If you’re contemplating a career in home staging and you are thinking about enrolling in a home staging training program then you’re in luck!

I’ll be appearing live for a taping of Ask Staging Diva® Live and you can be part of the call-in audience with me FREE this Wednesday October 1, 2008 if you sign up before all the spots are filled.

By the end of the call you’ll know more about what the life of a home stager is like and you’ll have a good handle on whether I can teach you what you need to know to be successful in the home staging business.

Here are the call in times for your area:

• 8 PM (Eastern - Boston, NY, Miami, Toronto)
• 7 PM (Central - Minneapolis, Houston)
• 6 PM (Mountain - Denver, Boise, Calgary)
• 5 PM (Pacific - Seattle, Los Angeles, Vancouver)

Ask Staging Diva Live is your chance to get to know me a bit better and more importantly, it’s your opportunity to ask me your own question about the business of home staging. You’ll also be learning from what others ask.

The event is free and you’ll get about 90 minutes of my time…the calls are scheduled for 60 minutes but they always go over because I get a bit carried away answering questions.

Click here for more details and to sign up for the October 1 Ask Staging Diva Live event.

When you register, you’ll receive the special phone number and password you’ll need to join me on this live conference call. Be sure to dial in a few minutes early to make sure you get in.

And if you can’t make it live, sign up anyway and I’ll send you a recording of it for FREE after the event. Only those signed up for Ask Staging Diva Live on October 1 will be eligible to get the special bonus offer I’ll be announcing on the call.

I’m looking forward to it - “See you there!”

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®

President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Home Staging expert Debra Gould also known as The Staging Diva knows how to make money as a home stager and has taught over 900 other men and women to do the same. She is president of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company that is frequently profiled in the media in both the US and Canada. Debra Gould developed the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program to create opportunities for others to grow their own profitable home staging, real estate enhancement businesses.

Technorati Tags: home staging, home stager, house staging, real estate staging, real estate enhancement, home business, home staging business training, ask staging diva live, career in home staging, home staging training, business of home staging Staging Diva, Debra Gould, Ask Staging Diva Live

I have a client in Rome, Georgia in need of a professional house stager. This 6000 square foot home is furnished and will have a list price of $700,000 when it goes on the market in January. This project would look great in your home staging portfolio.

We’ve made it really easy for your to apply for this home staging project. All you need to do is complete the form at the Staging Diva Home Staging Project Referral Service.

Please include “Rome, GA Staging Project” for the project location in the first line of the form.

You must be a Staging Diva Graduate and have a professional Internet presence and/or a page on the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers to be recommended for this position. The reason for the latter being, I can’t convince someone to hire you if they can’t study your portfolio.

If you get any paid work through this referral, there will be a $250 referral fee. This real estate staging project could be a beautiful addition to your portfolio.

Because of all the traffic I get to my two sites, SixElements.com and StagingDiva.com, I get lots of leads on projects from all over the United States and Canada, and as far away as England, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, South Africa and Israel! I will only refer them to Staging Diva Graduates.

I generate tons of traffic for anyone listed on the Staging Diva site. Only one good project would more than pay for your entire Staging Diva Training Program plus building and hosting your web page on the high traffic Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers for an entire year! When clients find you from your listing in the Staging Diva Directory, I do not charge you a referral fee.

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Home Staging expert Debra Gould also known as The Staging Diva is president of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company that is frequently profiled in the media in both the US and Canada. Debra Gould developed The Staging Diva Program to create opportunities for others to grow their own profitable home staging, real estate enhancement businesses.

Learn more about the Staging Diva Home Staging Training Program.

You can get your company listed in the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers. We build your page and all the code to help search engines find you!

Learn more about the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers

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I’m a little sad that this is the last installment for the Silly Staging Tricks series of blog posts. In case you missed the first three parts - the first was about staging tricks that border on creepy, the next focused on common dining room and kitchen staging tricks with the last post talking about overly staged bedrooms.

I have saved the best for last:

The frou-frou bathroom.

Although it’s the smallest room in the house, the bathroom is such an important space. That’s why I really don’t understand the great lengths some home stagers go to with their silly staging tricks in there.

Does anyone live with tassels draped over their hand towels in real life?

