You walk up to the home and it looks like a great property. In fact, you can’t help but wonder why it’s been on the market for so long without any interest whatsoever. The curb appeal is fantastic; the gardens are gorgeous and well-manicured, the lawns are mowed and there are no toys or chalk drawings on the driveway leading you to believe children live here.

You enter the house and you can’t recall ever having such a physical reaction to color before. Suddenly you understand why they’ve scheduled a home staging consultation. It’s obvious that the couple living here has a love affair with bold color – the kitchen is painted a brilliant turquoise and opens up to a hot pink living room.

Because these are the first rooms a potential buyer is going to see when they walk in the home, you’re trying to figure out how much primer you’ll need to cover it so when the wife says, “We love color and we get tons of positive comments from people who come in here so we know we don’t want to paint,” you panic.

These clients are proud of their colors and are not in any rush to change them, despite the fact that they’re selling the house and they haven’t seen an offer yet.

I’ll tell you what I would do in this situation later but first I want to know what you home stagers would do in this situation. Please let us know by adding your comments to this post.

(Psssttt… if you can’t wait to find out the answer, check out the Staging Diva Ultimate Color Guide!)

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

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love.

Technorati Tags: home staging dilemma, home staging, home stagers, staging diva, home staging colors, home staging training, debra gould

A few weeks ago I posted a home staging business dilemma asking what you would do if you walked into a home staging consultation to find a nightmarish scene with fur-covered furniture from the 70s – the place where knick knacks go to die.

I asked what you would do, knowing that the woman is a widow who you can tell is grieving not only the loss of her husband but also the loss of the home they’d shared.

I want to thank all of you who left a comment on the original post (read the post and the comments here) and after reading through the feedback, I don’t have a lot to add!

As a home stager you must be comfortable dealing with a grieving homeowner – not necessarily someone who has lost a loved one, but someone who is having to give up their home. It really can be a grieving process.

This situation, like many others, requires you to trade your home stager hat for your therapist hat and respect the emotions of the homeowner.

One of the things I recommend in the course, Taking the Mystery Out of Home Staging Consultations is that you begin with a walk through of the entire home before making specific recommendations in any one room. There are several reasons for doing this, but one of them is that if you keep an eye on the body language of your client, and listen to what they say in each room, you’ll have an idea which rooms are more sensitive than others.

For example, I was doing a home staging consultation for a widow who was moving to a new condo. When we got to a study filled with books, she mentioned this was where her husband had worked and that this was his library. There was no point in my jumping right into editing and telling her we needed to style the shelves. She would not have been responsive and it would have put her on the defensive throughout the whole staging consultation. Instead, I left this room until last. By the time we got to it, I had built up a rapport with her and I could then more gently ease her into the need to pack up her late husband’s books “in preparation for her upcoming move.”

Here are other suggestions you can make for the inevitable challenges you will run into staging a home for a grieving homeowner:

Rather than telling her the knick knacks are tacky, you have to remember they were probably gifts from grandchildren that have been cherished over the years. Tell her that because you would hate to see anything happen to them, you think it’s best to pack them up and store them somewhere safe while the house is on the market.

Instead of making a big deal about the cat fur everywhere, tell her that some buyers may have allergies to her beloved feline and he should go somewhere else to stay while the house is being shown.

If you have no room in your budget for rental furniture, tell her how nice it will be to have freshly cleaned furniture to bring with her to her new house or to hand down to her grandchildren and suggest a good professional steam cleaning.

There are some wonderful comments on the blog. Check them out for further learning.

Please share any special challenges you have faced dealing with grieving homeowners and how you handled them by leaving a comment below!

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

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love.

Technorati Tags: home staging, home stager, home stagers, home staging, home staging consultation, home staging dilemma, home staging priority, staging diva

You wanted to become a home stager ever since you first heard of the industry on HGTV. You knew it was the perfect career for you because of your natural design talent and entrepreneurial drive. You decided six months ago to dive in and start a home staging business. You felt like you had chosen the perfect life path and you were so happy you could hardly believe it.

Now, six months later, you’re scared.

The phone hasn’t been ringing like you thought it would be, even though you invested in a membership to the Chamber of Commerce and created and mailed an expensive flyer to all of the real estate offices in your community.

To tell the truth, you still haven’t even done a project for a client you weren’t related to.

Your spouse is telling you to cut your losses and find a job. You’ve spent more than you’ve made. Now you believe you don’t have enough money to take any courses to help you become successful or do any real marketing because you have no projects coming in.

With no support at home and no phones ringing, you think it’s time to give up on your dream.

With six months and no income, what do you do? Please leave your answer by commenting below. (Successful home stagers, I hope you’ll all chime in here!)

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

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love.

