Agent Tips

This is an update rewrite of my previous post: 5 Tips on How Do You Hire a Stager?!

If you run a search on Craig’s List for “staging” under real estate services, several pages worth of stagers pop out. All of them promise to sell your home faster and for more. But are they going to fulfill their promises? How do you know? Do you dare to use your equity to gamble on a stager you randomly found on the web?

Here are 6 tips to hire a qualified stager:

1. Ask for qualifications. But don’t mistake this with the letters behind this person’s name on his/her business card as qualifications. When I was working as a Realtor, although I passed my exams, taken my GRI and e-PRO courses, these letters didn’t mean anything until I was out on the field.

What I mean by qualifications is how much work has this person done in the staging industry? Ask to see resume, portfolio, past before & after pictures (*be sure to ask if the photos are done by the stager and they are not some stock photos from some website. There are many new stagers out there that use stock photos from training schools, as well as copying other experienced stagers’ photos, which is why I watermark every Staged4more’s photos, even the before. Usually a good way to tell is “Oh, tell me about the story behind this picture!”).

Also ask for certifications and continue education if this is important to you.

2. Ask for their professional policies. As a professional, everyone works to their set of guidelines. For example, if you are a bank teller, you follow procedures when a customer shows up at your window. If a customer is doing continue

I came across an article by Amy Chorew recently and she literally took the words out of my mouth. This is something every seller & agent should know (I took the liberty of highlighting the key points to look at by underlining the text):

What Do Consumers Want?

Every year NAR publishes its Profile of Today’s Homebuyer and Seller and one section focuses on the “Most Valuable Features of Web Sites” – items consumers demand when they are on your web site. Here is the breakdown:

• Photos: 83% [note how Photos are more important than Property Details!!!]
  
• Property Details: 81%
• Virtual Tours: 60%
• Maps: 43%
• Area info: 37%
• Agent info: 31%

NAR says that 96% of consumers start with a property search. If you don’t have a search button predominantly displayed, allowing the consumer to drive the experience they will search somewhere else. A consumer will stay on your web site for just a few seconds if they can’t find what they are looking for.

When they find listings, do you have the featured items above? If not the consumer will eliminate properties from their home search. If they do a search and half of the listings only have one photo, those listings are eliminated immediately.

Do you have more than 10 photos per listing? Even shoe web sites like Zappos has ten photos of shoes. Shouldn’t your listing client at least enjoy the same amount of photos that a pair of shoes does?

Staging is key with today’s photos. Martha Webb author of “Dress your House for Success” says “With all the emphasis on staging, it’s important to remember that preparing a home for market is a process that starts with the basics of cleaning and uncluttering. Clean, clutter-and-odor-free account for 35% of a buyer’s first impression. This can be accomplished in a few hours and at almost no cost. Next, a coat of paint will create a clean, fresh feeling for minimal cost. These simple steps show buyers your house has been well cared for, and that translates into value!”
Just by uncluttering a listing will make your photos more appealing. You listings will have more staying power on the internet. Take time to revisit your listings and the photos. If your photos need help, consider hiring a professional. If you can, investigate a staging course like Certified Home Marketing Specialist and learn the dialog to help the consumer partner with you to make their home look the best it can in photos.

Twenty-four percent of homes sold last year were found directly on the Internet. That means after filtering through home after home the Internet consumer found the actual house they wanted to buy. They called or emailed you and you showed it to them, and SOLD it to them. The first showing for many buyers is happening on line.

New standards of performance are simple. Give the consumer what they want, photos, lots of them. Make sure they can reach you by email, phone or text messaging – in the time and way they require.

Technology can help streamline your communication process and your marketing efforts. Welcome to the new millennium.

Here is the link to the entire article: New Standards for Modern Real Estate Professionals.

When I first started blogging about real estate & staging, it was only a year ago, and about 80% of the buyers start their search first on the internet before they go to the open house. Now, it’s at 96%!!! If another agent tells me that internet presence doesn’t matter, I would think they are insane!

Like Amy said, staging can help to clean up the online presentation dramatically. Moreover, as stagers, we should constantly think what’s the best photographic angles while we stage.

I would love to hear about your thoughts on this article! Do so by commenting in the white blank box below.

Cheers,

Cindy

I still can’t believe 2007 is already over. A year has changed a lot! Pamela Anderson has gotten married… and err.. divorced. Paris Hilton went to jail. Facebook is now yesterday’s Friendster. K-Fed is actually proven to be the “better” parent than Britney Spears. Oh my my!

And these are the staging “Trends” that need to go with 2007 (These photos were pulled from Redfin’s search. The criteria was set at 90+ days on market. After viewing the photos, it’s not difficult to imagine why these properties stay on market for so long):

10. Terrible View

This is really nothing to write home about. Why feature a terrible view that is full of weeds and a shack? Each listing photo should tell a story, what is the story of this one?

Or what is the use for this photo of the staircase? Does vertigo come with the house?

9. Forgot the Outside Curb Appeal

Right, I understand you are selling a house. What house?!

8. continue

As someone who has staged roughly $30+ million worth of real estate now, I often find resistance from agents to market their listings as Staged Homes. Which I find SHOCKING.

Staging is a great market differentiator and a great tool for agents to utilize and to potentially increase their edge as a selling agent.

In my post Apparently, A Good Stager Is the Buyers’ Biggest Enemy and We May Cost You $5645, quite a few agents & stagers responded to it on Active Rain, a real estate myspace-like platform. All these comments proved that why an Agent should advertise their listings as staged: (I think you may be sick of me talking about staging, maybe some of these real estate professionals can convince you as well )
Ken Realivent of realivent.com said:

“Buyers should appreciate staged homes as they provide more opportunity to look at continue

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 continue
   

Wednesday Series: Why Staged Homes Don’t Sell. In the series, we are 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

It’s very common. We often want to reach across the table and strangle our clients alive or shake them violently because we can’t seem to convince our clients to come to their senses. They are turning down something that can benefit and help them make significant return on their biggest investment in their life — staging to sell their homes.

We all know that staging can help to move the homes off the market sooner, whether it’s in hot or cold markets. A staged home can also sell for more. The return on the staging investment is also far greater than the investment itself. SO WHY IS THE SELLER SAYING NO?!

There are often a few underlying issues:

1. The Seller has been burnt before by bad staging/stager. Unfortunately there are no ethnics nor regulations in the industry. Essentially anyone can continue
   

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

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

A common problem that I see why staged homes don’t sell is THE AGENT. It’s not the agents don’t do any work to market the listing. Sure, they put the listing up on MLS and run the flyers and ads for the staged homes. They host open houses and try to get people into the door. But what they don’t realize is that they had done something terrible, unthinkable (at least to a stager anyway) and something that has hurt their own commission dollars & their sellers’ equity — market it poorly to counter the staged home effects, which is to SHOW THE HOME WELL and attract foot traffic to the open house.

Deadly mistake #1: The home was shown before it was staged. Would you go on a date BEFORE you showered and put on your best outfit? I think not. Same with marketing your house. Put your best foot forward. I cannot say this enough! In my post, Making the Blink Count, I talked about the power of first impression and how it can help to sell the listings. Case in point, celebs without makeup:

Deadly mistake #2: The agent doesn’t market the home as a staged home. We all know that staged homes shows better to non-staged homes, therefore, staged homes are easier for buyers’ agents to show since buyers are more likely to buy when the homes are properly staged, and therefore adding to the agents’ commissions. Here is a real life example of my recent staged home (staged just today!), a lot of de-cluttering can do a LOT for the home! Also shiny furniture can help too:

Another great idea that I have seen agents done continue