Home Staging: What it Is, and What it Isn’t
The most common overall misconception about home staging is that it’s basically on par with personal decorating and with the things a realtor would recommend doing before showing a home. Truth be told, staging is neither decorating nor showing. Read on and you’ll see some of the differences.
At the essence of decorating is personalization; making your home suited to you, based on your own tastes and aesthetics. Staging a home is essentially the opposite of this. Staging involves the de-personalization of a home; making it attractive and appealing, but basically neutral in terms of styling. Now, this doesn’t mean you have to go painting everything beige, making sure the furniture is all monochromatic and that there’s not an ounce of red anywhere ( all common myths about staging!). A professional and qualified home stager will have the skills to create a balanced, and enticing living space in your home by using various elements of color, texture, furniture arrangement, artwork placement among other tricks. Color can be used as accents- but a stager will make sure to tie everything in so that it’s all complimentary.
When showing a home there are certain things that a realtor may recommend doing that include setting the lights just so, perhaps making sure the home smells nice and welcoming and maybe setting up some fresh flowers to bring a sense of good cheer into the home. These are all fine and dandy little things to attend to before a showing, but staging a home is a much more involved process.
Part of home staging, which relates to what was previously mentioned about de-personalization, involves de-cluttering. A professional home stager has the expertise to know what needs to be packed up and removed in order to create a more refined sense of space in your home, and to show off the space in its best light. Now, this may seem like something you can just go ahead and do yourself- but a pro will help guide you. You’d be surprised at how difficult it is to be objective about your own home.
The other aspect about a home staging company is the access they have to items that’ll help you optimize your home’s strengths and create a beautiful space. For example, a professional stager may recommend a couch and living room furniture of particular proportions, dimensions, style and color. They’ll either have such items in storage or be able to rent them for you. With their trained eye, your space will come to life in a new way, and in a way that’ll fetch the highest price of your home. Many folks who have their homes staged end up deciding to stay as they fall in love with their property’s incredible transformation- and this is not a myth!
Another common idea that is just not so, is that home staging is only for model homes- that is, homes that are new, and empty. A home stager can do an equally bang up job with an older home that has been lived in for years. In such cases, they’ll generally do some serious de-cluttering and then stage using a blend of your furniture and some other rented show pieces. With older homes other aspects of staging may include painting the walls, and spending some time enhancing the outdoor curb appeal of the home.
Another myth that isn’t true is the idea that home stagers are expensive. Stagers are eager to do their very best with whatever budget is available. They can offer consultations where they walk through the home and give you a plan to work on yourself, or they can do the whole job. So again, it really depends on what you feel comfortable with. One fact remains, well staged homes will often sell 50% faster and for 7-10% more than a home that hasn’t been staged. How can you afford not to have your home staged, is the most pertinent question you should be asking yourself as a home seller.
By: DB Wilson
About the Author:
At the essence of decorating is personalization; making your home suited to you, based on your own tastes and aesthetics. Staging a home is essentially the opposite of this. Staging involves the de-personalization of a home; making it attractive and appealing, but basically neutral in terms of styling. Now, this doesn’t mean you have to go painting everything beige, making sure the furniture is all monochromatic and that there’s not an ounce of red anywhere ( all common myths about staging!). A professional and qualified home stager will have the skills to create a balanced, and enticing living space in your home by using various elements of color, texture, furniture arrangement, artwork placement among other tricks. Color can be used as accents- but a stager will make sure to tie everything in so that it’s all complimentary.
When showing a home there are certain things that a realtor may recommend doing that include setting the lights just so, perhaps making sure the home smells nice and welcoming and maybe setting up some fresh flowers to bring a sense of good cheer into the home. These are all fine and dandy little things to attend to before a showing, but staging a home is a much more involved process.
Part of home staging, which relates to what was previously mentioned about de-personalization, involves de-cluttering. A professional home stager has the expertise to know what needs to be packed up and removed in order to create a more refined sense of space in your home, and to show off the space in its best light. Now, this may seem like something you can just go ahead and do yourself- but a pro will help guide you. You’d be surprised at how difficult it is to be objective about your own home.
The other aspect about a home staging company is the access they have to items that’ll help you optimize your home’s strengths and create a beautiful space. For example, a professional stager may recommend a couch and living room furniture of particular proportions, dimensions, style and color. They’ll either have such items in storage or be able to rent them for you. With their trained eye, your space will come to life in a new way, and in a way that’ll fetch the highest price of your home. Many folks who have their homes staged end up deciding to stay as they fall in love with their property’s incredible transformation- and this is not a myth!
