Rachael Stafford, a home stager and professional organizer, in her Richmond Hill, Ont. home on Jan. 18.Cole Burston/The Canadian Press
One walk through a home tells Rachael Stafford what adjustments are needed to pique the interest of potential buyers.
For Stafford, the founder and creative director of organizing and staging company Order in the House, changes can range from decluttering rooms to services like painting and repairs, or even bringing in furniture rentals.
It’s a service valued by homeowners, she said, especially in a hot market where sellers look to gain any advantage that can help drive up the price of their property.
But as home sales throughout much of Canada have turned sluggish, home staging services have taken a hit as sellers rethink the cost of a thorough revamp, Stafford said.
“We’re still supplementing with some (furniture) rentals where rooms really need it,” she said. “But I find that sellers are more so trying to scale back a little bit on the rentals, concerned about the initial investment and the ongoing monthly fees should the property not sell quickly.”
Stafford, who is based in the Toronto area, said companies like hers have had to adapt in this high interest rate environment after a years-long housing boom. When interest rates were low coming out of the pandemic, “realtors and homeowners were willing to put in that extra money and go that extra mile because they knew they were getting the [return on investment] on it,” she said.
But now, many clients are either relying more on Order in the House’s decluttering and home organizing service or simply tidying up themselves based on advice received from the initial consultation.
“We have a warehouse where we store our staging accessories. It’s obviously very tough to be incurring those monthly storage fees when staging is not busy,” Stafford said.
“I think people forget staging appears to be a very glamorous industry, but there are a lot of moving parts behind the scenes. Thankfully, our organizing services help compensate for the slower trends in the staging market.”
According to a study by the Real Estate Staging Association, 45 per cent of staged homes in both Canada and the U.S. sold for more than the seller’s listing price from January to September of last year. That was down from 63 per cent in both 2021 and 2022.
The Canadian Real Estate Association reported earlier this month that the number of newly listed homes fell 5.1 per cent on a month-over-month basis in December. It noted that Canadian housing markets have remained quiet since the Bank of Canada’s interest rate hikes last summer.
Cailey Heaps, president of the Heaps Estrin Real Estate Team in Toronto, said that with the region’s home sales at a 20-year low, staging companies are “far more available than they used to be.”
She said the biggest shift in client behaviour that she’s noticed has been sellers choosing not to maintain the staging in their homes for the duration of the listing.
“They might stage for the first month and then if it doesn’t sell, they remove the staging … and go back to living with the way they had the house, but rely on the photos from when it was staged,” Heaps said.
She added that if she suspects a listing is going to take longer to sell based on factors such as geography and price point, she will recommend clients invest in a more “conservative” amount of staging that can go the distance.
“So suggesting, ’OK, let’s stage the main floor, the primary bedroom, but we can leave the kids’ bedrooms in the basement,’” Heaps said.
Home stagers have had to be more creative to account for the longer listing periods and added flexibility sellers need in the current market, said Katie Walker, principal designer at Katie Walker Interiors. She said the slower market hasn’t affected the volume of business for her Greater Toronto staging company, “but it has changed the way that things are done.”
In addition to traditional staging, where physical furniture is rented to place in the home, her company offers the option of virtual staging, which saves both money and heavy lifting.
Designers are able to blend 3D models of furniture into photos of the seller’s home and digitally remove some of the existing furniture. Walker said the option is becoming more popular, especially as part of a hybrid staging process that still includes physical remodelling of high-priority rooms.
“What we’re seeing is obviously longer days on market, so it’s affecting the way the homeowner will treat the transaction. Instead of saying they’ll get a hotel for a week and incur that cost, they’ll be living in the property,” said Walker.
“In the old days, back in COVID, I would have said, ’Remove that desk so we can make this space look larger.’ Now I’m hearing more of, ’Well, I have to live here for the 45 days that this is going to be on market so let’s make that work.’”
With forecasts of a potential rebound in the housing market this year as the Bank of Canada looks to begin cutting its key interest rate, Stafford said she’s hopeful the staging industry will see a similar bump. She said even minor touch-ups by a professional can go a long way.
“You really want your home to show at its best, particularly in the photos for the MLS listings,” she said.
“Buyers … are browsing photos (and) listings online before they’re even willing to reach out to the sellers’ realtor to book a showing. So if that house doesn’t show at its best, sellers are really missing an opportunity.”
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
