When choosing a plastic surgeon to perform your nose job or face lift, viewing before and after pictures is crucial because you want to be assured that they will do outstanding work and you will get the end results that you desire. Would you choose a plastic surgeon who was unable to provide any before and after photos of his work? Would you be upset or feel deceived if you found out that the plastic surgeon that just did your surgery used another surgeon's before and after pictures on his website?
Not only am I seeing lots of home staging websites with no before and after photos, I am seeing many staging websites with the same beautifully staged rooms in homes all over the country. Thus, it is evident that there is a lot of photo sharing going on.
I have seen some staging training websites that provide their graduates with photos for their portfolios and slideshow presentations. The same can be said for staging workshops where a property is staged by the students. Unless you have done a room totally by yourself, it should not be used as an example of your work. I have seen many websites where it is obvious that several stagers, within a tri-state area, took the same workshop on the same day because they staged the same house!
The training programs that supply the photos and the home stagers that use them justify it by saying they are only providing samples of what staging can do. The realtor or homeowner who has found your webpage through a Google search for "home staging" already has an idea of what staging can do....they want to know what YOU can do! In my opinion it is deceptive to pass someone else's work off as your own.
Questions for realtors to ask when interviewing home stagers:
- Did you stage this home by yourself?
- Are these photos taken of work that was personally done by you?
- Are these stock photos?
- Were the photos taken during a staging training workshop? If the answer is yes, ask how much of the work was done by them without help from other students or the instructor.
- Ask to see photos of the stager's original work.
If you are a home stager just starting out and need to build your portfolio, begin by staging and photographing your own home as well as the homes of your friends and family. This not only gives you the pictures you need but also some confidence-building hands-on experience.
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