When you’re buying homes to live in full time, you typically furnish those homes over time. You may have your grandmother’s buffet, the end tables you bought in California, the new dining room table. And as you move you buy or sell pieces to fit your needs and tastes. When you buy a vacation or investment home in a different area, odds are SO VERY GOOD that you aren’t going to bother with shipping things out to furnish it. This is why many properties in Park City are sold furnished: it’s absurd for the sellers and buyers to ship all of their furniture out or into the house, so we sell them with furniture because it’s convenient.
If you’re buying in a new development however, you’ll need a whole home full of furniture all at once. Frequently, the developers will bring in design firms to put together design packages. Often there will be something like a cool or a warm palatte for paint, tile, floor coverings. And there will also be a furniture package to choose from. The design firms will pull together a selection of room furniture for you, 3 options or so for each piece that all work well together. So you just sit down and decide which barstools you like, which beds, which lamps.
A furniture package price has as many variables as the properties themselves, but I recently worked with one for some buyers that ran between $100,000-120,000 for 2,100 square feet including throw pillows, wall decor and kitchenware.
If you are buying a resale and want to change out some or all of the furniture (or if there is none included), you can bring one of these firms in to design a package for you. Rather than picking pre-selected pieces, you meet with a designer, discuss your style, walk through a showroom, and decide on a budget. You hire the designer, and then they put together a package for you.
The key in this whole process isn’t just the delicious aspect of having somebody else narrow a tremendous field of options down for you (which by itself is reason enough to hire a designer). But designers act like agents for their pieces; they have relationships with furniture builders, textile warehouses, tile suppliers. You get to take advantage of their network, discounts, and connections with custom makers to create a unique package just for you. Hiring a designer is basically hiring a general contractor for the interior.
And that is worth EVERY PENNY SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY
Kristina Watkins, Summit Sotheby's International Realty 