It may surprise you to know that real estate agents aren’t always realtors. That’s why I wanted to make the distinction between the two in the Home Staging Glossary by Staging Diva. If you look closely, you’ll see that Realtor has a ® symbol after it – an important detail to note.

The entry in the glossary for Realtor® reads:

People often assume that the term realtor can be used interchangeably with real estate agent. REALTOR® is actually a registered trademark of the National Real Estate Association (NAR) and only their members can properly be referred to as a REALTOR®.

If you’re using the word realtor in your website content, you can get in trouble because it is a trademarked phrase. When you make mention of a real estate agent and you know they are, in fact, a REALTOR® then you must type the word in capital letters with the ® symbol after it.

There are lots of great tidbits of information like this in the Home Staging Glossary. Please take a few minutes to peruse some of the entries there. You won’t find strict dictionary-type definitions. Instead I’ve tried to breathe more life into each entry by adding tips or a link to an article on the subject.

Your suggestions for new additions to the Staging Glossary are especially welcome as it’s hard for me to think of all the terms you might like more information on by myself.

Is there a word or phrase related to the staging or real estate industry that you are unsure of? Leave a comment and let me know what it is so I can add a definition and other helpful tips on the subject to the glossary!

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

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.

In real estate, there’s nothing quite as sad as a vacant home. When a potential buyer walks through a home with no furniture besides bare mattresses in the bedrooms, even if it’s the ideal property for them, their thoughts are distracted as they wonder what caused the homeowners to leave in such a hurry. That’s one reason why home staging is so important!

Staging Diva Graduate Dolly DeWald, owner of Omaha home staging business D3 Dolly DeWald Designs, was approached by a couple who had recently moved out of town. They knew they’d have better luck selling if their home wasn’t a mish-mash of empty rooms and randomly placed remaining furniture like a couple of beds and a baby grand piano.

The homeowners agreed at their home staging consultation to clear out the clutter and take care of some cosmetic changes Dolly suggested. While they were doing that, Dolly shopped for accessories and sourced rental furniture. The entire home staging project took fifteen hours and it was completed just in time for the homeowner’s first open house. Dolly stopped by before it started to arrange some fresh flowers (plucked from the property’s gardens) and to freshen everything up.

That evening the real estate agent called Dolly with the good news that the home sold at the open house for 99% of asking!

Everyone involved was thrilled.

About her home staging training, Dolly says, “My goal was to do something I truly enjoyed doing. I love staging homes. The Staging Diva Program has given me the tools necessary to help me realize my goal.”

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 thousands of people like Dolly how to earn a living doing something they love.

I’ve been contacted by a home seller in Hopwood, (Fayette County) Pennsylvania who needs the help of a professional home stager.

His 5000 square foot home is currently listed at $397,500 after a price reduction in a market where, according to Trulia.com, the average listing price is just $187,403!

In other words, this house is on the high-end for the Fayette County real estate market. Given it’s size and the fact that it is furnished already and not selling despite a price reduction, this is a great staging project for you to prove that home staging really works and it will make a great addition to your portfolio!

It couldn’t be easier for you 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 “Hopwood, PA 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 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 staging portfolio.

This real estate staging project would be a fantastic addition to your portfolio and if you get any paid work through this referral, there will be a $250 referral fee. You can build this into your fee to the client or not, it’s entirely up to you.

Because of all the traffic generated by my many home staging websites, I get lots of leads on staging jobs 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 Graduates.

I generate tons of traffic for anyone listed on the Directory. Only one good project would more than pay for your entire Training Program plus building and hosting your web page on the high traffic 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

Technorati Tags: home stager, home staging, home staging business, Pennsylvania home stager, home stager Pennsylvania, Hopwood home stager, staging diva, directory of home stagers, home staging jobs

As a home stager, part of your job is to convince your clients why they have to spend money on a house they’re selling, an unattractive notion for many homeowners you’ll encounter.

Your job is to demonstrate how the money they spend on their home now is actually an investment and that the more money they put into the project, the greater their potential profit when the house sells.

When I entered a bidding war on the home I’m currently living in, I had only a few days to get my other house on the market and there was a lot of pressure to have it looking perfect, especially with me being The Staging Diva!

Of course I didn’t have to hire a stager but I did have to hire a handyman, gardener, painter and junk removal service. I also had no choice but to install a new kitchen floor because the 1920s kitchen had never been renovated. I decided to go with cork because it’s easy to install right over vinyl and it would work well with the retro chic look that I’d created while living in the space.

As the costs continued to climb to prepare my house for the real estate market, I found myself saying, “Why in the world would I spend almost $800 on a new floor for a house that I’m just trying to sell?” Naturally, I know better and the stager half of me was able to give that negative voice a little pep talk on why it’s an investment and not an expense.

