A profile of home managers highlights one of the newest techniques for selling expensive homes:

The 7,800-square-foot home where the couple currently live, at 1334 Fox Glen Drive in St. Charles, is on the market for $1.5 million. It has a six-car garage with a “motor court” driveway (the owner’s Porsche 718 Boxster is still parked inside), six bedrooms, eight bathrooms, a tennis court, and 2 acres of land. It’s four times the size of the Callahans’ townhouse in Geneva.

“Sometimes I walk in and think, ‘Really? I get to live here?’ It’s like a fairy tale land,” Janine said, while standing in a stunning living room with giant windows that overlook a backyard koi pond and waterfall. “It’s a privilege for us to do this. … It’s like we’re living someone else’s life for a while.”…

Realtors hire home managers to live in vacant luxury homes that they’re trying to sell because it saves the seller money, Mike Callahan says. It lowers their staging costs, since home managers bring their own furniture…

They’ve lived in 12 houses over the past eight years in Batavia, Wayne, Geneva, Elburn and St. Charles. They’ve stayed as few as 45 days and as long as 16 months. Every time they move in, Mike carries Janine across the threshold. “It’s just our thing,” he says…

“You can’t be spontaneous because it always has to be clean. The home must always be ready to show. You have to be ready to turn all the lights on and get out (for a showing),” Janine said, noting that it’s not unusual for a Realtor to call at random times and say, “We’re sitting in the driveway, can we come in?”

This sounds like it has reality TV potential, particularly if the live-in managers stayed in homes for relatively short periods. The show could track the staging and home showings alongside the lifestyle that comes with moving from nice home to nice home.

I also wonder if such managers can up their rates when they have a proven track record of selling homes (1) quickly and (2) at higher prices. The true value of a home manager might not just be saving money (such as lowering insurance costs and spotting potential problems) but moving homes for good prices.

Finally, what is the home value where having a live-in manager is not worth it? The home mentioned at the beginning of the article is an expensive one but could a typical suburban homeowner (think more of the $400-800k range) benefit from and/or afford a live-in manager?