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 and download a recording of it right away. You’ll make your investment 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.
Related posts:
- If you want to be a home stager, luck won’t make it happen.
- Real estate agents make their financial situation worse
- Earn extra money with weekend home staging consultations
- Home staging projects may always make you nervous
- Staging Diva helps Lincoln NE home owners make more money when they sell
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