When I originally purchased that home I’d painted the old laminate counter tops, cabinets and the back splash. I’d even added new hardware and lighting but I fell into that familiar trap of being too busy to replace the floor and I just got good at learning to ignore it.

The reality is that kitchens are key with buyers and I knew the old floor would stand right out and would encourage buyers to focus on the fact that it was really an old kitchen that had simply been tarted up. The look needed to be complete to wow buyers and leave them thinking “nice kitchen” rather than “this needs to be renovated!”

If I wanted to make a good profit on my own home staging services, I had to complete that look and spend the $800 to fix the floor and when it was finished, I knew it would pay off.

I was right! I sold that house after only 9 days on the market and I sold for well above asking. The profit I made more than covered the costs I’d incurred replacing the kitchen floor and getting repairs done. Even better, despite the house competing with others in the price range that had renovated kitchens with granite counters, the buyer told her agent that one of the reasons she bought the house was that she fell in love with the kitchen!

If your clients are struggling with investing in their home as they prepare to sell, remind them that every improvement they make is one less barrier between a potential buyer and their decision to buy.

Home stagers, do you have a story you’d like to share about an investment your clients were resistant to make that ended up paying off? 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 stagers, staging diva, staging clients, home staging courses, home staging business, invest in staging, home staging training, debra gould

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

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 have a personal trainer who helps me meet my fitness goals. Could I do those exercises myself? Yes. Would I be as likely to get my butt to the gym three days a week with nobody to hold me accountable? Probably not.

Just as my personal trainer has helped me conquer my fitness challenges, as a business coach I help aspiring and established home stagers meet their goals and grow their businesses.

In the past few weeks, with Staging Diva Accelerator Business Coaching, home stagers have used their one-on-one time with me to:

• Beat down limiting assumptions they’ve been making
• Identify ways to reduce income tax by over 30%
• Deliver a reality check on their ideas and expectations
• Name their businesses
• Review concepts for their business logos
• Critique a website and identify ways to improve its ranking with search engines
• Edit their Staging Diva Directory Profile copy
• Identify ways to increase sales by up to 65%
• Get them through an especially challenging staging project
• Improve on their real estate agent presentation
• Unravel an overwhelming To Do list to focus on the highest pay-off activities
• Review home staging portfolios and identify the strongest photos to include

If you find that you’re feeling stuck on a particular challenge or if you’re ready to start using some new ideas to take your business to the next level, you could benefit from an Accelerator Business Coaching session. You don’t have to be a Staging Diva Student  in order to book a business coaching session with me. In fact, I’ve helped plenty of struggling stagers who have never taken any of my courses, with very specific information geared towards their unique challenges and opportunities.

Once you order coaching time, you’ll be given access to my online calendar so that you can book a convenient appointment date and time in 15, 30, 45 and 60-minute increments. You’ll provide your phone number when booking, and I’ll call you at the appointed time for your business coaching session. It’s that simple.

You don’t need to prepare a list of specific questions so don’t let that stop you.

If you give me a quick overview of your situation and what your biggest challenges are, I will be able to take it from there. It could be one of the most important investments you ever make in your home staging business.

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 stagers, staging diva, home staging courses, home staging business, home staging coaching, 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

A home stager will struggle to make money when they don’t charge enough for their staging services. Here are 3 tips to help you establish your home staging fees:

1. Consider all the time you don’t get paid for.

If you think $75 or even $200 per hour is too much to charge a client for home staging, remember the many hours you put into your business that no one pays for.

As a home stager, you spend time on many other non-paying tasks, like:

• researching decorating and design trends
• understanding the local real estate market
• writing home staging blog posts and newsletters
• networking with real estate agents, home owners and home sellers
• negotiating with suppliers
• preparing for client appointments
• answering potential clients’ questions in advance
• scheduling and re-scheduling appointments
• travel time to and from meetings and running business errands
• follow up calls (before, during and after the staging or redesign project)
• keeping track of client expenses and time on each staging or redesign project
• bookkeeping
• standing in line at the bank
• shopping for office supplies
• maintaining your home staging website

2. Consider the many benefits you bring to your home staging clients.

Do you believe you provide real value to your clients? If you don’t believe this, it will be very difficult to convince them. It might help to think about the many benefits you can bring to a client if you do the job well.

Don’t fall into the trap of feeling embarrassed about your rates. Done well, a home staging project should generate anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000 profit for the homeowner.

So, why shouldn’t a professional home stager be paid well?

This was my home staging client’s house. It sold for $71,000 over the asking price.

The client invested about $950 in my advice during a home staging consultation.

Someone could easily say, “wow, $950 just for advice, that’s a lot of money!”

But if you asked them, “what if you could invest $950 and make $71,000?”, few people would consider that too expensive.

Perhaps you’re thinking, “it’s a slow real estate market, my clients aren’t going to make that kind of profit on my services.”

