Professional Home Stagers have the ability to imagine what even the worst room can look like with the right color, furniture, lighting and accessories. That’s not easy to do if you don’t have the right eye for it. For home sellers, it’s especially difficult to view their home as a highly critical buyer will. They are too emotionally involved in the house, the contents, the memories of living there, why they need to move, etc. Home Stager Debra Rowley of Debra Rowley Interior Staging saw this living room when it was filled with construction debris. She was able to create the right contemporary look to attract a full price offer at the first open house for this $945,000 Seattle area home!

Home staging is all about romancing the home buyer, which is especially necessary in slow real estate markets.

Prospective buyers shop with logic but they buy on emotion.

Unless they walk into a home and make an emotional connection with it, they won’t make an offer. Especially in a buyer’s market when they feel no pressure to act quickly because there are so many other homes to choose from.

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

Internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould is president of Six Elements and creator of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program with 750+ Graduates worldwide. She is the author of “Staging Diva Ultimate Color Guide: The Easy Way to Pick Colors for Home Staging Projects”, and “Staging Diva Ultimate Guide: Creating The Perfect Portfolio to Sell Your Home Staging Services”.

Debra also offers a Directory of Home Stagers to help homeowners and real estate agents locate home stagers who will decorate homes to sell quickly and for top dollar.

Technorati Tags: home staging, home stager, real estate staging, Seattle home staging, home staging statistics, romancing home buyers, decorate to sell, Debra Rowley, Washington home staging, Sammamish real estate, Staging Diva

Congratulations to the first Staging Diva Graduate in Italy, Tamara Lee Wilson Earl who is based in Milan.

Tamara followed the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program by ordering the five course recordings to listen to at her own convenience.

I’m looking forward to Tamara’s stories about starting up her staging business in Milan, Italy.

Italy’s real estate market has been hot in recent years, with prices rising substantially. Many Italian investors distrust the stock market and prefer to put their money into real estate.

Italians are bigger savers than in the US. Personal debt levels are lower so the risky mortgage practices (which have percipitated house price declines in many US markets) are not seen in Italy.

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

Discover the ONLY Home Staging Business Training Program taught by a seasoned entrepreneur who has successfully grown her own home staging business (not as a side-line to selling real estate) — The Staging Diva Training Program.

With an MBA in marketing and hundreds of home staging clients, internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva, is uniquely qualified to train others how to start and grow a profitable home staging business.

More about Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training

Listen to a FREE Staging Diva Preview Call Recording

Technorati Tags: home staging, house fluffing, house fluffers, home stagers, Italy home staging, Milan home staging, Italy home stager, house staging, real estate staging, real estate staging business, home staging training, home staging business, staging diva, Debra Gould

Schott’s Almanac which the Sunday Times calls “a social barometer of genuine historic value, ” features the latest catch-phrases as language evolves.

The 2007 edition includes “house fluffing” as sprucing up one’s house in preparation for a sale.

This is great for the house fluffing, or home staging, industry as it contributes to overall awareness of the need to decorate a home to sell for top dollar.

The more the average public learns about what this is, the better for all home stagers or house fluffers as we’re sometimes called.

However, our responsibility as home stagers remains, to continue to educate the public and the media about:

• what home staging is,
• why home staging works and
• what to expect from a professional home stager.

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

Discover the ONLY Home Staging Business Training Program taught by a seasoned entrepreneur who has successfully grown her own home staging business (not as a side-line to selling real estate) — The Staging Diva Training Program.

With an MBA in marketing and hundreds of home staging clients, internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva, is uniquely qualified to train others how to start and grow a profitable home staging business.

More about Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training

Listen to a FREE Staging Diva Preview Call Recording

Technorati Tags: home staging, house fluffing, house fluffers, home stagers, Schott’s Almanac, house staging, real estate staging, real estate staging business, home staging training, home staging business, Directory of Home Stagers, staging diva, Debra Gould

If you’re serious about promoting your staging services, you need great before and after photos. These take time to plan and shoot; don’t expect to run through a house and get a bunch of great shots in 10 minutes.

