In my previous blog (Reader’s Question: Staging is Used to Hide Problems?), I mentioned my new friend Pamela, a real estate agent in Saint Louis, Missouri had asked me to pitch in on her blog There’s No Place Like Home to answer her readers’ questions in regards to staging.

(photo courtesy of Pamela’s Blog: There is No Place Like Home)

Her reader,

Bob said…

Home staging is a complete waste of time. Its ridiculous. It’s just another useless profession trying to make money off of someone who’s got enough on their plate already.

September 23, 2007 11:50 AM

Pamela said…

Hi James and Bob. I appreciate your feedback and would like to post these questions on a larger platform for other agents and stagers alike to also answer your questions. No judgement here. I think stagers are great and do help sell a home and faster than if it was empty. Please email me and let me know if that would be ok. Thanks.

September 23, 2007 11:53 AM

Bob said…

Hi Pamela. Thanks for sending me the link to your AR blog and though I think you made some good points I am not surprised that home stagers couldn’t defend themselves and prove me wrong.

Well, here is what I said:

Bob, as a stager, I would love to defend myself and my profession! Prior to becoming a full time stager, I was working as a buyer’s agent. Needless to say, I had seen a lot of homes, staged and unstaged, good staged homes and bad staged homes. I work in San Francisco bay area, where the market is very competitive, and sellers definitely need that extra edge to shine through the pile of listings.

There are definitely merits to my job, or I wouldn’t be able to stay in business for almost 2 years and investing more money and time on continue education and building a community. Real estate is also a harsh and high turnover industry, people are in it for the money are quickly washed out. You have to truly love what you do to be able to sustain yourself in this business. Also if I were a quick money schemer, I would’ve picked online gambling.

Earlier this year, in San Francisco bay area, it took about 62 days for a home to move off the market. Using my own staged homes (about 40 under my belt), I moved my (more…)

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An real estate agent reader, Tony, of my Active Rain blog had the following comment on my Blog Carnival Announcement post:

i am not sure that i have enough ideas to add to a “carnival” but i do have one thought - i have heard that an empty house does not work as well as a staged house?

my experience has been that sometimes the staging detracts from the space we are selling

i have sold lots of empty houses and sometimes i wish my clients would move out, so i can sell their homes!!!

please comment on that

also i sometime battle in convincing my clients to change their living habits and the way their house looks - do you have any ideas as to how to get them to listent to my council?

***************

Hey Tony

These are very excellent questions. Let me show you a home I staged last Monday:

Before & After Staging (2600 14th Ave SF)

It is true, empty homes don’t sell as well as staged homes, here are a few reasons:

1. Buyers generally have difficulty visualizing themselves living in there
2. Our brains generally perceive an empty space as smaller than it really is
3. Staged homes present itself well and puts its best foot forward (See Post: Making the Blink Count Here, click to read more)
4. Good staging can help buyers realize the potential of the home when there is a tricky floor plan (See Post: Staging a Tricky Space, click to read more)
5. Staged homes have less Days On Market (DOM) in both hot and cold markets. It can also potentially bring more equity and commission dollars to sellers & agents. Earlier this year, I complied some stats from my staged homes. Average speaking, in San Francisco bay area, homes typically sat for 62 days. My staged homes averagely speaking sat for 31. That’s 1 month’s mortgage difference.

On staging sometimes distract buyers: This is something you need to look at a few stagers. Look at their portfolio before you hire to see what their style is, because not all stagers are created equal. You also need to figure out what will show well with your listing and a good stager should know that. The stager shouldn’t place oversized furniture into the home, nor they should create a theme room that most potential buyers (more…)

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My new friend Pamela, a real estate agent in Saint Louis, Missouri had asked me to pitch in on her blog There’s No Place Like Home to answer her readers’ questions in regards to staging.

Both are excellent questions. I think I will touch on James’ question first in this post.
James said:

Hi Pamela! I think this is a great idea. I have some questions about using a home stager. Is it really worth it? I have seen some articles by real estate agents stating its only used to hide problems. Is it true? Thanks!

Here is my response:

NABEA (National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents) recently published a report How to not Get tricked by staging– and potentially save $5,645 when you buy your home, which I wrote a blog post in response to it: Apparently, A Good Stager Is the Buyers’ Biggest Enemy and We May Cost You $5645. It was featured on the real estate community Active Rain and you can access the post here.

Here are some of the comments that I received from the real estate community on AR:

It sounds like the report does not emphasize that buyers should always do home inspections which would uncover most problems (would not uncover problems that are intentionally concealed). Buyers should appreciate staged homes as they provide more opportunity to look at a home in its best light and make sure they get the home thoroughly inspected and all should be fine. Intentional non-disclosure of material facts will come to haunt the seller and seller’s agent when the time comes.

