How A Stager Can Potentially Kill Your Deal

Wednesday Series: Why Staged Homes Don’t Sell. In the series, I am going to cover:

1. What A Well Staged Home Does for a Sale
2. How Listing Agents Unintentionally Sabotage Their Own Staged Listings
3. What is the Seller’s Problem?!
4. How A Stager Can Potentially Kill Your Deal
5. Other Real Estate Professionals’ Play in the Mud Too

A staged home can be the answer to selling houses. BUT It’s only a marketing tool that is as effective as how someone uses it, or if it’s fundamentally a sound solution to begin with. There are 3 causes that a stager can potentially kill the sale by providing inappropriate staging to the home. They are: unqualified, inexperience, and have really no clue what staging is.

1. Unqualified: My good friend Linda R once said “Not all stagers are created equal” and she really nailed it on the head. Everyone had different training and backgrounds, and sad to say that some even don’t have trainings nor backgrounds. I receive emails or calls all the time from budding stagers. It generally goes as followed, ranked by frequency:
   
   Budding Stager1: Hi, I want to apply to be a stager in your company because I have a flair for design and passionate about interior design.
   Budding Stager2: Hi, I want to apply to be a stager in your company because I am a stay-at-home mom for the past 3 years, have decorated my own house. Now I want a career change.
   Budding Stager3: Oh hi, I want to see if you are hiring….. (why do you want to be in this field?) Don’t you all make a lot of money? It looks so fun on TV!! Yes, it’s hard to believe, isn’t it? Granted, a staging professional is not like a surgeon, but doesn’t some sort of resume or cover letter is needed when you apply to a new job? How about something called “qualifications?” Would you hire a brain surgeon because he said he had a “flair” of cutting people up? Moreover, there is inconsistency among various staging training schools. It’s difficult to gauge which stager is good, which stager is not. (You can click here to read the 5 tips on how to hire a qualified stager.)My good friend and a fellow stager has received calls from “trained stagers” to learn how they should charges clients. When my friend said that they should take a training course, they replied that “oh, I already taken an online course. But they didn’t teach us how to charge clients.” ???!!! Isn’t this business skill 101? As a client, you can risk being charged too much for too little.
   
2. Inexperience. Staging school can teach all the business skills and staging tips, but when it comes to staging in real life, every home is different and every time it is a new challenge. It could be positioning of the furniture placement, it could be the styling, or whatever. A experienced stager will be more equipped to handle it and more likely to produce the ideal result (given that pricing and location work). An experienced stager is worth his/hers weight in gold.
   Other than staging, an experienced stager tend to be more on top of paperwork and professionalism, as well as working with you on your budget and needs. The person is also more likely to be an established business which has business licenses and proper insurances.
   
   I recently saw this property in person. Good effort, but missed the mark. The person understood that the home needed staging, but missed the mark on what staging is.
   
3. Doesn’t understand what staging truly means. Staging is not just about plunking furniture down. That means the home is furnished, NOT staged. They are different. A furnished home is only a furnished home. A staged home can create appeal forthe buyers and grab them emotionally to prompt them to make an offer.
   
   furnished (on market 152 days so far)

staged (sold less than a month and overasking)

Overall, it is very important to stage, because stagings’ Return on Investment (ROI) is well worth it. You can see from these stats from here.

These 2 bar graphs are courtesy of StagedHomes.com. Here is another staging statistic from HomeGain:

As you can see, out of everything that is used to prep a home for sale, Home Staging comes in at 478%. Out of all the out-of-pocket expenses for home sellers, home staging is the only one that will yield return on the investment. So hiring someone who knows what he or she is doing can be crucial to preparing your homes for sale. You can click here to read the 5 tips on how to hire a qualified stager.

Happy selling!

Cheers,

Cindy*Staged4more

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