If you’re trying to show the before and after of a certain room:

• Make sure both photographs are taken from the same angle.

• Shoot both of them with the same orientation, either horizontal or vertical.

• In the “after” shot, eliminate any distracting details like the dishtowel hanging from the stove or the opened toilet seat.

• Don’t shoot towards a window in daylight; it will make the rest of your image too dark.

These are some of the many tips contained in my new ebook “Staging Diva™ Ultimate Guide: Creating The Perfect Portfolio to Sell Your Home Staging Services” coming out March 1.

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

Discover the ONLY Home Staging Business Training Program taught by a seasoned entrepreneur who has successfully grown her own home staging business (not as a side-line to selling real estate) — The Staging Diva Training Program.

With an MBA in marketing and hundreds of home staging clients, internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva, is uniquely qualified to train others how to start and grow a profitable home staging business.

More about Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training

Listen to a FREE Staging Diva Preview Call Recording

Technorati Tags: home staging, home stagers, house staging, real estate staging, real estate staging business, home staging portfolio, home staging before and after photos, The Business of Home Staging, home staging training, home staging business, Directory of Home Stagers, staging diva, Debra Gould

One of the ways to improve your own home staging before and after photos is to use a program like Photoshop or other photo editing software to help the shot look better.

I’m not suggesting putting in or taking out items (the decorating equivalent of sticking somone’s head on someone else’s body!), but for fixing things like:

• improving the lighting and contrast
• rotating the image so that it looks straight
• cropping to focus on the right elements within the shot
• bumping up the colors so they look more true to life (sometimes photos come out very yellow for example because of the lighting)
• cropping down to a close up detail of the room to create a vignette

How room photos look on a home staging website is critical to marketing our staging services. Good interior shots are also critical for realtors who want to do an effective job of drawing potential buyers to their listings since so many people house hunt on line.

I know I bought my last three houses after finding them on the Internet!

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

Discover the ONLY Home Staging Business Training Program taught by a seasoned entrepreneur who has successfully grown her own home staging business (not as a side-line to selling real estate) — The Staging Diva Training Program.

With an MBA in marketing and hundreds of home staging clients, internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva, is uniquely qualified to train others how to start and grow a profitable home staging business.

More about Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training

Listen to a FREE Staging Diva Preview Call Recording

Technorati Tags: home staging, home stagers, house staging, real estate staging, real estate staging business, home staging portfolio, home staging before and after photos, The Business of Home Staging, home staging training, home staging business, Directory of Home Stagers, staging diva, Debra Gould

Since home staging is a completely unregulated field, some house stagers seem to think “anything goes” and others do certain things without really thinking through the ramifications.

I’m disturbed by the number of home staging websites using the same before and after images. That’s because many of these stagers have taken a program that includes being given a fake portfolio to help them get their business started. Others, have purchased “stock images” to enhance the look of their websites and marketing materials.

This completely misleads homeowners and real estate agents who are purchasing our services based in no small part on the strength of our portfolios. We are selling our staging or decorating talents, so the before and after photos we present to them must absolutely be our own work!

This flower image is not a stock image, it’s from a kitchen I personally staged. The project included doing all the flower arrangements for the house. This shot is a close up I took of one of my arrangements.

What is a stock image?

An image, photographed and made available by someone else, and then rented or sold to third parties for their own use (generally marketing communications). Some stock images are royalty free and therefore available without a fee.

Stock images (photographs and illustrations) have been used by major corporations and advertisers for years, long before the Internet made digital images available to the masses. It’s an effective way to build your marketing message without having to budget for a professional shoot or professional illustration.

But, the stock images are not used to represent the actual product being sold, they are used in other ways. For example, a beach shot to depict the prize you can win by buying the product. The product shot would be an actual photograph of the product being sold.

In this blog I use stock images to represent locations where I’m advertising for a home stager. I used a stock shot of a projector when I was posting about the need for a guest speaker in Texas. However, I never use stock shots of interiors of homes. All the decor shots on this blog and my two sites are of rooms I’ve staged. The only exception being when I’m blogging about a Staging Diva Graduate or showcasing their portfolio, then I use one of their own portfolio shots. In the case of listings in the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers, all the photos must be the work of the home stager advertising.

