‘Human Props’ Stay in Luxury Homes but Live Like Ghosts

July 15th, 2014
Via: Tampa Bay Times:
When the Mueller family sits for dinner, the leftover broccoli and crepes are already wrapped in plastic, the kitchen is beyond spotless, and the rest of the home is so tucked-away tidy it looks like they just moved in. In a way, they have: Every inch of furnishing, every little trinket and votive candle, sits precisely as designers placed it five months ago. That would make them the most perfect suburban ideal, except for one catch: This isn’t actually their home. Bob and Dareda Mueller and their three grown sons are, instead, part of an “elite group” of middle-class nomads who have agreed to an outlandish deal. They can live cheaply in this for-sale luxury home if it looks as if they never lived here at all.
The home must remain meticulously cleaned and preserved: the temperature precisely pleasant, the mirrors crystalline clear. If a prospective buyer wants to see the home, they must quickly disappear. And when the home sells, they must be gone for good, off to the next perfect place.
That they do everything an owner would do — sleeping, making memories, learning the home’s quirks and secrets — imbues an otherwise-empty home with an unmistakable energy, say executives with Showhomes Tampa, the home-staging firm that moves them in. It also helps the homes sell faster, and for more money.
“They have to live a very different, very difficult life,” said Kim Magnuson, a sales director. Added franchise owner Linda Saavedra, “The home managers act like human props … and (with buyers) it’s like magic. It works phenomenally well.”

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So no perishables in the refrigerator, no laundry in the washer or dryer, no more than three changes of clothes, can't be writing a book (you'd have reference materials open on a table somewhere), no pets allowed (obviously), and carry around cleaning supplies because you have to walk backwards wiping up any trace of your passing through the room.  

What about white carpet?  

Can you use the dishwasher?

How often do you change the air filter?  Daily?

Use the bathroom, get out the scrub brush and the sink sponge!

And don't forget to clean the mirror every time you wash your hands.

No water spots allowed on the fixture chrome, like the strainer, for example.

No fingerprints on the faucet handles or the doorknobs.

Microwave everything, and wipe down, buff out and dry the microwave EVERY TIME YOU USE IT.

Where do you put your trash, if the trash cans outside must be empty?

"Give me the wrappers from these TV dinners so I can take them to the dumpster at the 7-11, and give me those snot rags and used dental floss, too!"

Time to mop the floor for the third time today!  

You never know when a buyer might drop in, and we have to grab our suitcases and the jug of milk on the way out the BACK door.

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