Six months ago I wrote a post called Virtual Staging or Just Misleading Pictures? in which I said that I considered using software to manipulate listing photos was a waste of money because as soon as perspective home buyers visit the house they’ll be disappointed (which of course doesn’t lead to an offer to purchase). That’s the best case scenario in my opinion.

At worst, they might even be horrified with what they find as happened to Texas real estate agent Greg Nino, who had a pretty angry client after he took him to see a house that looked nothing like the listing photos. His experience, and some of the surrounding issues, are highlighted in an article this week in the Seattle Times called, Virtual Staging is raising concerns: Virtual Staging can make nightmare look like a dream house.

In it, columnist Kenneth R. Harney describes the slippery slope you’re on when you start manipulating room shots. After all, where do you stop in a virtual staging? Do you only put in “virtual” furniture? Or while you’re at it, do you also change laminate counters to granite, virtually paint over ugly wallpaper, add in crown molding where none exists, etc.?

Many people rationalize that as long as all photos disclose that the property doesn’t really look like that, it’s OK. Or they say,”if there’s no budget to stage for real, using digitally altered listing photos is the next best thing.”

I still think having a big disconnect between what a prospective buyer expects after seeing the listing photos, and what they actual experience when they walk into the home, is a problem.

Imagine going to an online dating site, falling in love with someone’s photo and then you meet them in person and they’re 25 years older and 40 pounds heavier than their photo. Do you stick around long enough to get past that? Maybe if you’ve committed to a dinner and you’re too embarrassed to walk out immediately. But if it was only a coffee, my guess is you drink it up, say you’ve got a meeting and bye bye now!

Now before you accuse me of being overly shallow, consider this. If someone lacks that much integrity when they’re representing themselves in their photo, wouldn’t it make you wonder what else you shouldn’t trust about them?

A real estate showing is rather like that “coffee date”. There’s no obligation to stick around for any length of time. You just turn to the agent and say, “Forget it, this isn’t what I was expecting. Let’s move on to the next house on our list.” Or in agent Nino’s case, you have to deal with an outraged client who is blaming you for wasting their time taking them to a disgusting property that looks nothing like the listing photos.

What do you think of virtual staging? Please share your 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: virtual staging, virtual staging software, home stagers, home staging, home stager, home staging training, home staging courses, home staging business, staging diva

I came across an interesting article recently about a home stager who has come up with a new way to package her services over the holiday season which is traditionally a slower time of year for stagers.

She has started offering holiday home staging parties and I hope this story inspires you to think about some different ways you can be packaging your talents!

For these holiday staging parties, a free consultation is held beforehand where the host(ess) decides which room is to be staged and what the budget should be (the stager does her initial consultation for free but charges for materials and labor). At this time, the client also shares their preferred color palette, favorite types of fabrics and gives their general style preference to the stager.

Clients are also asked what purpose the space will serve over the holidays and whether or not they will be using their own items or if rentals and accessories will have to be brought in. (Read this entire holiday home staging article here.)

The holiday staging party actually takes place in the room that’s being staged while the stager gives a presentation as she decorates. The home stager transforms the space as the gathering goes on around her.

You know I don’t agree with home stagers giving free consultations, but besides that, this is an interesting way to get additional business at a slower time of year. At the end of the evening, the stager has exposed her business to all of the guests in attendance, the homeowner has a room made over for the holidays and everyone has shared some holiday cheer and will come away with some new holiday decorating ideas.

As a home stager, your natural talents and skills are very valuable and appreciated by anyone who doesn’t share them! Why not do something a little different? Can you think of some ways you can broaden your market by packaging your talents in a different way? Please feel free to share your ideas by commenting 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 while helping others at the same time.

Technorati Tags: home stager, home stagers, home staging, home staging business, holiday home staging, free estimates, staging diva, debra gould

Staging Diva Graduate Anne Gunson’s spot for A Current Affair in Australia has finally aired and you can catch it online. In this TV spot you’ll see the transformation of a home that sold in 4 days for more than anyone thought it was worth before staging. Anne’s company, Home Staging by Anne is based in Brisbane Australia.