Use of stock images to promote your home staging or decorating services

As professional home stagers we should not be using stock photos of house interiors or exteriors in our marketing efforts. I know many will disagree with me, especially the people using them or making money selling them to others.

When we use an image that we’ve bought, begged or borrowed from someone else, we are implying (to potential customers) that it is our work because it’s showing the service we are selling.

Establishing trust and credibility

In a nation-wide survey of why people buy, “confidence in the company or their service/product,” was the number one reason (”price” was down at number 5 in case you’re wondering). If a prospect assumes that all the lovely room shots they see on your site, brochure, etc. are your own work and they find out that it isn’t, what does that do to your credibility?

If your brochure and front page of your site have gorgeous stock shots and then they go to your portfolio and don’t see the same level of quality, what do they think of your portfolio? I think they’ll very likely feel like they were getting sucked in by fancy packaging and there isn’t anything beneath that. So, their confidence in you has just gone out the window.

If you haven’t bought my case for why using stock “decor” images is misleading, consider this…. your own portoflio of before and after photos can only look worse when you mix it in with professionally shot and styled stock images. Because they’re juxtaposed together, the contrast in quality is obvious. What might have been a perfectly acceptable portfolio on it’s own now looks amateurish.

With every word and image you use in your marketing efforts, you are communicating who you are and what you offer. When there are inconsistencies you only lower the confidence others will have in you, making actually getting hired for your work, infinitely harder.

If a real estate agent runs an ad with a bunch of photos of homes with a SOLD flash across the picture and they were not involved in the sale of any of the homes, I would find this equally misleading. Because they are implying that they had the listing or that they found the buyer for the home. The fact that some do it is not a reason to say everyone should.

If you were selling your car, would you run an ad with a different vehicle in the picture? And if you did, would the person buy the car when they saw the real thing?

If you’re selling your decorating talent and the photos on your site are of rooms decorated by someone else, this is misleading. That’s why you shouldn’t do it, plain and simple. No amount of rationalizing about how others do it, or how it’s hard to get started, will change that.

I don’t use stock images on my two home staging websites and I don’t provide staging portfolios as part of the Staging Diva Training Program. Though I do discuss how to go about building your first home staging portfolio as part of course 2 of the program.

It can sometimes be tempting to take short cuts, but in the long run I believe it will hurt business. What goes around comes around. At the end of the day, if we don’t have our integrity, what do we have?

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

Discover the ONLY Home Staging Business Training Program taught by a seasoned entrepreneur who has successfully grown her own home staging business (not as a side-line to selling real estate) — The Staging Diva Training Program.

With an MBA in marketing and hundreds of home staging clients, internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva, is uniquely qualified to train others how to start and grow a profitable home staging business.

More about Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training

Listen to a FREE Staging Diva Preview Call Recording

Technorati Tags: home staging, home stagers, house staging, real estate staging, real estate staging business, home staging portfolio, home staging before and after photos, The Business of Home Staging, home staging training, home staging business, Directory of Home Stagers, staging diva, Debra Gould

A major US newspaper is doing a story on blacks and visible minorities in the field of home staging. If you have any information to share and would like to be interviewed for this story, please contact Staging Diva Graduate, Venus Hamilton of Distinctive Touch.

Home Staging expert Debra Gould also known as The Staging Diva is president of Six Elements Inc., a leading home staging company that provides free information to raise the standards in the industry and build awareness amongst homeowners and their real estate agents about the benefits of decorating a house to sell.

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

Technorati Tags: blacks in home staging, visible minorities in home staging, home stager, staging diva, real estate staging, home staging business, home staging training, directory of home stagers, home staging directory

I’ve been contacted by a major insurance company that is organizing a series of lunch and learn sessions for new real estate agents who have joined the Arlington Texas Board of Realtors.

They would like a guest speaker for their March 13, 2007 luncheon to speak about home staging. It’s an excellent opportunity to educate new agents about the benefits of home staging and position yourself as the local home staging expert.

Imagine speaking at an event that is organized and hosted by a prestigious firm. That’s far different than showing up at a realtor office begging for a chance to speak to their agents!

