If you’re concerned as a home stager about what will happen if a home you’ve staged does not to sell, and what liability you have in the situation, you’re not alone. Many aspiring home stagers, and even established ones, share the same fear.
The first thing to remember is the person the client will be upset with when their home isn’t selling is the real estate agent not the home stager.
Yes, you’re decorating the house to sell, but you’re not in control of:
- pricing the property correctly for the location it is in
- running ads
- hosting open houses
- booking showings
- marketing it to other real estate agents
These things are all the job of the real estate agent not the home stager.
A home stager packages a product for the real estate agent to sell, but after that, it’s up to them.
I never tell a client that if they spend a certain amount of money in staging that I guarantee their home will sell in x amount of time for tens of thousands of dollars more than without staging. That would be crazy and irresponsible for me to do because of the factors involved in how quickly a house will sell.
You can do an awesome staging job, but you have no idea what shape it’s in after you leave when people come for showings. Or, the listing agent might be ineffective in the way they’re trying to market the property. The sellers might be stuck on getting a certain price and impossible to negotiate with. There might be six offers but they’re all rejected.
I once staged a 4 bedroom home that by the time I was done looked great for what it was. But I couldn’t change the fact that the kitchen was 30 years out of date and it was located on a busy corner that would be dangerous for children. There was nothing I could do about the fact that it was a 1970s house on a street where everything else had been torn down and replaced with modern homes. I had repairs done, repainted in appealing colors, furnished it, added accessories, artwork and bedding. But, the inherent drawbacks of the location and age of the house, relative to its neighbors, needed to be factored into the asking price to create an appealing package for potential buyers.
Unfortunately, the homeowner thought because all the other houses on her street were selling for millions of dollars, hers should be priced $100,000 over what it was worth.
Guess what? It didn’t sell because no amount of staging could fix the fundamental problems with this overpriced home.
While home stagers are an important piece of the real estate puzzle by ensuring a house is decorated to appeal to potential buyers, we are still only one piece of a large puzzle.
I doubt that you would ever get the blame from a home owner if their home does not sell, but if that should happen, I hope this article will give you some confidence that the fault does not lie with you.
Any established home stagers reading this post, I’d love it if you would comment on this by sharing your stories of staged homes that didn’t sell and why you thought that was the case.
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. Gould has trained over 4000 home stagers around the world.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Great article Debra. I have been through this. I was hired to stage a large heritage home that had been converted into three units. The owners lived in the building and had updated their space beautifully. I recommended calmer paint colours, decluttered & staged this space. The other two units were vacant & were unfurnished. All the necessary work I recommended was done, everything looked great and I had rented funiture & accessories in the vacant units. The real estate agent, who was the home owner, marketed the property to potential buyers to return the home to a one family property. There were two issues that I saw, the street would not attract that buyer & market timing. The house did not sell over 6 months despite very positive feedback from prospects, the owners lost their down payment on a new condominium, and they have now rented the two apartments.
Debra,
I have my computer set to notify me of every listing in a certain price range in my postal zip code. I received one that is a house in the next block from me. The listing had two photos and one was the front of the house, and the other was a playhouse. Have you ever heard of a house selling because of a child’s playhouse? What kind of realtor do they have? Listings allow 10 photos in my area. I happen to know that is a beautiful home inside. You taught us that realtors choose what homes to show, and prospective homebuyers look on the Internet to choose what houses to see. I want to knock on their door and offer my help, but have to walk a tight rope to not offend realtors. My heart aches for the people who have realtors that don’t care. I can stand on my corner and see four houses for sale.
My sign is at that four-way stop sign intersection. How can I help these neighbors without offending their realtors?
Yes I have had plenty of instances where homes that I staged didn’t sell, mostly due to overpricing. Debra, as you pointed out, the price of that house had to reflect the fact that the house was outdated and on a busy corner. But at some price, a buyer would be willing to overlook these drawbacks. I believe every house has a buyer, it just has to be priced correctly.
I hate it when prospective clients ask me for my track record of how long a house took to sell after I staged it. Because of the dual factors of the down real estate market coupled with the unrealistic prices that sellers want to get, many of my stagings have been on the market for 6 months or more. So when they ask this question, I always point out that selling a home is like a 3 legged stool: staging is one leg, pricing is another and marketing is the 3rd, and I have no control over the other 2 legs. I then also tell them what clients have told me, which is that the staging definitely helped even if it did take 6 or more months.
I have had clients ask me if I will guarantee the sale of their home after staging. My answer is absolutely not. I like Donna Dazzo’s “tri – pod” analogy above. We, as professional home stagers, are only a piece of the pie to getting a sellers home sold. I stage a lot of homes that I feel are priced too high, don’t have the ideal location, and think their homes are worth more than the market will bear, especially in todays market. I staged a $370,000 condo on the water that is about 15 years old. I could not … I mean I could not … convince the seller to replace the kitchen cabinet hardware. The hardware currently is brass and oak handles, perhaps popular “back in the ‘day”. I completely furnished the condo (it was vacant) and the sellers leased the furnishings for 90 days, and not one day more. Now it sits vacant … in need of many upgrades and updates … and probably won’t sell. All the walls are white and the sellers would not entertain the cost of adding some color. At the very least, the furnishings and art counteracted all the white walls! They have one of the highest producing agents in this area. She is marketing this property well. This is also the second time it has been on the market. The agent and I both agree that allowing me to really stage this condo would probably get this condo sold – and sold quickly. These sellers are missing the market and will probably lose out again. Guarantee? I don’t think so.
Staging To Sell
Jill R. Monczunski
President/Designer
I too staged a beautiful home that still has not sold almost one year later. It was a beautiful home, great location, but their price was too high. They refused to drop it even at the realtor’s suggestion. I’ve noticed it’s no longer listed with the original agent. There’s only so much you can do!
When I was selling my home, my realtor gave me great advice, she said, “your home is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.” Of course you need to price it competitively and put your best foot forward, however if someone doesn’t see the value and like it enough…their is no deal!
Kay, Giving the realtor the benefit of the doubt for a moment, it’s possible that the house was a mess when the agent turned up to take the interior photos (I have seen that happen).
The client should be looking at their own listing on MLS (I always build into my own contracts with realtors that I have approval to the listing and feature sheets when I’m selling my own home), but not all do.
You really only have two choices:
a) Contact the realtor and say you found his listing on MLS and you know it’s a great house since you’re a neighbor, offer your services as a stager so that the interior will be photo ready for MLS.
b) Contact the homeowner directly and say that as a neighbor and a home stager who knows the importance of interior shots to attract buyers on MLS, you’d be happy to do a consultation with them to ensure their home is photo ready since you noticed their MLS listing only had an exterior shot.
Let me know what happens!
Debra
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