Realtors Lease Up Luxury Listings as North Dallas Tornado Victims Scramble For Housing

6442 Chevy Chase

Where do you go when you’ve been displaced from your home by the North Dallas tornado? Hotels are booked solid up and down North Central Central Expressway, and frankly, they’re nowhere to keep kids and pets for more than a couple of days. What do you do?

You turn to a savvy Dallas Realtor, of course! Our Realtor community is pulling together like crazy to help those affected by the North Dallas tornado get to a new normal, fast.

“My phone started ringing Sunday night,” Compass Real Estate principal Jonathan Rosen said. “People are calling to ask if a seller would be open to leasing a home, especially a staged home so they can move in immediately. We are doing everything we can to get people into houses and help in any way we can. We’ve also had calls on what’s available for purchase.”

When you consider the area of town most affected by the North Dallas tornado, it makes perfect sense to move into a staged luxury home, if you can. The homes getting the most traction are listed at anywhere between $2 and $4 million.

6442 Chevy Chase

“We had 12 calls from our agents between Monday morning and yesterday,” George Bass said. Bass owns George Bass Stage and Design and is the preeminent luxury home stager in the Metroplex with an enviable inventory of beautiful furnishings.

“You can’t go back into these homes, there is so much damage,” Bass said. People that have been displaced are looking at staged homes as the quickest solution to get back a bit of normalcy for the next three to six months. They have kids in school and pets and need a place they can call home quickly.

“We are also getting a lot of calls to stage houses that are empty so they can be leased,” he said. “I have three bids out right now to stage immediately so, we are scrambling because this is on top of our normal workload.”

Allie Beth Allman Realtor Christine McKenny is working on a lease for 4656 Meadowood, and Alex Perry has just put a family affected by the North Dallas tornado into 6442 Chevy Chase

6442 Chevy Chase

“My phone began ringing early Monday morning with calls from fellow agents,” Perry said. “There are a lot of moving parts to this. It must be worthwhile to the seller or investor to have a luxury property leased out. You also must have a have a stager willing to allow this because staged homes are not intended for personal use. When you think about it, moving people into properties that are on the market makes sense.”

Karen Eubank is the owner of Eubank Staging and Design. She has been an award-winning professional home stager and writer for over 25 years. Karen teaches the popular Staging to Sell class and is the creator of the online course, The Beginners Guide to Buying Wholesale. Her love of all dogs, international travel, good chocolate, great champagne, and historic homes knows no bounds. Her father was a spy, so she keeps secrets very well!