Another common idea that is just not so, is that home staging is only for model homes- that is, homes that are new, and empty. A home stager can do an equally bang up job with an older home that has been lived in for years. In such cases, they’ll generally do some serious de-cluttering and then stage using a blend of your furniture and some other rented show pieces. With older homes other aspects of staging may include painting the walls, and spending some time enhancing the outdoor curb appeal of the home.
Another myth that isn’t true is the idea that home stagers are expensive. Stagers are eager to do their very best with whatever budget is available. They can offer consultations where they walk through the home and give you a plan to work on yourself, or they can do the whole job. So again, it really depends on what you feel comfortable with. One fact remains, well staged homes will often sell 50% faster and for 7-10% more than a home that hasn’t been staged. How can you afford not to have your home staged, is the most pertinent question you should be asking yourself as a home seller.
By: DB Wilson
About the Author:
RE/MAX of Boulder consistently ranks as one of the top realty firms in the Boulder real estate market. To find the right Boulder Colorado REALTOR for you, visit BoulderCO.com.
Top 10 Reasons Home Staging is a Great Home Based Business
If you have a flair for decorating and an interest in real estate, Home Staging could be the right career for you. This service business, also called House Fluffing, Real Estate Staging or Home Styling, is based on the art of decorating a home to sell quickly and for top dollar.
Home Staging is a great service business to run from a home office for these 10 reasons:
1. Home Staging is a low cost business to start.
You can work from your own home office. You don’t need a store front or inventory. You also don’t need expensive advertising to grow your home staging business successfully.
2. There is no need to invest in inventory or recruit others into the business. Home Staging is not a multi-level marketing scheme.
If you’ve researched the subject of home-based business, you’ve probably encountered lots of schemes that want you to buy inventory and recruit others into the business too.
These are multi-level marketing businesses. Home Staging is not a multi-level marketing business. You don’t have to buy anything and you don’t have to recruit anyone else to join the business. This is something you can do on your own without any recruiting pressures. You aren’t expected to pester every friend and casual acquaintance you’ve ever had to invest in your “unique opportunity”.
3. Home Staging has been recognized as one of the best growth businesses.
Entrepreneur Magazine identified home staging as one of the hottest growth businesses, and the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program is the ONLY home staging business opportunity recognized by the magazine for the last three years in their business start up guide books.
As your own boss, you are in control of how fast you want to grow your home staging business. There are no outside income pressures because this is not a multi-level marketing scheme.
4. The financial rewards are there if you work hard to build your Home Staging business.
Home Stagers create real wealth for their clients by effectively decorating their homes to sell quickly and for top dollar. Once clients realize the significant return they can make on their investment in home staging services, they don’t feel it’s unreasonable to spend several hundred dollars for even two hours of a stagerís time. In other words, working only half a day, you can make what many people take a whole week to earn. If you have five clients in a single week, you can earn more than you did in an entire month of working full time.
And with real estate markets slowing in many parts of the US, the demand for (and interest in) home staging services will continue to grow as desperate home sellers look for an alternative to the costly price reductions their agents recommend.
Home staging businesses can also thrive in a hot real estate market as savvy home sellers realize the greater profits they can make when they have 10 or 15 buyers bidding on their homes, instead of the two or three they might have had before staging.
5. You can still have time for your family or other demands while running a Home Staging or Real Estate Staging business.
You control when you meet clients. If you only want to work during the day when your children are at school you can arrange it that way. ìI have an opening for you on Wednesday morning at 9:00 AM works well!î
Or, if you want to start this business on the side while you already have a full time job, then you can meet your clients on evenings and weekends. Many of them will really appreciate it as they work themselves.
6. As a Home Stager, you will have daily opportunities to be creative and meet interesting people.
Home Staging projects very much depend on the creative solutions you develop for your clients, and each one is unique. You get to see the end result very quickly and meet lots of different people as you deal with real estate agents and homeowners.
7. You will enjoy variety and a sense of adventure in a Home Staging business.
Home Staging projects are very short term in nature, lasting days or a couple of weeks. Each house is different and you’ll be visiting streets and neighborhoods you didn’t know existed as you build your home staging client base.
8. You decide who you want to work with and what kind of Home Staging projects you want to take on.
Since a Home Staging project is short term in nature, if you find yourself with a “client from hell”, you know they won’t be in your life very long. If you find there are certain real estate agents that don’t share your approach to business, or treat you with less respect than you deserve, don’t work with them again! There are thousands of real estate agents to choose from in most markets. Did you know that in California alone there are 200,000 agents? Clearly not all of them are equally good or equally pleasant to be around!
9. Since you visit clients in their homes, you do not need to worry about what your own home looks like to run a successful home based business in Home Staging.
