K on pre-sale improvements, betting that the payoff will more than cover the cost.

The first step is to identify the potential buyer. In the case of this property, on Page Street in Hayes Valley, they  pitched their concept toward a single, professional woman in her 30s buying her first home – a powerful buying force in today’s market, by the way. Then they hired a interior designer Ian Stalling, art consultants from Art Haus, color consultant Wendy Trotter, and even landscape designer Dat Pham to create a space designed specifically for this fictitious buyer.

“This isn’t about the four walls,” says Chris Lim, Climb’s marketing director. “It’s about what happens in those four walls. How is your life going to be better if you buy this property? Is it that Blue Bottle coffee is just down the street? Is it the restaurants and the easy commute to downtown? How do you create a storyline that will convince someone that this is meant to be her home?” The stack of takeout menus and bottles of coffee in the kitchen are only the beginning of that story.

Don’t Call It Home Staging. Call It Superstaging! | Houses | HGTV FrontDoor.