8/16/2007 by Ken Realivent   (more…)

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My speaking engagement at the Hire-A-Busiensswoman Week presented by International Virtual Women of Chamber of Commerce was picked up by The San Francisco Real Estate blog.

I don’t think Bill is fully sold on the staging profession, but I am glad that he is at least encouraging sellers to watch programs and attend seminars that can help their homes show better and hopefully sell quicker. I think Bill brought up a great point during our “chat” on his blog was that sellers should no longer be passive in their real estate goals. Buyers now can start searching homes online without a realtor and without seeing a home in person. Sellers can also do things on their own to make their home more desirable for sale, instead of just passively letting realtors do their thing to sell the house. The home that I staged yesterday was a very good example of that (photos coming soon!). The owner was very hands on in the process, even during the staging process. Which certainly made a stressful work day and made me very frazzled, but as long as the end results were good, that was all it mattered.

You can click to read about Bill’s opinion on staging here, on The San Francisco Real Estate Blog.

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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
*How to Earn Extra Income By Becoming A Home Stager
*Use Staging to Sell Your Home

Starting your own business is probably the best thing I have done in my life. It taught me a lot of my limits and my worth, it also has challenged my personal characters. Moreover, it is a great way to increase your net worth because after all, you can control your destiny.
Having a small business can also be a money pit, where you can over-invest on inventory (if you have any) or machinery, equipments, office supplies etc. I personally don’t believe in over-investing because you can drain your financial resources very quickly. You can grow your net worth by grasping your financial picture. Here are a few tips if you are thinking about starting a small business:

1. It’s okay to be small: I am very happy that my company is still very small, because it is manageable for me and if I take on full time employees then my monetary responsibilities increase dramatically. It is also a very personal thing to have my own small business, everyone who comes through the doors, including clients, become family. After all, it’s a people’s business.

2. Get a financial plan: We all have this dream that once we go out on our own, we will strike a goldmine immediately and clients will be calling us non-stop. Well, if that doesn’t happen, make sure you do have resources to fall back on. Generally it is recommended to save 4-6 months worth of living expenses save up when you work hard to take your business off the ground. You should also speak with a professional to plan everything out financially before you start. You need to figure out what your start up costs are which include marketing, licensing fees, continue education if any, investment in inventory, machinery, computers, etc.

3. Network, network, network: It doesn’t mean you go out and hand out business cards to everyone you meet, because you are not building meaningful relationships that will make you memorable and become part of someone’s rolodex and referral list. One of the ways I network is that I started my own support group for other small business owners who are women. I feel that it’s more important to develop personal relationships, that way the referrals are stronger and more meaningful. Running a small business can also be very lonely, so it doesn’t hurt to meet other people who can support your endeavors and who understand what you go through on a daily basis. I am the only one among my friends who have her own small business. They have no idea what I go through every day and that can get frustrating sometimes.

4. (click to read the 4 remaining tips at FreeMoneyFinance)

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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
*How to Earn Extra Income By Becoming A Home Stager

Staging has become a new buzzword of the real estate industry. I often have homeowners calling me to inquire about staging, but after in-depth conversation, I realize that they often a) don’t know why they need to stage their house, they just know they should b) have a complete misunderstanding about staging and therefore have unreasonable expectations of what goes on when a professional stager stages his/hers home.

To explain staging in brief: Staging is not about decorating, it is about marketing. Think of when Nike comes out with a new pair of shoes, they package the product and make it fabulous and appeal to as many potential buyers as possible before they roll out for the mass consumers. Same with selling a home. As a home seller, once I have decided to place my home on the market, my home now becomes a listing, a real estate product that opens its doors to the general public. What staging does is to package and market the home to make it show-ready to appeal to a broad spectrum of buyers, therefore staging helps to sell listings quicker in both hot and cold real estate markets, and potentially for more money.

So now your home is staged, now what? Just because of your home is staged, it doesn’t mean that it’s automatically attracting buyers to open houses. It still has to be marketed properly. Like great food is paired with great wine that brings out the food’s flavor and depth, same with your home. Now your home is staged, it needs to be pair with good photographs to make the home attractive. Staging has duel purposes: not only staged homes should to show well in person, staged homes should also show well on the internet. This is the online shopping age, people even buy cars over internet and it is no longer strange to buy homes off ebay. With 80% of buyers start their home purchases online, it is extremely important to pull the buyers into the open houses by having great listing photos.

Click to Read more at FreeMoneyFinance

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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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Click to read more at FreeMoneyFinance

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