Nobody needs to know where your home office is and they certainly don’t need to visit your home. So, don’t worry if your house isn’t a reflection of what you want to present to Home Staging clients. The most important thing is to always present yourself in a professional manner.
10. Home Staging does not require specialized training or official credentials because there are none for the Home Staging industry.
Despite what some organizations claim for their own marketing reasons, there are no official credentials to be a Home Stager. You can call yourself a Professional Home Stager today and no one can say anything about it.
Of course calling yourself a Home Stager doesn’t mean you’ll automatically know how to price your services, build your business and get clients. These are important skills to acquire if you want to be financially successful. The relevant point here is that you donít have to undergo years or even months of training to get into this business.
In fact, the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program will teach you how to grow a profitable and creatively satisfying business in only 10 hours. But you need to already have a basic talent for how to arrange furniture in a room because this is not a hands-on decorating course. Visit http://www.stagingdiva.com for more info.
By: Debra Gould
About the Author:
Home Staging is a great service business to run from a home office for these 10 reasons:
1. Home Staging is a low cost business to start.
You can work from your own home office. You don’t need a store front or inventory. You also don’t need expensive advertising to grow your home staging business successfully.
2. There is no need to invest in inventory or recruit others into the business. Home Staging is not a multi-level marketing scheme.
If you’ve researched the subject of home-based business, you’ve probably encountered lots of schemes that want you to buy inventory and recruit others into the business too.
These are multi-level marketing businesses. Home Staging is not a multi-level marketing business. You don’t have to buy anything and you don’t have to recruit anyone else to join the business. This is something you can do on your own without any recruiting pressures. You aren’t expected to pester every friend and casual acquaintance you’ve ever had to invest in your “unique opportunity”.
3. Home Staging has been recognized as one of the best growth businesses.
Entrepreneur Magazine identified home staging as one of the hottest growth businesses, and the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program is the ONLY home staging business opportunity recognized by the magazine for the last three years in their business start up guide books.
As your own boss, you are in control of how fast you want to grow your home staging business. There are no outside income pressures because this is not a multi-level marketing scheme.
4. The financial rewards are there if you work hard to build your Home Staging business.
Home Stagers create real wealth for their clients by effectively decorating their homes to sell quickly and for top dollar. Once clients realize the significant return they can make on their investment in home staging services, they don’t feel it’s unreasonable to spend several hundred dollars for even two hours of a stagerís time. In other words, working only half a day, you can make what many people take a whole week to earn. If you have five clients in a single week, you can earn more than you did in an entire month of working full time.
And with real estate markets slowing in many parts of the US, the demand for (and interest in) home staging services will continue to grow as desperate home sellers look for an alternative to the costly price reductions their agents recommend.
Home staging businesses can also thrive in a hot real estate market as savvy home sellers realize the greater profits they can make when they have 10 or 15 buyers bidding on their homes, instead of the two or three they might have had before staging.
5. You can still have time for your family or other demands while running a Home Staging or Real Estate Staging business.
You control when you meet clients. If you only want to work during the day when your children are at school you can arrange it that way. ìI have an opening for you on Wednesday morning at 9:00 AM works well!î
Or, if you want to start this business on the side while you already have a full time job, then you can meet your clients on evenings and weekends. Many of them will really appreciate it as they work themselves.
6. As a Home Stager, you will have daily opportunities to be creative and meet interesting people.
Home Staging projects very much depend on the creative solutions you develop for your clients, and each one is unique. You get to see the end result very quickly and meet lots of different people as you deal with real estate agents and homeowners.
7. You will enjoy variety and a sense of adventure in a Home Staging business.
Home Staging projects are very short term in nature, lasting days or a couple of weeks. Each house is different and you’ll be visiting streets and neighborhoods you didn’t know existed as you build your home staging client base.
8. You decide who you want to work with and what kind of Home Staging projects you want to take on.
Since a Home Staging project is short term in nature, if you find yourself with a “client from hell”, you know they won’t be in your life very long. If you find there are certain real estate agents that don’t share your approach to business, or treat you with less respect than you deserve, don’t work with them again! There are thousands of real estate agents to choose from in most markets. Did you know that in California alone there are 200,000 agents? Clearly not all of them are equally good or equally pleasant to be around!
9. Since you visit clients in their homes, you do not need to worry about what your own home looks like to run a successful home based business in Home Staging.
Nobody needs to know where your home office is and they certainly don’t need to visit your home. So, don’t worry if your house isn’t a reflection of what you want to present to Home Staging clients. The most important thing is to always present yourself in a professional manner.
10. Home Staging does not require specialized training or official credentials because there are none for the Home Staging industry.
Despite what some organizations claim for their own marketing reasons, there are no official credentials to be a Home Stager. You can call yourself a Professional Home Stager today and no one can say anything about it.