> View the Real Estate Makeover Story on A Current Affair

> Learn how you can become a Staging Diva Graduate

Have you ever noticed how well-dressed the families are when “surprised” by Ty and the rest of the Extreme Makeover crew? What about the fact that everyone is always home the moment the bus pulls up and available on a moment’s notice to go on a one-week vacation?

I hate to spoil the magic, but these houses are being worked on for months before the cameras start rolling. It’s completely unrealistic to believe that an entire house can be demolished, rebuilt, painted and furnished in a week, but it makes for great television!

Like any form of “reality TV”, most decorating shows on HGTV, including those focusing on home staging, are pretty unrealistic.They’re more about “entertainment” then they are about “reality.”

While they might show a home stager going through and cleaning the house, painting the walls, buying the accessories and replacing the hardware and lighting fixtures, that rarely happens in the real world. Plus, few of us arrive with a complete crew including a seamstress to make custom window treatments and cushions on the spot, a carpenter to whip up a wall unit the same morning, or our own electrician!

Think about it. If these shows featured a solo home stager walking through a house telling someone what had to be done and then showing the final product it would be pretty boring to watch.

If you’re using those shows as a guideline for what you might have to do when you’re staging homes, don’t be too quick to assume you’re going to have to do everything yourself or that becoming a home stager means you’ll be physically exerting yourself every day.

If you arrange your business the smart way, you’ll be sourcing other people to do the heavy lifting for you and you can still make money from their services. You don’t have to lift a finger to do anything you don’t want to.

Think of your role as a home stager as being more of a creative director of the entire re-design project.

You have the vision and figure out what needs to happen to make it come to fruition. Put away those cleaning supplies, paint brushes and strategies for lugging heavy furniture around!

You can source the cleaners to give you a fresh canvas to start with, you choose the paint colors and recommend a painter to apply the color to the walls. If you feel the counter tops need to be replaced, you should have a contractor you can recommend to get the job done.

Home stagers come in all shapes, sizes and ages. The eldest graduate of the Staging Diva program is Jean Smith in Florida who is 76 years old. She’s having the time of her life but I can assure you she’s not moving furniture or cleaning floors, and neither do I. I’m 5’1” and a lot of the furniture that needs to be moved is bigger than I am, yet I’ve staged hundreds of homes.

Go ahead and keep watching those HGTV shows, they’re great entertainment and you might pick up design ideas. They’ll help inspire and motivate you in your career as a home stager, but don’t believe everything you see. If you’ve been holding off on starting your career as home stager because you think it will be too physical reconsider that faulty assumption!

The Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program teaches you how to build alliances with other service providers so you can focus on the creative work without the heavy lifting, yet still be ready to offer all the services your clients need at a handsome profit.

Stagers, if you have a great system that you use for your home staging projects, please share by leaving a comment. Aspiring home stagers will be encouraged by your examples and we all stand to learn from each other.

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

Debra Gould developed the Staging Diva Training Program to create opportunities for others to grow their own profitable home staging businesses. There are currently over 4000 Staging Diva students around the world.

Technorati Tags: HGTV shows, home staging, home stagers, home staging television shows, staging diva, debra gould

Staging Diva Graduate Patricia Ebrahimi of Show-Smart! Home Staging in Washington DC is the featured home staging expert in the Washington Post providing her real estate staging tips to home sellers.

Patricia, who started her company in 2005 writes, “Things are great for in DC for staging! Five of the homes I staged in May either sold the first day or went under contract withing the first week or so. Thanks for all your help Debra in getting me there!”

As a home staging trainer and mentor I’m so proud of Patricia’s business success and that she’s out there helping home sellers realize the difference staging can make in the speedy sale of their home.

With so much sad real estate news out there, and the general feeling of hopelessness that is often promoted by the media, it’s great to continue to give the public proof that home staging works, in both fast and slow real estate markets.