When you put away your bath towels, do you stack them on the bathroom counter, wrapped with a bow and topped with a star fish?

Does anyone set champagne flutes out on the edge of the bathtub? I confess I made that mistake myself when I staged my first client’s home. It sold anyway, but in retrospect I think that detail looked silly.

One of the craziest staging tricks I’ve heard of in the bathroom is filling the bathtub with blue-tinted water – especially in the winter for a house in a cold climate! But one of the tackiest things I have seen in a bathroom was a large ribbon tied around the toilet seat lid.

When you’re finished staging a home, you should have created a warm, welcoming environment that a home buyer can’t tell was staged.

This means you need a good sense of color and where to put furniture. The property should be de-cluttered and de-personalized, but not to the point of looking cold, and there should be a logical use for each room.

A homeowner is not going to fall in love with a home that has lentils on charger plates or a bow on the toilet seat. These things are silly, contrived and a waste of your time.

Enough with the silly staging tricks!

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Home Staging expert Debra Gould also known as The Staging Diva knows how to make money as a home stager and has taught over 900 other men and women to do the same. She is president of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company that is frequently profiled in the media in both the US and Canada. Debra Gould developed the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program to create opportunities for others to grow their own profitable home staging, real estate enhancement businesses.

Technorati Tags: home stager, home staging, home stager marketing, home staging business, house fluffing, real estate staging, house staging, property styling, real estate market, real estate enhancement, Staging Diva, Debra Gould, silly staging tricks, bathroom staging

The Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program is now available by mail order as a Home Study Kit.

Over 900 Graduates have completed Staging Diva Training already by downloading the program, however the new Home Study Kit will appeal to those who would rather have a physical product mailed to their door.

All professionally edited course recordings are on CDs conveniently packaged in their own media storage case. The 5 sets of detailed course study notes, 2 bonus checklists and the training program workbook are packaged in an attractive binder with tabs for easy reference.

For a limited time only, the Home Study Kit includes a bonus audio CD and the complete workbook at no extra cost.

And for the first time ever there’s a three easy payment plan option that allows students to spread the cost of home staging business training across three months of credit card statements.

As with any Staging Diva product or service the new Home Study Kit comes with a money back guarantee.

More information on the new Staging Diva Home Study Kit, the discounted price and new 3 easy pay option

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Home Staging expert Debra Gould also known as The Staging Diva knows how to make money as a home stager and has taught over 900 other men and women to do the same. She is president of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company that is frequently profiled in the media in both the US and Canada. Debra Gould developed the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program to create opportunities for others to grow their own profitable home staging, real estate enhancement businesses.

Technorati Tags: home staging, home stager, house staging, real estate staging, real estate enhancement, home business, mail order course, home staging business training, Staging Diva, Debra Gould

I’m having so much fun with this series of blog posts! But I would love to see more comments with examples of silly staging tricks you’ve seen. Please share!

Earlier this week I shared some creepy staging tricks and some silly staging tactics which happen in the kitchen and dining room of many homes. Today’s post is all about something I’m very sick of seeing and buyers are becoming very aware of:

The obviously staged bedroom.

How many times must we be forced to see a throw ”casually” draped diagonally over the foot of a bed with a tray sitting on top holding a couple of wine glasses or a teapot with cups?

This might be okay for a hotel honeymoon suite, but normal people don’t live that way.

Speaking of diagonals, I can’t understand why people place a bed diagonally in a space – I have never seen a case where it worked. It usually just makes the room look weird and crowded.

Worse than a bed on a diagonal, though, is an imaginary bed. Some home stagers will put a rug in a room with throw pillows and some books to represent a bed.

When it comes to the ever important master bedroom, if the buyer can’t walk in and see how their bed will fit or how they can live in there with all their other furniture, they’re going to decide that the room doesn’t work for them. Make sure there’s an actual bed with usable night tables on each side and some nice bedding.

There should be one long dresser (usually with a mirror on top) and one “high boy” dresser or tall chest of drawers. To fit all that in, you may need to use a double bed rather than a queen or king. And be careful with sleigh beds or tall canopies, they shrink a bedroom faster than any other piece of furniture and should only be used in an unusually large bedroom.

