Photos by Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

Wanda Richards of Shows Great Homes Staging & Web Solutions adjusts a lamp at a home for sale in Roanoke. Business has taken off for Richards as real estate agents and investors call on her to help them market a home and move the sale fast.

Wanda Richards stages a home for sale on Preston Avenue in Roanoke, while owner/real estate agent Barry Compton of Campbell Realty takes a phone call.

Bright green and blue pillows from Pier One. Four dining room chairs, purchased at a yard sale for $25. A tan sofa from a rental company.

Last week, Wanda Richards bustled throughout a quaint, three-bedroom brick home on Preston Avenue in Northwest Roanoke, placing chairs in corners, pictures on walls and clocks on cabinets.

Richards is a home stager. She makes changes to simplify the look of a home for sale, from moving furniture to incorporating generic yet tasteful decor. She aims to create uncluttered living spaces, making them attractive to potential buyers and ultimately shepherding a fast sale.

But rather than only working with owners who still live in their homes while they are on the market, Richards more often has been putting her staging services to work inside vacant homes in the past few months.

Because of a slow market for home sales locally and nationally, there are more empty houses sitting in neighborhoods, fronting city streets and spread throughout the countryside. Richards' business for making empty homes appear livable and homey is hopping, as real estate agents and investors call on her to help them market a home and move the sale fast.

Directly or indirectly, several local entrepreneurs are benefiting from a slumping home sales market, where inflated home prices are losing air and selling a house is more challenging nationwide.

In the Roanoke Valley, 20 percent fewer homes sold in 2008 compared with 2007. The average home price fell 7 percent in 2008, to $197,889 from $213,459 in 2007, according to the Roanoke Valley Association of Realtors.

Though this news isn't great for real estate agents and sellers, it has created surges in sales for some local housing-related businesses, such as a home stager, a painter and an investment company that buys pre-foreclosure properties.

These business owners have found bright spots in the shaken real estate market.

Dressing up for success

Richards had a sudden realization that her staging business had taken off when she looked around her Vinton home to discover that she no longer had dining room chairs. She had shipped her chairs and much of her own furniture to use in vacant homes that she was staging. During one of her busiest weeks last fall, she staged five houses at one time, a total of nine bedrooms.

Because the homes are vacant, Richards must supply the furnishings to fill the rooms and make them look complete.

Richards, also an agent with Long & Foster Real Estate, began her staging business in 2007, when the housing market began its downward plunge. It's called Shows Great Homes Staging & Web Solutions.

Richards hasn't had trouble finding work, which largely comes from Realtors and investors who want help selling a house.

She charges a fee for each month that a home remains unsold. Her rates start at $300 a month and go up depending on the number of rooms.

In December, there was a 32-month supply of vacant and occupied houses on the market locally, Richards said.

"We've always had vacant homes in the Roanoke Valley," she said. "We haven't had the number we have had recently. Definitely, the down market has helped the staging business."

Based on a study by the Real Estate Staging Association from 2007 through 2008, vacant homes, when staged, sold in 26 days, versus the 120 days that unstaged vacant homes spent on the market.

In 2008, 68 percent of the vacant homes that Richards staged sold after they were on the market for an average of 35 days. Comparatively, in 2007, Roanoke Valley homes spent 75 days on the market, according to the most recent statistics from the Virginia Association of Realtors. The VAR no longer is computing days on the market figures, though in December 2008, homes in the Roanoke Valley were on the market an average of 100 days, said Todd Wampler, broker at Wampler Realty in Daleville and president of the Roanoke Valley Association of Realtors.

Richards estimated that she has spent at least $30,000 on furniture and accessories for staging by hitting up yard sales, furniture outlets and closeout sales. She even rents some items.

Next month, Richards is planning a trip to IKEA, a trendy and inexpensive Swedish furniture retailer, with a store in Woodbridge.

"I never really liked shopping much," she said. "It's a necessity."

After her own home began to resemble a furniture warehouse, Richards started to store her staging furniture in two 3,000-square-foot warehouses. She's making plans to move her inventory and personal office into a larger warehouse later this year.

Stopping the foreclosure

The rise of home foreclosures nationally and locally is fueling a yearlong business venture by Adam Barton, a real estate agent, and Tim Hogan, an investor.

By scouring newspaper advertisements and following other leads, the business partners who run Roanoke Valley Homes Inc. find houses to purchase before owners foreclose on the properties. They purchase houses valued at less than $200,000, fix them up and resell them.

"Instead of the homeowner having a foreclosure on their credit, we stop the foreclosure," Barton said. "They get some cash to walk away."

After fixing up a house, Barton and Hogan price it to sell within 30 to 60 days. If it takes longer, they offer a rent-to-buy option. That involves a potential homeowner paying a down payment on the property and eventually buying the house at a later date. This has been a popular option lately, because some people are unable to qualify for credit because of the credit crunch, Barton said.

The pair average one pre-foreclosure purchase and one home sale per month, Barton said.

"The more foreclosures there are, the better Tim and I do," Barton said. "There's a good market in it."

And what will they do if the real estate market eventually improves?

Barton said they'll consider moving into the regular foreclosure sales side of real estate.

Painting in slow times

Last year, sales rose 40 percent for Scott Fleming's residential painting business.

In search of a new career, Fleming purchased a franchise of CertaPro Painters, a national company, two years ago because it seemed that the line of work would be relatively unfettered by a poor economy. Fleming, who owns the franchise's central and Southwest Virginia territory, figured that demand for interior and exterior paint jobs likely would drive sales, whether home sales are brisk or stagnant.

"When housing is booming, people are moving into new homes," he said. "When new housing is not booming, people are staying in their homes longer."

There likely are several reasons for the rise in Fleming's CertaPro sales in 2008, compared with the year earlier. One factor could be a slowing home sales market that's leading people to fix up what they own, rather than purchasing a new home, he said. Also, much of the painting work is a choice that homeowners may make to get a return on the investment by adding curb appeal, Fleming said.

Also, in late 2008, there was a surge in homeowners getting homes "painted and protected for the winter," he said.

Still, despite a sliding real estate market that's likely benefitting Fleming's enterprise in certain ways, "don't get the impression that I'm happy with the way things are," he said. "I would much rather it be a thriving economy."