I received a call off the active rain website from a client who asked me to come today. I said that I could come tomorrow all was well. I went out for a couple of hours & when I came back I found an e-mail from the client saying that she had talked to her Agent & he told her the house was fine & he had received alot of comments that the colors were great ect. & that they were just going to lower the price.Well I was aghast & disappointed. My lesson learned is that when a new client calls I will do everything to go as quickly as possible. I mailed her back & was polite but what can you do?

Dianne dy.nam.ic de.signs

Calie,

Did you happen to catch my post Top Ten reasons NOT to professionally stage your listings:  I think we are thinking along the same lines.

For the life of me I will never understand why some Realtors would rather their clients NOT stage their homes. I can't help but believe it has to do with control issues. I just saw a home that I looked at 9 months ago-the Realtor told me at that time the staging "is what we Realtors do"- this how was not staged and it has been sitting on the market for all this time.. It is a shame. I could have staged this home completely for less than a thousand dollars yet they have lower the price by $16,000 and still no sale.

James - You're right and it is frustrating.  I just don't get it.  I wrote another blog questioning the way Realtors view home stagers... do they see us as bottom feeders or bridges to success?  I certainly don't understand why someone would rather lose thousands of dollars in place of spending one or two (thousand).... 

BTW - I enjoyed reading your Top 10, as well.  We should put our brains together and come up with some really great come backs to those excuses that we could either put in an extraordinary marketing piece or just be able to use them next time ....  Thoughts?

I would like to think that folks just aren't as familiar with staging as they need to be to understand its true benefits....

Thank you, Kaushik for your insight.  I believe you are right!

I do have a question for you - Knowing the relationship between the agent and home seller is suppose to be quite strong, if the agent had a better understand of staging, would he/she be able to influence the seller to stage instead of lower the price?

I look forward to your thoughts...

As an agent, that just spent all day Saturday staging my listing with my Stager, I would like to offer an opinion.  I would say that if I can get the seller to the right price point initially, then 100% of the time staging is worth it.  However, if the seller insists on overpricing it, it isn't worth staging it because it's not going to get seen anyway.  You can make an argument that staging will make the house look like it's worth the extra money.  But in today's AZ market, I really don't think that's the case. 

My bottom line, when I have an educated seller, affordable staging is always worth my time and money.