There are thousands of “proof home staging works” examples of homes that have languished on the slow real estate market for months (or years) until they were decorated to sell. If home staging can save a client from the costs of carrying a house they don’t want, not to mention saving them from the emotional costs of having their lives on hold waiting to sell, how much is that worth?

Home Staging is an investment in a potentially significant return for the client. Consider this when determining your rates.

3. Remember that when you’re in a service business you are  selling  your time.

You have a limited “inventory” of your time.  Since you can’t manufacture more hours in a week, the only way to earn more is to charge more for your time. You will never make real money as a home stager until you get your pricing strategy right!

The Staging Diva course “The Business of Home Staging: What you need to start and how to grow” includes a detailed discussion of how to properly charge for your home staging services.

If you’ve already taken the course, now is a great time to review your notes so you make sure you earn what you’re worth this fall real estate season. Would you believe people start hiring home stagers for the fall market in only 3 weeks?

If you haven’t taken course 2, you can order a recording of it right now for only $249. You’ll make that back easily on your first client because I share with you everything I’ve learned about pricing based on my MBA training and the real world experience of being an independent entrepreneur since 1989.

I have also built a lucrative home staging business from scratch in a very competitive market.

In Staging Diva course 2, you’ll learn what I charged clients when I started in 2002 and how I systematically increased my rates over time. I’ll share the single biggest discovery I made in how to best price home staging services for profit.

You’ll also learn what home stagers charge all over North America and how to avoid the mistakes most of them are making!

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). 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 make money as a home stager.

I often hear form aspiring home stagers who say, “There are no home stagers in my area, so there must not be a demand for this service.” Just as often, I am told the exact opposite by others, “There are already home stagers in my area. I’m sure there will be too much competition for me to enter this market.”

In both cases, these notions become excuses for not going forward. You can talk yourself out of anything with the right arguments, but you may be jumping to a whole bunch of conclusions that are not justified. If you really have a dream of becoming a home stager, you owe it to yourself to verify these negative assumptions before just giving up.

If there are no home stagers in your area and there are also no homes for sale, then you’re right there is probably no demand for home staging in your area. You need to live in (or within driving distance of) an actual real estate market for there to be any potential demand for your home staging services.

I guarantee that your market isn’t saturated with home stagers, I don’t care where you live.

Compare for a moment how many real estate agents there are in the same area! Then research how many homes sell in your real estate market in a year. How many of these properties will you have to get as clients to make a living? An incredibly small percentage if you learn how to price your staging services correctly which is something I cover in detail in course 2 of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program.

If you fear there is already a lot of home staging competition in your area, you need to find out if this is really the case. More importantly, you also need to find out the calibre of the competition. I don’t mean how well they arrange furniture (though this is important), I mean how well they market themselves. For example:

• Do they come across as real professionals?
• Do they sound confident about what they do?
• Are they able to explain what they do for clients in a compelling way?
• Are they easy to find when you’re ready to hire a home stager?
• Are they easy to speak to?
• Do they listen well?
• Are they likeable?

Don’t just look at their websites and assume all these great qualities if it’s a great site.

The competitive picture might look a whole lot different if you actually pick up the phone and speak to them.

There are a lot of “home stagers” who aren’t actually serious about their businesses. It’s more of a creative hobby for them, and you’ll be able to spot them as soon as they open their mouths to explain what they do!

And if your “competitors” have unprofessional, do-it-yourself-and-I’ve-never-done-it-before-websites, you’ve learned you don’t need to worry about competition from them as long as you market your own home staging business the right way.

One of the first homework assignments I have Staging Diva students complete during my home staging courses, is an assessment of their competition. This is not homework they have to submit for marking. It’s homework they should be doing as part of starting up a home staging business, which is why I make it homework. It’s my little way of nudging new home stagers to focus on the tasks that will be the biggest boost to their businesses.

I’ve taught thousands of students and they consistently discover that the home staging competition is not as intimidating as they first thought. If you’d like more tips on how to measure the need for home staging in your local real estate market, download this FREE report, Ask Staging Diva: Can I Grow a Home Staging Business in a Depressed Economy?

So what if the competition does look tough?

Then you have to resolve to step up to the plate and give it all you’ve got if you truly want to make money as a home stager. I’ve learned from experience over the years that a lack of serious competition can make you a bit lazy. It’s human nature to start taking it easy once we’ve mastered something. One sharp competitor and it’s amazing how much better you get at boosting your own home staging business! I always fine-tune my own game when I look at what others are doing. And if you’re in the lead, it pays to look over your shoulder occasionally to see what the newcomers are up to.

The cool thing is that home staging is a growing industry and the sooner you jump in and establish yourself as THE local expert, the better you will stand up to any competitors coming up behind you.

Home stagers, how has the competition affected your staging business? If you’re just starting to think about home staging, has worrying about the competition stopped you? 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 stagers, staging diva, home staging courses, home staging business, home staging competition, home staging training, debra gould