APARTMENT S.O.S.(The Talk of the Town)(real estates)

SHOUTS & MURMURS, by Paul Rudnick

When Antonio del Rosario, the managing director and executive vice-president of Barak Realty, remembers the golden era of real-estate sales--the spring of 2005--he does so with a mixture of nostalgia and astonishment. "Even if you had farm animals and feces in the apartment, you could sell it at or above asking and have a bidding war," he said the other evening at a cocktail party in Tribeca. "Now you get below asking if it's not staged right."

Learning about staging--dressing up an apartment so that it looks unfit for human habitation, but in a good way--was the purpose of the cocktail party, which took place in a loft that, having been vacated by its owners in advance of an anticipated sale, had been staged for the benefit of open-house browsers. In the living room, a pair of buttery suede sofas faced each other over a coffee table, upon which copies of two "Olivia" books and a catalogue of Leonardo's drawings had been casually strewn. In the master bedroom, a quilted throw was tossed on an all-white-linen bed, and floaty white drapes had been artfully hung at the windows, disguising the room's brick-wall-facing northern exposure. In the master bathroom, a white sheepskin rug had been slung over the edge of the sunken tub, looking rather like an albino sloth making its way to a watering hole.

This pseudo-home had been conjured by Jill Vegas, a thirty-five-year-old former advertising drone with bleached-blond bangs, who was circulating through the room wearing high heels and a leopard-print dress. "This is all from my inventory--I have seven hundred and fifty pieces," she said, gesturing toward the white Barcelona chair in the bedroom. The apartment had been on the market, empty, for four months before she gave it the once-over: accenting side tables with books by her favorite authors (a John Updike collection, with elephant tchotchke atop), and hanging art on the walls. "This isn't an apartment that most artists can afford, but these things bring in some of the character of the neighborhood," she said. The garden gnome that squatted between chaises on the roof deck was also her addition.

Thirty-odd real-estate people sipped wine (choices were limited to non-staining Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio), while Vegas gave a presentation demonstrating her craft. She had gone into the staging business, she explained, after a neighbor, one weekend, threw herself out the window. "It was really awful, and I really felt, like, her presence," Vegas said. "On Monday, I told my ...