home stagers: Are Home Stagers Born With Decorating Talent?
- 09/12/11 01:07 PM
I’ve been addicted to decorating since I was a kid. I remember insisting that my room be painted a deep turquoise, and my rattan headboard white, because I could totally picture how one would stand out against the other and compliment the pale creamy-yellow duvet. At the risk of revealing my age, I’ll admit it was the 1960s. Even now I can see that decorating scheme in my mind’s eye, and it still looks cool. As a teen, I painted murals on my bedroom wall and also the high school cafeteria. In my first marketing coup and “payment” for my creative … (8 comments)
home stagers: Why Real Estate Agents Discourage Home Stagers
- 06/27/11 07:14 AM
If you’re looking for the best way to talk yourself out of becoming a home stager, immediately get on the phone and call a dozen real estate agents in your market. After a few “No one will ever pay for it around here” or “It will never work in this market” or “There’s no need for staging, if a house is priced right it will sell” responses you’ll be almost embarrassed with yourself for ever thinking up such a silly idea. If I listened to everyone who told me home staging wouldn’t work in my city 9 years ago, there would … (31 comments)
home stagers: FSBO Selling Tips for Home Stagers
- 05/14/11 09:44 AM
Active Rain member Laurie Jarett wrote a blog post this week for real estate agents about how the FSBO Seller is NOT a Big, Scary Monster! What a great title! It occurred to me that home stagers might be worrying about similar things and not approach them either. With FSBO properties being so common in the marketplace, you’re probably wondering how to attract some of them to your home staging business. Targeting FSBOs or “For Sale by Owner” properties is a great idea but remember, they’re selling their homes themselves so they don’t have to pay an agent. This could mean … (5 comments)
home stagers: Home stagers and real estate agents, just step into your future
- 03/29/11 01:18 PM
In coaching home stagers since 2004 and working with real estate agents since the 1990s, I'm constantly reminded how important mindset is to what we can achieve. The bottom line is you have to be willing to stick with it if you want to achieve home staging business success or build your real estate commissions. Perhaps I contemplate mindset so much because I can be very negative when I'm living inside my head listening to that little voice that only talks about problems or fears. There is no way I would have been able to support myself as an entrepreneur since … (4 comments)
home stagers: How do you deal with distracted clients who suck your time and energy?
- 08/30/10 12:30 PM
It has happened to me more times than I can count in the 8 years I’ve been staging homes. I walk into a home and I am greeted by someone with a phone to their ear, smiling and gesturing for me to come in while they finish up the first of many calls they will take during our home staging consultation. Just as we start to make some headway, we’re interrupted by yet another ringing phone or a barking dog, or a child screaming for a snack or because her big brother pulled her hair. The Distracted Client, can make … (10 comments)
home stagers: Home staging consultation reports are a waste of time
- 08/02/10 12:19 PM
If you’re sitting down with a stack of photos after a home staging consultation, struggling over the report you’re preparing for the homeowners you are really wasting your time. Unless… You just love doing paperwork You enjoy knowing you have a lengthy report to complete before moving on to the next client You’re getting paid extra to write it In my opinion, this practice is a pure waste of time…valuable time you should be using marketing your business and getting more paying clients! Preparing staging consultation reports is one of the many contributing factors to new home stagers going out of … (19 comments)
home stagers: Virtual Staging A Waste of Money?
- 04/22/10 07:48 AM
Many home stagers have written me to ask what I think of virtual home staging software. In my opinion there are two types of “virtual staging.” The first (which I practice), is virtual because I don’t actually go into a client’s home but I give them virtual staging advice by phone based on photos they provide me with to analyze. This allows clients to have my staging advice and do the work themselves at a lower cost than if I were to do an actual home staging consultation in their home. It also allows me to offer specific staging advice to … (56 comments)
home stagers: Home stagers new target for email scammers
- 02/20/10 03:12 AM
In case you were still wondering how many people have heard of home staging, here’s further proof that this is a well established field. It seems the scam artists are starting to crawl out from under their rocks to see if they can con home stagers into sending them money! This is a twist on the “send money to a foreign country to rescue a dying relative” or “assist a diplomat who needs help getting millions out of the country and you’ll be rewarded” — this time with a script rewritten for home stagers and decorators or interior designers who might … (7 comments)
home stagers: Home Stagers, do you accept credit cards?
- 11/12/09 02:04 AM
I'm often asked by home staging professionals whether they should just accept checks, cash or take credit cards too. The ability to accept credit card payments is appealing to home stagers, especially since the amounts you’re getting paid are usually quite high (assuming you're not one of those bargain basement stagers who fly in and out of this business within 3 to 6 months). Setting up a merchant account, however, is very expensive. Not only do you have to pay a large sum to the bank just to apply for and then set up the account, you also have to pay … (12 comments)
home stagers: Home Stagers: Quick way to attract more clients
- 10/14/09 05:00 AM
In tough economic times, it's easy to jump to the conclusion that you should lower your price to attract clients and that you should be promoting how cheap your home staging services are. If you find yourself heading down that road, please stop! It's a dead end and it will put you out of business. Here's the thing, if you promote your services as being cheap, you’ll attract penny-pinching clients who don’t value what you have to offer. People who only care about price will argue every step of the way about any recommendation you might make that might cost extra. … (7 comments)
Articles of interest to home stagers and real estate agents to improve understanding of the business of home staging (real estate staging, house fluffing).
I’ve been addicted to decorating since I was a kid. I remember insisting that my room be painted a deep turquoise, and my rattan headboard white, because I could totally picture how one would stand out against the other and compliment the pale creamy-yellow duvet. At the risk of revealing my age, I’ll admit it was the 1960s. Even now I can see that decorating scheme in my mind’s eye, and it still looks cool.
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