Hot Property: Easy Home Staging to Sell Your House for More Money in Any Market.

Sarah Robertson is an associate editor of the Canadian Book Review
Annual.

Alex Newman is a Toronto-based home decor and design writer. She writes a regular column titled “Model of Design” for the Toronto Star and has worked as a television producer on the shows Designer Guys, Love by Design, and Design for Living.

Hot Property, Newman’s first book, is a practical and comprehensive guide to home staging, which she defines as “the process by which you present your house in the best possible light to prospective buyers.” Depending on your personal circumstances, staging, the author notes, “might involve a simple rearrangement of what you have or it might be as complex as renting furniture, accessories, and art.”

The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 (“The Design Basics of Home Staging”) comprises 14 chapters devoted to every aspect of home staging, starting with decluttering, repairing, and cleaning. Part 2 (“Case Studies”) consists of six case studies of homes that were prepared for sale by professional stagers Jennifer Brouwer, Paula Whitlock, Shona Fitzgerald, Allison Roberts, Bruno Billio, and Nora Lukss. Two more case studies follow in Part 3 (“The Processes”). A list of resources rounds out the volume, which will serve as a valuable resource for those who are in the process of selling their home or contemplating the prospect of doing so.