Of course calling yourself a Home Stager doesn’t mean you’ll automatically know how to price your services, build your business and get clients. These are important skills to acquire if you want to be financially successful. The relevant point here is that you donít have to undergo years or even months of training to get into this business.
In fact, the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program will teach you how to grow a profitable and creatively satisfying business in only 10 hours. But you need to already have a basic talent for how to arrange furniture in a room because this is not a hands-on decorating course. Visit http://www.stagingdiva.com for more info.
By: Debra Gould
About the Author:
Entrepreneur and Home Staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva, knows how to make money as a home stager. Discover her secrets to business success in the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. Free quiz to see if a home staging business is right for you at http://www.stagingdiva.com
Slowing Economy a Boon for Home Staging Entrepreneurs
Have you been thinking about starting a Home Staging business? With the economy slowing down, you may be wondering if this is a good time to enter the field. You may be worried that home sellers, your potential clients, will not be as willing to spend money on your services. As a professional Home Stager who also teaches a course on the business of home staging to students around the world, I know this is an excellent time to be in the Home Staging business.
1) The slowing economy means a lot of people’s financial situations are changing and they will no longer be able to afford their mortgage. Sellers in this market will quickly realize that when their own home hits the real estate market, it will have a lot of competition. Home Staging is the special ingredient that gets buyers excited about a home. The vast majority of homes are not decorated for sale, so they show poorly. But as more people understand that a staged house helps it stand out from the crowd by appealing to home buyers on an emotional level, they will realize they need to invest in staging if they want to sell quickly and for top dollar.
2) We’ll see more and more real estate agents recommending that their clients stage their homes. Again, with so many nice houses available for a good price, agents will see their profits squeezed as prices continue to decline. So, just like homeowners, they will need to do everything possible to make their listings stand out from the crowd. Staging ensures a home puts its best foot forward to buyers. Agents that don’t already know the benefits of staging will learn very quickly in this market.
3) Home staging also has the merit of being a low cost business to start and run. You don’t have the high overhead that other service or retail businesses may have, and many Home Stagers work from home. Remember, you’re going to your client’s home, they aren’t coming to yours. So don’t think you need to spend extra money to perfect your own house before you can become a Home Stager. As long as you project a professional attitude and have an efficient office from which to work, you’re set.
4) Home Staging has been recognized as one of the best growth businesses. Entrepreneur Magazine identified home staging as one of the hottest growth businesses, and the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program is the ONLY home staging business opportunity recognized by the magazine for the last three years in their business start up guides.
If you are a creative individual with an eye for design, you should consider becoming a Home Stager and put your talent to work for you. Home staging is a great career if you choose it. It is one of the most sought out services in the real estate industry today, and the future looks even brighter.
By: Debra Gould
About the Author:
1) The slowing economy means a lot of people’s financial situations are changing and they will no longer be able to afford their mortgage. Sellers in this market will quickly realize that when their own home hits the real estate market, it will have a lot of competition. Home Staging is the special ingredient that gets buyers excited about a home. The vast majority of homes are not decorated for sale, so they show poorly. But as more people understand that a staged house helps it stand out from the crowd by appealing to home buyers on an emotional level, they will realize they need to invest in staging if they want to sell quickly and for top dollar.
2) We’ll see more and more real estate agents recommending that their clients stage their homes. Again, with so many nice houses available for a good price, agents will see their profits squeezed as prices continue to decline. So, just like homeowners, they will need to do everything possible to make their listings stand out from the crowd. Staging ensures a home puts its best foot forward to buyers. Agents that don’t already know the benefits of staging will learn very quickly in this market.
3) Home staging also has the merit of being a low cost business to start and run. You don’t have the high overhead that other service or retail businesses may have, and many Home Stagers work from home. Remember, you’re going to your client’s home, they aren’t coming to yours. So don’t think you need to spend extra money to perfect your own house before you can become a Home Stager. As long as you project a professional attitude and have an efficient office from which to work, you’re set.
4) Home Staging has been recognized as one of the best growth businesses. Entrepreneur Magazine identified home staging as one of the hottest growth businesses, and the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program is the ONLY home staging business opportunity recognized by the magazine for the last three years in their business start up guides.
If you are a creative individual with an eye for design, you should consider becoming a Home Stager and put your talent to work for you. Home staging is a great career if you choose it. It is one of the most sought out services in the real estate industry today, and the future looks even brighter.
By: Debra Gould
About the Author:
Entrepreneur and Home Staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva, knows how to make money as a home stager. Discover her secrets to business success in the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. Free quiz to see if a home staging business is right for you at http://www.stagingdiva.com