Monday I’ll be posting about silly staging tricks that buyers would never fall for - in the bathroom.

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Home Staging expert Debra Gould also known as The Staging Diva knows how to make money as a home stager and has taught over 900 other men and women to do the same. She is president of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company that is frequently profiled in the media in both the US and Canada. Debra Gould developed the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program to create opportunities for others to grow their own profitable home staging, real estate enhancement businesses.

Technorati Tags: home stager, home staging, home stager marketing, home staging business, house fluffing, real estate staging, house staging, property styling, real estate market, real estate enhancement, Staging Diva, Debra Gould, silly staging tricks

I hope you enjoyed the first installment in this blog series highlighting silly staging tricks. Please help make this series even more entertaining by adding your own comments about silly staging tricks you have seen!

Today, I’ll share some one common tactic and one crazy one that have been done in too many innocent kitchens and dining rooms by silly home stagers.

There goes my appetite!

The kitchen and dining area seem to be popular sites for silly staging tactics. Nothing screams “staged home” like a formally set dining room table, especially when the charger plates are filled with dried lentils.

What would you think if you found baking accessories strategically scattered around the kitchen island beside a tray of dusty, painted plaster cookies? (Yes, it’s actually been done!)

Think uncluttered. There is no need for these details and they only distract buyers from viewing the individual rooms as their own home. A fruit bowl on the counter or a vase of flowers on the dining room table is how most people live. Less really is more.

Be sure to check back here on Friday when I divulge silly staging tricks that I have seen over and over again in overly staged bedrooms.

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Home Staging expert Debra Gould also known as The Staging Diva knows how to make money as a home stager and has taught over 900 other men and women to do the same. She is president of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company that is frequently profiled in the media in both the US and Canada. Debra Gould developed the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program to create opportunities for others to grow their own profitable home staging, real estate enhancement businesses.

Technorati Tags: home stager, home staging, home stager marketing, home staging business, house fluffing, real estate staging, house staging, property styling, real estate market, real estate enhancement, Staging Diva, Debra Gould, silly staging tricks

Are you afraid to start a home staging business because you’re afraid you don’t have enough flair for decorating to stage homes? This could be because of those decorating shows and magazines which feature photos of rooms adorned with strategically placed fruit and seashells.

Don’t let something like this stop you from pursuing a career in home staging.

While photos of rooms decorated like that might sell magazines, those tactics will not help sell a property. In fact, it is these decorative touches that I like to call “silly staging tricks” and here’s why.

The purpose of home staging is to show a home in a way that people will imagine themselves living there. The ultimate goal is for a potential buyer to walk through the home and have the impression that they’re home already. That’s the end result of a home staging job done well. Buyers are smart enough to know that those obvious touches were done by a home stager to increase the value of the property.

Not sure what kind of “touches” I mean?

To follow up on an incredibly popular and fun blog post I did in March, I took many of the comments that my readers posted and some silly staging tricks I have seen since then, and wrote an article combining them all. I would like to share that article with you through a short series of blog posts.

I know you’ll have fun reading these and I sincerely urge you to comment about new silly staging tricks you’ve seen lately.

Today’s installment:

Simply creepy! Imagine walking into a home you’re excited about viewing to be welcomed by “virtual tour” music which has been wired throughout. Nobody would ever live like that and it would probably make the buyer laugh or make the home feel creepy more than anything else. Another creepy and silly staging trick is replacing the real family members’ photos with pictures of more attractive people. How do you explain that to your clients?

Can you believe some stagers even frame photos of celebrities to place throughout a home? Is that to make buyers think the homeowner is friends with Oprah and George Clooney?

Another good one is when a home stager uses those frames which hold multiple photos, without removing the manufacturer’s filler pictures.

I advise removing all family photos from the home (attractive or not!) to prevent the homebuyer from feeling like they’re invading the owners’ privacy.

I’ve also read of stagers hiring actors to set the scene during an open house, yes you guessed it this was a California concept! A dining room would be set for Thanksgiving Dinner for example, and actors would be there to show what a great house it was to entertain in. Talk about distracting home buyers from the business at hand, which should be falling in love with the property! This concept sounds more like giving visitors the sensation of being part of a reality TV show, and has little to do with Home Staging in my opinion!

