While FreeMoneyFinance is taking his sweet vacation, I am guest blogging several blogs on Staging:
If you missed the previous entries:
*Quick & Cheap Tips for Selling Your Home
When FMF first suggested this topic I was frankly a little hesitant to write it. I have been a professional stager for about 2 years now and have seen quite a few newbies who never took off in their businesses or stagers left the business after couple years. It’s a high turnover business, like any job in real estate industry. The main reason for such high turnover is that people don’t have the right expectations coming into the industry. HGTV has made it very glamorous and seemingly easy to do, but the daily grinds of running your small business, liabilities issues, administrative tasks, taxation issues, inventory upkeep, time management and personnel management, prospecting, marketing, PR, etc. can kill any aspiring professional very easily. I have seen quite a few jumped into the industry and had no clue what they were doing whether in staging or running a small business or both, and consequently hurt themselves and their clients along the way. In the long run, that does hurt the industry and made it difficult to work with clients sometimes when they have the misconceptions or already got burned by previous bad staging experiences.
That said, it is actually very easy to become a home stager, that’s why there is a significant increase of stagers on the current market.
Unfortunately there are neither ethics nor regulations that set standards for stagers. That means essentially anyone can print up a business card and set up a website then call herself/himself a stager. Working as a stager can be good money, as we have seen on shows like Million Dollar Listings where stagers charge $30,000 to stage a home (Although in general, that’s not the case. It varies by market.). It is also fabulous to work for yourself. It certainly is a creative job.
Here are a basic ways you can earn side income as a stager:
- Write consultation reports: Consultation reports are basically DIY reports for the sellers. You will visit the home, write down detailed notes and instructions for transforming their home, and have the homeowners stage the homes themselves. You can also include a visit so you can make sure the homeowners are staging it according to your instructions, moreover, they actually did it. Sometimes sellers don’t feel motivated to stage it so they may only do part of it. Unfortunately, the entire home is for sale, not just “part of it,†so it’s good to pay a visit to make sure they actually did what you said they should do.
- Redesign homes to live/sell: You have seen it on HGTV and basically you come into the home and use their existing furnishings and accessories to stage. When sellers are strapped for cash, you gotta use what they’ve got. Many believe that staging is about moving all the furniture out and then moving in stager’s furniture. NO. Staging doesn’t have to be costly and I personally don’t believe that the sellers should spend more than they should to get their home sold. It’s a waste of monetary resources and everyone’s time. Sometimes when homeowners don’t have accessories at all, or theirs are outdated, I do bring in my accessories to style the homes. This happens when young couples know that they would be moving in couple years, so they purposely didn’t buy anything to decorate the starter condo/home. Or senior citizens who haven’t updated their homes while they live there. I also encounter sellers who have very personal décor, such as religious symbols, nude paintings, etc. where I generally will bring in home accessories as well to neutralize the home to appeal to a broader range of buyers.
- Click to read more at FreeMoneyFinance