Sheri Walker's Blog

It may surprise you what I really made money on this year!! ...And it wasn't staging!

Sheri Walker (Joy Daniels Real Estate Group) — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 23:14:21 -0800

2008 was my first full year with my staging company. I wanted to earn 6 figures (net)...I didn't :( but I did ok and I am hoping to do better this year. I am an out of the box thinker, an entrepreneurial spirit and I love what I do. I thought I would share this with you:

It may surprise you what I really made money on this year!! ...And it wasn't staging!

After starting to evaluate all the figures this year as I am starting to get everything ready for the tax man, I thought I would share what the big money maker was for me: PAINTING!

I am a full service staging company which means that we will do wallpaper removal, painting, flooring, lighting, etc. etc. I make money off of all of these services. But there is nothing I do more than PAINT. I have kept my painting team busy much of the year. How many houses do you see that need wallpaper removal or paint? Do you just refer or give names out or worse yet, let the homeowner handle the projects completely themselves?

I was blessed to find a great and small painting company when I started my company who I very quickly developed a solid relationship with. We have a mutual admiration thing going on. She (the owner) loves that I have a lot of work for her and her team and I love that she does great work that I don't even have to manage. For my painting projects she picks the colors, buys the paint and of course, paints the house. Except for connecting with my sellers, I don't even have to look at the paint projects...she's that good!

Painting jobs are great! They require no construction (some wall repair/drywall on occasion), they have little liability, they make huge impacts in preparing a home for the market and they are great profit makers.

Are you missing the boat? What would you think if you could make $1,000 and practically do nothing? What would you think if you could make that 20 or 30 or 40 times that this year? Don't think it's possible? Think again. It's not only possible...it is opportunity waiting.

Make 2009 the year where you find opportunity in new places. There is more money to be made than just the typical "staging". There is subcontracting, speaking, training, marketing, printing, photography, redesigning, AND OF COURSE, THERE IS STAGING!

Tips on Teens (and kids)

Sheri Walker (Joy Daniels Real Estate Group) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:49:24 -0800

I do almost all resale staging (my specialty and first love). Except for the fact that a vacant home is easy because you don't have to work around people, I love rearranging, doing cosmetic repairs and bringing a lived-in home to life for the market. I'm saying that because for all of you that work with mostly vacants, this won't be a key issue in your business.

I once had a job where the teen (17 years old) was quite a princess and she had a lot of stuff!!! We packed up her stuff and carefully put it in boxes and hid it. That included a boat load of stuffed animals. Well, when she got home from school she had a cow. She let her mom have it! Of course, because she is a princess (they are made you know) her mom took it!

All that said, I learned a lesson from that incident and now I sit down with kids, especially teens to explain one-on-one what we are doing. I have a project this week and there is a 13 year old (very sweet) named "Jill". I asked her if I could speak to her and we sat down on her bed and I told her that of all the people I work with, teenagers get most upset when I touch their things. I then explained to her what I wanted to move out, what exactly I was planning to do and what I wanted her help with. I explained how we are trying to help her and her family move and sell quickly and also how to best keep her room together and then I "asked permission" to do so.

Talking to kids up front, getting their permission and getting them "on board" is a great way to insure good communication, less misunderstanding and overall success with the staging and the listing.

PART 2 - Messy family lives here!

Sheri Walker (Joy Daniels Real Estate Group) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:03:21 -0800

I wrote this last week:

I need help. I am doing a staging job this week where I am using the home owner's furniture and some of my accessories...kind of a typical staging job. The problem is that they really live poorly. They are very messy, dirty, disorganized. I can have the house looking good for Friday's MLS pics but I need tips to help this family survive and keep this house looking good for buyers!!

I haven't really worked with any other family that is quite this messy and I would really appreciate "tips of the trade" so I can type up a sheet for them to have a system each day.

For instance, when I was selling my own house, I made my family stick their towels in the dryer each morning after use and I fluffed for 10 minutes and then refolded. We went through at least 6 towels on a typical morning. My "staged" towels never left their spot, no one was allowed to use them and the other towels either got washed or refolded for the next morning. That went very well for us.

As far as the beds in this house, shall I have the kids sleep in sleeping bags and then put under the beds? They will never make their beds, I can just feel it.

Any suggestions would be very appreciated.

And then, an amazing thing happened.

We did this job in 2 days (5 of us cleaned, moved and staged)

The sign went up Friday morning and 10 minutes (I kid you not) later a woman who is going through a divorce who already lived in the neighborhood drove past. She drove past again and again and then called her realtor and looked at it a few hours later and bought it that evening for full price!!!!!!

