Unfortunately, too many home stagers seem to be sacrificing their client’s success by using lawn signs in their marketing efforts. It seems like a good idea on the surface. A way to attract more home staging projects in a specific neighborhood by letting people know that the home that shows beautifully was staged by your company.
Why not say the home was staged by your company right there next to the real estate agent’s “For Sale” sign?
I would only advocate this practice when you’ve staged a brand new, never-lived-in home. In other words, prospective buyers already know that no one lives there, so clearly any furniture they see was brought in for the purpose of showcasing the home (the “model home” scenario).
If the home is lived in and you’ve staged it, putting up a lawn sign advertising that fact is tantamount to saying: “This home has been carefully decorated to get you to pay as much as possible for it!”
It’s a home stagers job NOT to make it obvious that a home is staged, which is why I personally abhor the practice of using a tea tray on the end of a bed (but that’s another story). Home stagers should be creating the right environment for potential buyers to fall in love with the home, but it shouldn’t be obvious that this is what has been done.
Bottom line, don’t promote your business with lawn signs, it does a disservice to the homeowners who hired you. It takes away the magic of what you’ve created as a stager and invites prospective buyers to approach the house with their defenses up.
Debra Gould, The Staging Diva
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging
Debra Gould has trained over 600 home stagers in the US, Canada, Australia, England, Portugal, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa and Wales to start and grow their own house staging businesses. She brings a unique perspective to training and the business of home staging, based on her experience of growing her own home staging company from scratch (not as a sideline to selling real estate), being a self-supporting entrepreneur since 1989, and her MBA in Marketing. The Staging Diva also personally understands the ups and downs of real estate having bought, decorated and sold 7 of her own homes.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
The concept of putting up a sign outside is also a bad idea due to the fact that the property may not have had as much attention placed on it from the outside as it did the inside. This ‘initial impression’ then puts out negative vibes on your wholistic presentation of the property.
I flat out refuse to promote my business at any property unless it is clearly a vacant property. Even then, all I have is a counter card with some information about my business and some DL sized brochures for prospective buyers to take away with them. I ALWAYS place these on the kitchen bench where possible, this seems to be the hub of all traffic in the house.
All excellent points Adam! I agree with you.
For other visitors to this blog, it’s worth clicking on Adam’s name as it links to his fabulous website. I’m so proud of all the progress this Staging Diva Graduate has made!