Technorati Tags: home staging, home stager, home stagers, home staging dilemma, home staging investment, staging diva

Part of the appeal of a home staging business is the many variations of ways to work with people depending on the situation they’re in. As home stagers we get to work with real people, in their own homes where they are their most comfortable, natural selves. This is a very welcome contrast from dealing with corporate types in suits in stiff boardrooms.

The beauty of being your own boss is that you can make decisions about how you want to handle situations as they arise. You are in charge and you can set things up however they best work for you in the situation. There’s no need for getting permission from anyone…how cool is that?!

In 7 years of staging homes I have experienced a wide range of possible situations and the important thing to remember is that nothing is black and white.

Earlier this month I posted a home staging dilemma asking you what you would do if called to stage a grieving widow’s home – a home full of ugly furnishings and cat fur.

In this dilemma, I was less concerned with the logistics of home staging as I was with hearing how you would approach the situation of a woman grieving not only her husband’s passing but the loss of the home they shared as well.

The comments I received on that post were fabulous. I couldn’t give better advice than what you will read in those comments. Things like cleaning the furniture and adding slip covers are ideal solutions for this situation. (Catch up on the post and read those great comments here.)

But there’s a deeper issue in a scenario like this one – you have to be very tactful with the homeowner. It’s going to be a gentle process to have her take down her precious memories and depersonalize a home that she shared a wonderful life with her late husband in. I would handle this interaction differently than I would with a 35 year old bachelor or a young couple with children but one thing always remains the same – you must always treat the client with the utmost patience and respect. They need to feel that you empathize with whatever situation they are dealing with.

Staging Diva Graduate, Heather Cook, summed it up beautifully in her comment when she wrote, “Every home owner is different and deserves to have his/her home treated with respect. We never make clients feel as if their furnishings are lacking, we always try to work with what they have but maybe put a new spin or finish on them. If that’s not possible then we move forward with rentals – with the client fully on board – so that we can do what they hired us to do – help them sell their home fast and for top dollar. It’s all about how you treat your clients. That’s what makes your clients open to suggestions and once you’ve done your job well, it paves the way to referrals and design business down the road!”

A project like this can be difficult yet quite fulfilling as it really stretches your limits. It reminds you that as a home stager you have to be part psychiatrist, depending on the scenario. But when you’re able to effectively work with a client like the elderly lady I’ve created for this story, you get a feeling of satisfaction that’s hard to find in a boardroom.

During your career as a home stager you will be faced with a situation like this if you haven’t been already and you’ll be faced with dozens of other situations. Along the way you’re going to learn that nothing is ever black and white and you’re going to be amazed at the ways you find to handle all of the situations you encounter.

Thank you for taking the time to comment on the original post. In part it’s your contributions that make this blog such a great resource for home stagers.

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

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the Staging Diva Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love.

Technorati Tags: home staging, home staging scenario, home staging dilemma, home stagers, home staging course, home staging program, staging diva

A homeowner calls you and asks if you’ll stage her home. It’s a sweet lady, a widow of five years, and she’s finally ready to move into a seniors community from the home she and her husband built together 50 years ago.

You make a connection with the woman on the phone and agree to go to her home to conduct a home staging consultation.

When you arrive, you smell fresh coffee and oatmeal cookies which she has prepared for your visit. You smile, take off your shoes and look around. There are shelves of decorative plates and knick knacks on every wall and where there are no ceramic puppies or kittens there are family photos from the past five decades. The furniture is straight out of 1978 and is covered in cat fur.

Do you turn around and run or start making demands of this woman who you could tell on the phone is grieving the process of parting with her beloved home?

I’ll tell you what I would do in this situation in a future post but first I would like to hear what you would do.

Please share by leaving a comment below!

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

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love.

Technorati Tags: home staging, home stager, home stagers, home staging, home staging consultation, home staging dilemma, home staging priority, staging diva

Several weeks ago, I presented a home staging business dilemma for you where a young couple expecting their first baby was having trouble selling their home. It had been on the market for six months and based on feedback from prospective buyers, the rough driveway and ugly second bathroom were shying people away from making an offer.

The catch was this couple only had enough money left to undertake one renovation. (Read the original post and all of the great comments by clicking here.)

I absolutely loved Staging Diva Graduate, Christina Rougerie’s comment. She took more of a strategic approach with her advice saying:

“It also depends on the neighborhood that they live in. Are all the driveways in somewhat the same condition due to harsh winters? If so, then clearly I would remodel the second bath. Either way they would need to contact their realtor to do a market analysis and compare other properties. Do most of them have a remodeled second bath or driveway? Besides Kitchens and Master suites, I’m the kind that researches my competition for that particular area. Every area is different and this always changes the rules to the game. Like in this case driveway or second bath?”

