Never let it be said that the finance and real estate industries are boring. Behind the deals done, money exchanged and papers pushed lies the true artistry of these very important pieces of the American economy.
In this issue of The Commercial Record, we celebrate art in all its forms – the art of the deal, the art of staging a home and the literal art that hangs on your walls or sits on your desk.
Art can be subtle, transformative, challenging and, sometimes, downright bad. Lamented though they may be, dated trends in home decoration can transport the viewer to a long-ago time and place as surely as a good book. Facts and figures – which The Warren Group, publisher of The Commercial Record, has in abundance – paint a picture of market ebbs and flows, charting the past and predicting the future. Even an office building demo – a messy and often thankless task – holds within its gutted walls a certain bare-bones vision of what could be.
In this issue, we explore the art of staging a home for sale. From throw pillows to window treatments to furniture, the watch-word in the industry is “contemporary,” which can be difficult to come by in Connecticut’s older housing stock. But the state’s agents and stagers know just how to make it happen. The right staging helps buyers envision themselves in a space, and studies show they’re willing to pay more at closing if they can see themselves already living there.
We also take a look at the art world – more specifically, the ways collectors’ buying habits are changing and what they’re doing with what they already have. Etsy, Instagram and Facebook have cut out the middleman and the buyers are out in force. But the stewardship of art doesn’t end with the click of a mouse; once acquired, questions about care, insurance and inheritance are bound to come up.
Art, like beauty, is subjective, but that variety of viewpoints in the eyes of the beholders is a vital component of appreciation and driver of creativity, one of the motivating forces in so many professions. Discussions and appreciation of art are never far below the surface in the finance and real estate industries.