Patricia’s excellent tips in the Washington Post article include:

Using a product called Goof Off to remove latext paint splatters from floorboards, cabinets or chair rails and Downy Fabric Softener mixed with hot water sprayed on walls to help remove ugly wallpaper.

For home staging design tips, check out the Staging Diva Ultimate Design Guide: Home Staging Tips, Tricks and Floor Plans.

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

Debra Gould developed the Staging Diva Training Program to create opportunities for others to grow their own profitable home staging businesses. There are currently over 1000 Staging Diva Graduates around the world.

Technorati Tags: home staging, real estate staging, Staging Diva, staging Washington, decorated to sell, proof staging works

Congratulations to Anne Gunson of Home Staging by Anne who is featured on an upcoming TV segment of Australia’s A Current Affair.

The show followed Anne from her initial home staging consultation right through to the final completion of staging the property before it went on the real estate market. The home sellers were also interviewed for the segment and noted “the house wouldn’t have sold without staging.”

Thanks to Anne Gunson, who graduated from the Staging Diva Home Staging Training Program 2 years ago and has seen steady growth in her real estate staging business since then, the property sold in only 4 days for more than $50,000 (AUD) above what it was expected to sell for prior to staging.

With real estate sales rates in the Brisbane region falling significantly, home staging offers a welcome solution for home sellers hoping for a faster sale at a higher price.

> How to become a home stager

> Find a Staging Diva Graduate home stager

The next time an agent tells you “home staging doesn’t work,” get them to check out this video. It’s a wonderful example of what can be done over a single day or two, using what the homeowner already has and creating a completely new environment. Dare I say “hot property”!

Four minutes well spent to watch the transformation of this Westport, Connecticut home that has sat for 6 months without a single offer. Well no wonder! You’d think her agent might have mentioned that her lovely home just looked plain sad. That it looked like she was half moved out already!

Check it out and add your comments below!

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

Internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould, creator of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, has staged millions of dollars worth of real estate, including seven of her own homes. She is president of home staging firm Six Elements Inc. and has trained over 1000 home stagers to start and grow their own businesses.

Staging Diva Graduate Donna Dazzo of Designed to Appeal has been grabbing quite a lot of media attention recently in New York. And it’s no wonder! Her home staging projects are fabulous and she’s invested time and energy into promoting her business in a professional way.

Not long after Donna completed the Staging Diva Home Staging Training Program, she got my attention with how quickly she joined the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers with a very professional photo of herself and great staging shots. This was followed by frequent updates to me about her company and projects so I could write about her (an invitation I give to all Staging Diva Graduates, but many never get around to following through on this).

Donna’s most recent media coverage includes a feature in New York Resident Magazine, distributed to Manhattan doorman residential buildings, at various retail outlets such as Barnes & Noble and Starbucks, and to transportation hubs such as Grand Central and Penn Stations.

Donna was also featured in short TV segment on home staging for New York 1′s Real Estate Report. The spot aired multiple times over a January weekend and showcased Donna’s knowledge about the benefits of home staging.

A veteran of more than 25 years in the financial services sector, this talented stager has totally reinvented herself over the past year and as a teacher and mentor, it’s been a pleasure to watch! In fact, I’ll be writing a blog post this Wednesday about the power of following our dreams and coming into our own.

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 is determined to inspire and teach others to do the same. There are over 1000 Staging Diva Graduates who have learned to use their decorating talents and run their own home staging business in the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program.

Technorati Tags: home staging, new york stager, Donna Dazzo, Designed to Appeal, Staging Diva, home staging business

I did a radio morning show interview about home staging this week. It was the first time I had three people grilling me at once about why home sellers should use real estate staging to help them sell their homes faster.

I spoke with Katfish Morgan, Darryl Kornicky and Laura Stone from Live 88.5 Radio in Ottawa. The show aired this morning.

Hear an unedited recording of the interview.

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, Katfish Morgan, Darryl Kornicky, Start Up Radio, Live 88.5, home staging training, business of home staging Staging Diva, Debra Gould, Ask Staging Diva Live