Another Staging Diva Graduate, Hayley Harris, read my mind and summed up my thoughts perfectly, saying:

“For me it would be paramount to get the driveway sorted. This will be the first thing the buyers see as soon as they step out of the car. If they are presented with a driveway in disrepair they are likely to start wondering if the rest of the property would be like this. I would allocate a small amount to the bathroom. As this is not the main bathroom I think a cosmetic makeover would be more than enough. In conclusion, a couple of hundred for the bathroom and the rest of the budget on the drive. Bathrooms can be tarted-up quite cheaply when you know what you’re doing but driveways most definitely can’t and would be a job for the experts.”

I would tell this client to repair the driveway because it is perceived as a more expensive repair and it could do more damage to a potential real estate sale by scaring buyers away at first glance. If they don’t even get in the front door, it won’t matter what the rest of the house looks like!

For the bathroom, it’s amazing what a fresh coat of paint, a new shower curtain, some fluffy towels and art can do. Replacing a sink or taps is not a huge expene and neither is laying a floating floor over what’s already there.

If there are more bathroom repairs needed beyond the cosmetic, buyers won’t be as nervous of taking them on when they see the second bath is livable as is. This is presuming that you’ve gone through and professionally staged the rest of the property so that the buyer will be romanced from the moment they set foot on the grounds!

Thank you for your wonderful comments on that original story – you really contributed to a great discussion! Feel free to add additional comments.

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

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the Staging Diva Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love.

Technorati Tags: home staging, home stager, home stagers, home staging advice, home staging dilemma, home staging priority, staging diva

Home stagers, especially those who haven’t been in the home staging business for long, often write me about their fears of being asked to stage a luxury home. If they don’t live in one themselves and they didn’t grow up in a wealthy family, it’s natural to worry that you won’t know the right things to do.

My very first home staging project was in one of the most expensive areas of the city. When I heard the neighborhood it was in and the fact that they would also need furniture to supplement what they had, I was instantly terrified.

I have only ever lived in modest homes, didn’t grow up with wealth, and wouldn’t know a Louise XVI from a Queen Anne desk, chair etc.

So I walked into my first staging appointment thinking “they’ll spot me for an impostor any minute and throw me out.”

That might have been what I was thinking, but I certainly didn’t let it show. I rehearsed several things I might say to the client in the car on the way there. For example, how I’d describe my process for staging their home, how rental furniture worked, etc. All the kinds of things I now teach my students today in course 3, Taking the Mystery out of Home Staging Consultations, only back then there was no one to teach me so I learned it the hard way!

Imagine my surprise when I got inside the million dollar plus home and found things liked flipped over plastic milk crates for end tables in the master bedroom. Remember this was an “executive home” in one of the most expensive neighborhoods.

With the experience that comes with visiting thousands of homes in many different cities and having personally staged hundreds of them in the last 7 years as a home stager, I’ve come to realize:

• almost no one lives the way you see in Architectural Digest
• rich people don’t necessarily have any taste at all
• most people have no clue about where to put the furniture, what color goes with what, or how to hang art
• many people live in big near-empty homes (the address and outside appearance are all about impressing others and not always a true reflection of how they live inside the house)
• your biggest market as a home stager won’t be the very rich anyways, it will mostly be middle and upper middle class families

So don’t let the address, or what a home looks like from the outside, intimidate you and scare you into thinking you won’t know how to handle the staging project!

Have you had a similar experience you can share? I know your comments will help inspire and educate others. Please share your thoughts by hitting the ‘comments’ link at the top of this story, just below the title.

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

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the Staging Diva Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love.

Technorati Tags: home stagers, luxury homes, luxury home staging, Staging Diva, Debra Gould, home staging

You’re just getting established in your home staging career with only a couple of projects under your belt but with each passing day you’re feeling more confident in your skills and the expertise you have to offer homeowners.

You find yourself one Saturday morning doing a home staging consultation with a sweet young couple. They’re expecting their first child in a matter of weeks and they’re hoping for a fast sale on the tiny one bedroom home they’ve had on the market for six months with no offers.

They have a limited budget and although the home is in good shape overall, the paved driveway is all ripped apart after a particularly harsh winter.

The yard is covered in pieces of asphalt and it’s obvious that the driveway needs to have the existing pavement removed and new pavement put down. Also, inside the house the second bathroom is an absolute eyesore and needs a full reno.

They know from feedback they’ve gotten from their agent and people who have viewed their property that both are sore spots but they only have funds to repair one or the other since each project will cost approximately $5000 to undertake.

What is your expert home stager‘s opinion in this scenario? I’ll share my thoughts later but first, I’d like to hear what you would do in the same situation. Do you believe the second bath is more important to romance the buyer once they’re inside, or should the driveway which leaves the first and last impression be the element to repair?