Have you seen any silly staging tricks that could be categorized as creepy? Please share!

And be sure to check back Wednesday to read about some extremely “distasteful” staging tricks that continue to show up in kitchens and dining rooms everywhere!

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Home Staging expert Debra Gould also known as The Staging Diva knows how to make money as a home stager and has taught over 900 other men and women to do the same. She is president of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company that is frequently profiled in the media in both the US and Canada. Debra Gould developed the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program to create opportunities for others to grow their own profitable home staging, real estate enhancement businesses.

Technorati Tags: home stager, home staging, home stager marketing, home staging business, house fluffing, real estate staging, house staging, property styling, real estate market, real estate enhancement, Staging Diva, Debra Gould, silly staging tricks

The home staging industry is alive and well and full of opportunity for anyone wanting to profit from their creative talents with a fulfilling career decorating homes to sell; that includes women and men! Yes, there are men working in the home staging industry even though they are dramatically outnumbered by their female counterparts. However, there is no good reason why the ratios are so unbalanced.

There are plenty of men in the real estate industry. Male interior designers are not difficult to come by either. Just look in the media – can you think of a designer with a better career right now than Nate Berkus? He’s probably one of the world’s most easily recognizable decorators and by the way…did you know that he doesn’t have a formal education in interior design?

There’s proof that the lack of a degree in interior design shouldn’t hold anyone back from pursuing their dreams of working as an interior redesigner or home stager; it’s about knowing how to capitalize on your talent by turning it into a viable business.

Once you start looking for men in the design industry in popular media you’ll see lots of them. You may have heard of a little show called Extreme Makeover Home Edition. As of this writing, seven of their eleven designers are men including the very manly Ty Pennington.

One of the most entertaining real estate reality shows on television would have to be Flipping Out featuring Jeff Lewis, another successful male designer. His university degree is in legal studies not design. Did you know he bought, renovated and sold 45 properties in 9 years!

It’s puzzling to me why only a handful of the more than 900 graduates of the Staging Diva® Home Staging Training Program are men, especially since these male graduates are so successful. One of these men is Gary Baugher of An Eye 4 Change in Nashville. Gary made a scary decision when he left a secure management position he had held for 15 years at a car rental company to pursue a career in home staging – but he hasn’t looked back since.

Another man who has graduated from the Staging Diva Program, Ken Sater of Creative Home Visions in California, has a very similar story to Gary’s. Ken came into home staging after working for 14 years in the insurance industry followed by an 18 year career in mortgage banking. Making a cool six figure income in his first year as a home stager, I know he’s not trading in being his own boss staging homes for a return to the corporate world anytime soon.

What could have prompted two men in such non-creative fields to get into home staging of all things?

Both discovered through the purchase and sale of several of their own homes that they were able to significantly increase a home’s value with their innate ability to make their properties universally appeal to buyers. Gary and Ken were asked repeatedly by neighbors how they were able to sell their homes so quickly and they each realized that they had a very valuable and marketable skill. They each went on to profit from that skill after breaking away from their stuffy desk jobs and into the creatively fulfilling field of home staging.

Another very successful Staging Diva Graduate, Adam Luttrell of Tasmania, Australia has made a booming success of his property presentation company Shift by Design. His background is in advertising, multimedia, business management and creative development. He eventually discovered that by blending these skills with a passion for real estate he could really make a difference in peoples’ lives by starting a home staging business.

That’s another trait these three men share; besides a keen focus on turning their talents into successful staging businesses - they all sincerely love being able to help others in such a positive way by dramatically increasing the value of their clients’ properties.

If you’re a man who has been putting off starting a home staging career because of the stereotype that only women can do this, or because you have no formal decorating training, no more excuses. Go for it!

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Home Staging expert Debra Gould also known as The Staging Diva knows how to make money as a home stager and has taught over 900 other men and women to do the same. She is president of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company that is frequently profiled in the media in both the US and Canada. Debra Gould developed the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program to create opportunities for others to grow their own profitable home staging, real estate enhancement businesses.

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Here we are at the end of this blog series - The 5 Biggest Mistakes Homeowners Make When Hiring a Home Stager. You now know that when hiring a home stager you shouldn’t