I was so excited. The family was so excited. I don't have to worry about my accessories either! :)

By the way, the homeowner cried on the phone when we talked about it that Friday evening and she said she knows her house didn't look good and she couldn't have done it without us.

Some before and after pictures:

Living Room - Before Living Room - After

Sunroom - Before Sunroom - After

Family Room - Before Family Room - After

We were very limited to using the owners' furniture and items and then some of our accessories. The owners best furniture was either in the basement or in the cluttered sunroom. They didn't make all of the cosmetic changes that we suggested (like the family room which needed new carpet and paint on the paneling) but they did do some painting and a lot of packing up and decluttering. They were very flexible and gracious to work with and let us do whatever we wanted.

Wouldn't it be nice if they were all this easy???

After a difficult week, it certainly ended on a great positive note! :)

Round Table in Philadelphia...why it's good to connect with other stagers!

Sheri Walker (Joy Daniels Real Estate Group) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:55:21 -0800

I was excited to go to Philadelphia for one of the round table events. Besides my new staging friend Tammy Kemp from Allentown, I had never even met another stager. I felt a real connection with everyone. It was really refreshing to see all of the different designations and backgrounds and interests and personalities. But, despite that, we came together and had fun and spoke very openly about our businesses and our ideas. I hope our round table day is just one of many that we will be able to come together and share and inspire each other. I think it's important to get to know other stagers and people within our industry. We can really learn alot. We can call on each other when needed. We can bounce ideas. We can express frustration. We can even have fun when we don't agree. Anyway, I had a great day and encourage anyone given the opportunity to attend a round table or something like it to go and be a voice!

Calling all Color Gurus...on MY house!!! Help!

Sheri Walker (Joy Daniels Real Estate Group) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:20:07 -0800

I recently moved into a home that has pretty trim work but all of the trim is beige and the walls are white in the whole house. I would prefer to have all of the trim white so I can work with any color I want but no such luck. I don't really want to change the trim so I would like to work around the color.

The color of the trim is really close to S-W 6092 - Lightweight Beige

My style is pretty traditional with some wood, glass and black accents throughout the house - more neutrals than color. Like for instance, my dining room has a thick glass table with a wrought base and wrought iron chairs (with padding) and then I have a cherry side cabinet in the room.

I like color but am not a radical when it comes to color.

I recently staged a house where we painted the dining room baked clay above the chair rail and it was a risk for me and came out stunning so I did like that.

I really like blues - lighter shades like: S-W 6513 - Take Five

I did a bedroom that I loved for staging: S-W 6219 - Rain (blue/green)

I am not fond of greens or yellows

I like golds but that wouldn't go with the beige trim

I'm not very good with color...any advice???

Thanks in advance!

Good Cop...Bad Cop! Are you a good Bad Cop?

Sheri Walker (Joy Daniels Real Estate Group) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:02:26 -0700

I have taken a leap of faith in the past 2 months and have joined a realtor in my local area as her marketing and staging specialist (I was already doing a major portion of my business with her anyway). What that means is that I am no longer marketing myself to other realtors!!! I have changed my website to reflect our partnership and I only work for her on her listings! What I have realized is how valuable I have been to her as the BAD COP. Now she and I tease about this all the time because although she is in the top 1% in our region and carries 25-35 listings at any given time, she could be stronger in pricing, commission and preparation...that's where I (i.e. bad cop) come in. We go on listing presentations together and I tell the sellers everything that's wrong with the house, how it won't hold up in the current market, why they need to price it accordingly based on my realtor's recommendations and then I give them sample interior pictures of competing more favorable listings...I pull out all of the stops in my preparation! I have been known to give a seller a pretty good beating!

Now, I don't mind this role because I am good at it. My realtor partner once said to me "I can't believe what you get away with saying to people". Like for instance, the time I told a seller that they had the WOW factor, just the wrong kind of WOW. They hired me to do $15,000 worth of work. :) I once went on an appointment and the sellers told me right before my presentation that a realtor had once told them that no one would like their wallpaper and the wife had been so upset she cried. I told them the same thing and they told me how much they liked me and could I come back and visit? They ended up completing all the wallpaper removal and painting themselves and the house sold!

So, my question to you is this? Are you a good Bad Cop? Can you criticize without offending? Can you be completely honest about their house and they still like you? Can you inspire them to make changes? Do you do lots of homework to this end? Can you look at the "better" competition and motivate them to get in line? Because if you can, you will be worth your weight in gold to your realtor clients...they will hire you over and over and over. If you can't then you better learn it because I believe you are missing the most important aspect of a good stager - the ability to get in there, tell it like it is and get hired. You can be the best stager in the world but if you can't get hired no one will know it!