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

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the Staging Diva Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love.

Technorati Tags: home staging, home stager, home stagers, home staging, home staging consultation, home staging dilemma, home staging priority, staging diva

“Oh, St. Joseph, guardian of household needs, we know you don’t like to be upside down in the ground, but the sooner escrow closes the sooner we will dig you up and put you in a place of honor in our new home. Please bring us an acceptable offer (or any offer!) and help sustain our faith in the real estate market.”

According to FishEaters.com, that’s one version of the popular prayer offered up by home sellers after burying a statue of St. Joseph, hoping for a quicker sale.

Apparently, this odd custom dates back to 1515 when St. Teresa of Avila needed to build a new convent for her quickly growing Disalced Carmelite Order. Of course she needed to buy some land in order for this to happen but she and her fellow sisters didn’t have enough to purchase it. They turned to St. Joseph for help, burying medals with his picture on them in the ground where they wanted to build their convent. Their prayers were answered.

This method also worked for Andre Bessette, when he prayed to St. Joseph and buried a St. Joseph where he would eventually erect the Shrine of St. Joseph in Montreal, Canada.

Though the custom started out as a means of acquiring land, it changed throughout the centuries and is now performed by sellers who carefully bury a statue of St. Joseph, upside-down and covered in protective cloth, in the front yard of their property.

I recently posted a home staging business dilemma that alluded to this custom. I asked stagers what they would do if they wandered into a FSBO that had been on the market for years with the listing price having been dropped by $100,000 and all that had been done to prep it for sale was the burial of St. Joseph statues in the yard. (If you didn’t read it you can see that post here.)

Curiously enough, not many of you actually referenced this act in your feedback, choosing instead to talk about how you would approach the topic of home staging with the homeowner. A commenter named Peggy, however, did pick up on the St. Joseph reference, exactly as I’d hoped someone would when she said, “I would gently remind the client that in case she hadn’t heard, St. Joseph has been putting in some extreme overtime of late and that even the Good Lord ‘Helps those who help themselves!’ Of course I would admit to her that for ‘good measure,’ I too buried a St. Joseph statute in my yard (I did!) but then I did everything else in MY POWER to help him help me! And the utmost help I could offer was by staging my own home!”

Peggy cleverly added her own home staging success story in her comment when she wrote, “I would then tell her how my staged home sold to the first buyer through and how there were 3 back up offers in waiting! I would add that there were no less than 30 other homes on the market in my neighborhood alone at that time. I would then suggest she consider helping St. Joseph help her by setting up a time that she and I could discuss in greater detail the power and effectiveness of home staging!”

So while burying a statue of St. Joseph in the yard might help sell faster, it might be prudent to do the same thing Peggy did and ensure that the home is staged too (you know, just in case!) because as she added in her comment, “I would share with her my belief that, ‘In today’s real estate market, a home seller can’t take themselves or what they are trying to accomplish seriously until they have at least spoken to a home stager about how they can get their home sold faster and for the most money possible.’”

By the way, I confess I never even heard of this practice of burying a St. Joseph statue until a frustrated home seller called me to say that she’d tried it unsuccessfully for three years (!) and she was desperate and ready to try home staging instead. I sent her to the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers to locate a Staging Diva Graduate who could help her.

Have you heard of any other techniques home sellers have used besides home staging, price cuts and statues of St. Joseph? I’d love to hear your comments and share them in a future post.

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

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the Staging Diva Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love.

Technorati Tags: home staging, home stager, home stagers, home staging, home staging dilemma, St. Joseph statue, buried st joseph statue, staging diva

You’re in a neighboring town running errands on a Saturday morning when you see an open house sign. You don’t have anyone with you today and you have nowhere else to be for an hour or two so you walk inside. The home is a FSBO and the hostess, the homeowner, looks very tired sitting next to her box of one dozen doughnuts.

The house is very sad. It’s dark and it’s vacant. All there is inside is the homeowner, a crucifix, a TV on the counter, a kitchen table and two chairs.

There are no buyers in the house and you decide you have nothing to lose so you introduce yourself to the woman and tell her you’re a home stager before asking how long the house has been on the market.

The woman says, “To tell you the truth, we’re at the end of our rope! We’ve been trying to sell for almost three years. We’ve dropped our price by more than $100,000 since then and we’ve even buried statues of St. Joseph in the yard but we still can’t even get an offer.”

How do you respond?

I’ll share my thoughts later but first, I’d like to hear what you would do in the same situation.

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

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the Staging Diva Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love.

Technorati Tags: home staging, home stager, home stagers, home staging, home staging dilemma, St. Joseph statue, buried st joseph statue, staging diva