If you’re interested in me recommending you for this opportunity, you need to be a Graduate of The Staging Diva Home Staging Training Program and have a website or listing in the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers. I’ll be looking for stagers with a strong portfolio of before and after photos who can speak confidently about home staging.

If you’re interested in this amazing opportunity to showcase your talents in a professional setting, please email me using “Arlington Texas Speaking Opportunity” in the headline and tell me why you should be the one to speak at this event.

This is one example of the leads and marketing opportunities I provide to Graduates of The Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. I’ve also referred hundreds of staging projects over the past twelve months and gained media attention and other speaking engagments for a number of Graduates.

Home staging expert Debra Gould, the Staging Diva, is president of Six Elements Inc. a leading home staging firm. She has also taught close to 400 women and men across the US, Canada, Australia, England, Wales, South Africa and The Philippines to start and grow a successful home staging business. She has been featured on HGTV, CBS Radio, CNNMoney, The Wall Street Journal, Woman’s Day, Reader’s Digest, House and Home, Style at Home, GlobalTV, CityTV, LIFE Network, and many more.
Learn how to take your decorating talent and turn it into a profitable staging business

Browsing for magazines to read over the holidays, I discovered that The Staging Diva Home Staging Training Program made Entrepreneur’s Fall 2006/Winter 2007 Business Start Ups Guide.

It’s the third time Staging Diva has made one of their Start Up Guides this year. Staging Diva is the ONLY Home Staging Business Opportunity Entrepreneur Magazine recognized this year, and they also identified home staging as one of the hottest growth businesses for 2006.

Given the continued melt down in US real estate (Canada experienced what they’re calling a “soft landing” in 2006), the demand for home staging services will continue to rise in 2007 making this an excellent time to learn how to start and grow a staging business.

After all, when there are a dozen other similar houses in your neighborhood for sale and prices are falling, what other strategy can a homeowner use to protect their most important financial investment when it’s time to sell?

Home staging makes a tremendous difference in how fast a home sells and for how much because it’s human nature to be attracted to something that looks better! That’s why we dress up when we go on a date, why we detail a car before we sell it… how silly to imagine you can take a cluttered, badly decorated home in need of obvious repair and expect top dollar!

Discover the ONLY Home Staging Business Training Program taught by a seasoned entrepreneur who has successfully grown her own home staging business (not as a side-line to selling real estate) — The Staging Diva Training Program. With an MBA in marketing and hundreds of home staging clients, internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva, is uniquely qualified to train others how to start and grow a profitable home staging business.

You can become a Staging Diva Graduate with 10 hours of training by phone with Debra Gould from home, or you can do the entire program by listening to recordings which are emailed to you immediately after you register.

More about Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training

Technorati Tags: home staging, home stagers, house staging, real estate staging, real estate staging business, Entrepreneur Magazine, business start ups, The Business of Home Staging, working from home, home staging training, home staging business, staging diva, Debra Gould

Last Monday I was supposed to appear on Bob McCormick’s Money 101 radio show on KNX1070, CBS Newsradio’s Los Angeles affiliate. The show was moved to today because of the wild fires that were burning around LA last week.

So, you can catch me live today on Money 101 at 10:30 AM Pacific Time, for a 30 minute interview on how to stage a house to maximize it’s value given the squeeze Southern California homeowners are in because of slower real estate sales, declining propery values and the high number of adjustable rate mortgages in a rising interest rate environment. It’s a great show with lots of real estate-related features.

Listen in live to Money 101 on KNX1070 in LA, November 13, 10:30 AM, and I invite your comments here!

Recent Money 101 Episodes available on line

Home Staging expert Debra Gould also known as The Staging Diva is president of Six Elements Inc., a leading home staging company that provides free information to raise the standards in the industry and build awareness amongst homeowners and their real estate agents about the benefits of decorating a house to sell. 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

Technorati Tags: home staging Southern California, home staging Los Angeles, home stager, Money 101, Bob McCormick, KNX1070 Newsradio, CBS Newsradio, Debra Gould, staging diva, real estate staging, home staging business, home staging training