The pricing structure you set up for your home staging services (and items you charge for), can either make or break your real estate staging business. It's great to follow your heart and make a business out of your creative talents, but if you’re doing something you love and not making money, it’s not a business – it’s a hobby.
Even if you’re the best home stager in your city, if you charge a flat rate for your services, you could end up broke faster than you think. In fact, you could be setting yourself up to kill a business that would otherwise be extremely profitable.
Charging by the square foot or setting a flat rate per room is a common mistake that has ended more than one home stager’s career
No two spaces are ever the same. It could take more time to stage a 1200 sq. ft. condo than a 4,000 sq. ft. detached home. If you're charging by the square foot or room, you're in trouble! When you’re already into a project and realize it will take hours more to complete than you originally estimated it’s too late. By using the wrong pricing strategy, you have totally undercut yourself.
There are several common scenarios you probably encounter regularly as a home stager that eat up time you may not be charging for. For example, the client who is distracted by toddlers while you're doing your consultation, or the one who has saved every item that has come into the house for the last 20 years.
If you have the proper pricing strategy in place, none of these "time-wasters" matter.
In fact, if clients like these are eating up your time, you will make more money with the right rate structure. With the wrong pricing strategy, you will find yourself working for nothing much of the time.
If you charge "flat rates" for your home staging services, you really need to reconsider your pricing strategy before your business "flat lines" from all the extra work you have to do to make ends meet.
Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging
Internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould has been writing about home staging since 2002 when she started earning a living as a home stager. Within her second year in business she was earning up to $10,000 a month staging homes. She teaches her strategies to other home stagers in the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, which has 900+ Graduates worldwide. Debra is the author of two home staging guides and offers a Directory of Home Stagers to help homeowners and real estate agents locate home stagers who will decorate homes to sell quickly and for top dollar. To learn more visit http://www.stagingdiva.com.
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