Here's a typical inquiry I get from realtors:
"I am a 20+ year veteran of Real Estate in the Tampa area. I have been staging homes for years! The problem is that I did it to help sell the listings...and now people expect it from me.... and of course I am not getting paid to "Stage". Do you think trying to now charge $$$ tostage is going to be a conflict with my real estate career?
I just want to know if you feel these two careers can co-exist....... real estate is very very slow in Florida, and I felt with all the people trying to sell... now would be a perfect opportunity to jump into staging for $$$$ since they all need help!"
The quick answer to whether an agent should also be a stager is "that depends!"
I think you need to sort out whether you want to be a home stager who happens to also have a real estate license or whether you want to be a realtor who also stages houses. The answer to that question will determine how you approach your business.
I have many agents who take the Staging Diva Program because they're tired of the 24/7 demands of real estate and want to earn their living more from staging. I can also tell you that most of my projects come directly from homeowners before listing their homes (that's where the real money is in staging), and most of them would have happily given me their listing after I staged their homes. I'm not an agent so I referred them to others.
If you're an agent who is providing FREE home staging for your clients and you're doing that work yourself, I think your time is better spent on what presumably you do best, finding and selling listings!
Imagine spending an extra two or three hours with each client discussing what junk to get rid of, what colors to repaint, how to rearrange the furniture. That's two or three hours you didn't spend getting a new listing, running an open house for agents or home buyers, doing showings for buyers, etc. There's a significant opportunity cost to any time you don't spend on revenue generating activities.
Furthermore, you've risked jeopardizing your listing by telling your client about problems and deficiencies they might not be ready to hear, or worse getting in the middle of a disagreement between a husband and wife about what needs to done to sell the home.
You're much better off leaving all that to an independent third party, a professional home stager.
If on the other hand you're tired of being on call 24/7, you see the clouds on the horizon of your profession created by open access to all the information you used to control through MLS and a softening market, you might want to consider reshifting your priorities so that you're a home stager who happens to also sell real estate.
In other words, your efforts are more focussed on promoting your home staging business and along the way you also pick up listings. In that way, you're competing with other realtors on a different level. Considerable trust is built up between a home stager and their client. It's quite an intimate process working with a homeowner and going through all of their personal posessions! At the end of it, if you can continue that relationship by also taking their listing, many of them will be yours. Notice in this scenario, you're getting paid to stage the house and the rewards can be considerable!
By the way, the small home pictured above was a renovation site when I saw it before decorating it the way you see here. I made over $3,000 on the project, visited the house only twice and did not need to own any of the items I put into it. Imagine also the agent's delight at being able to show up to do her agent's open house and all she had to do was open the door and put her sign out front. Everything else was picture perfect and ready for "show time!"
Debra Gould, The Staging Diva
President, Six Elements Inc.
Internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould, also known as The Staging Diva, has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, CNNMoney, CBS Radio, Reader's Digest, Woman's Day, MoneySense, National Post, Globe & Mail, and HGTV, CityTV, GlobalTV, among others. She created the Staging Diva Home Staging Training Program and has almost 400 graduates across the US, Canada and in Australia, Wales, England, The Philippines and South Africa. Contact sales@stagingdiva.com for help finding a home stager in your area. For more information on home staging and training, visit: stagingdiva.com and sixelements.com
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