Home Stagers Help Real Estate Agents Stop Wasting Their “Free Time

“As a real estate agent, you don’t make any money until a home sells, so it’s important for your clients’ homes to stand apart from competing properties. The longer you carry a listing, the more it costs you in marketing fees. Home staging can help differentiate your clients’ homes from the competition and speed up sales.

According to expert home stager Debra Gould, there’s another reason why staging is so crucial. “Approximately 80% of prospective buyers shop online before ever calling an agent to help them buy a home. Now that the public can access MLS listings and shop from the photos they see online, it’s even more critical for properties to show well in listing photographs. Otherwise, the agent won’t even get a request for a showing.

Staging makes all the difference in how rooms look both online and in the real world, and real estate agents are catching on to that. Many agents have begun offering to stage their clients’ homes themselves at no charge, hoping to attract more listings, which they can then sell faster and for a better price. This practice of staging listings for free just creates more problems for overworked and underpaid agents.

First of all, as a real estate agent, your time is money. While you’re donating your time to help your client rearrange their furniture, sort through their junk, choose the perfect paint color for their den and decide whether or not to move the baby’s crib out of the office, do you realize the significant amount of time and money you are wasting–not to mention the risk of offending your client and losing the listing altogether?

It’s time to do the math. If you list four properties this month and spend an average of four hours staging each of them, you have wasted sixteen hours, or two entire workdays. How many homes can you show in sixteen hours? You could have planned, advertised and attended five open houses in that amount of time.

When you’re in the business of selling real estate, your strengths are presumably finding and selling properties for your clients and negotiating the best deals for them. If you are personally staging your clients’ homes for free, those negotiation skills are being wasted on domestic disagreements over paint chips and furniture placement.

Savvy real estate agents are recommending that their clients consult with home stagers in order to draw attention to their listings and to sell their homes faster. This reduces or even eliminates the need for price reductions, which is a win-win outcome for all involved.”

Internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould is president of Six Elements and creator of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program with over 4,000 students worldwide. Gould is the author of four home staging guides and 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. To learn more, visit www.stagingdivadirectoryofhomestagers.com . Written by internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva^®, www.stagingdiva.com. © Copyright Six Elements Inc. Used with permission.

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Looking to get a great logo for your home staging or other business?

In 2014, I graduated from the Staging Diva Home Staging Training program and started my home staging and design business. The program offered a great step by step plan to set up and market a home staging business and loads of inspiration!  Some of the great advice from the program that would apply to any new business was to get a professional looking photo and logo,  to make a fantastic first impression with potential clients. Debra Gould, the “Staging Diva” mentioned an option of using 99designs.com to run a logo contest to develop a professional logo, which I tried with great success.

First, I wrote a creative brief describing my image, goals, target market and “who I am”. This helped me refine my own vision for my business.

Then, I supply pictures, documents, and design ideas to help the logo designers understand my vision. As an Interior Designer and home stager in Alaska, I love color and the natural beauty of Alaska’s landscapes and wanted to highlight that in my work. I wanted my finished work to inspire the same reaction people have when they see northern lights, which are most commonly described as “magical”. So my name, Northern Lights Home Staging and Design, and tagline, “make magic happen” was born.

I gave the designers two ideas: one of a house surrounded by mountains with northern lights, and the second of viewing mountains and northern lights from inside a home looking out.

I selected a package stating how much I was willing to pay for my logo. The more you pay the more top quality designers may enter your contest from their marketplace of 950,000 designers.

I had 10 different designers submit logos. I provided feedback through a “star rating” or private message to help them refine the designs. After 3 days, I decided if there were any designs I liked and wanted to continue with the contest, or drop out and pay nothing. I selected my top 6 designers to continue working with. On day 7, I picked my winner.

A great feature is that you can run a “poll” any time of your favorite designs for your “target market”. The poll generates a link you can post on Facebook, Twitter or by email. Polls made my friends aware of my new business and they gave great feedback and enjoyed helping shape the logo for my new business.

My winning designer, “Youimage” from Italy developed a beautiful design and was great to work with! I love the way the window shutters are located so that you are viewing the northern lights as if you are standing outside and looking at them inside the house.

I spent a lot of time giving feedback to get what I wanted, and you can spend as much time as you choose. I received and reviewed 107 designs from designers from around the world. The experience gave me a great logo, helped me focus on the direction I want to take my business and provided an opportunity to engage my target market and advertise my new business.

If you are starting a new business or need a great logo for a project, give it a try!

My Online Services

Northern Lights Home Staging and Design offers a variety of online Interior Design, Home Staging and Color Consulting services. Check some of them out by clicking on the pictures or feel free to call if you are wondering how I might help you with your project.

 

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 Home buyers have less imagination than you might think. That’s why home staging can make such a difference in the selling price of a home and the length of time it takes to sell. During the few minutes that homebuyers typically spend in a house, most of them aren’t able to look past ugly, crowded and disorganized rooms, or figure out that the missing dining room is actually masquerading as a family room. In a house with few bedrooms, most buyers won’t look past a desk and imagine a bed in its place. What you do with a “spare” bedroom can have a huge impact on how the house does in today’s real estate market.

A professional home stager will not assume that the rooms in your house are already furnished for the right purposes, and will be able to envision what homebuyers want to see. A home stager’s job is to lead a buyer down the garden path of how a property can look and show them exactly how they can live in it.

Add a bedroom
Debra Gould, founder of the Staging Diva® Home Staging Business Training Program, has encountered this scenario countless times since she started her home staging business,  Six Elements Inc., in 2002. “I once staged a house that had only two bedrooms, and one of them had dark paneling, no closet and was set up as a home office,” says Gould. “Consistent criticism after showings told the homeowners that it was being perceived as a one-bedroom house. For staging, I took out the desk, put in a bed and turned it into a guest room. The house sold within days.”

Add a child’s room
Home stagers pay special attention to whether or not a home might be a popular choice for young families. This is where knowledge of the local real estate market comes into play.

“If a home is in a family-oriented neighborhood and the existing owners do not have children, at least one existing bedroom needs to be transformed into a child’s room,” remarks Gould who is also known as The Staging Diva®, “When a couple with a young family walks through a childless home, it’s hard for them to imagine how their own family will live there. Are the bedrooms appropriate for their kids? Where will they play? Professional home stagers always keep the target market of a house in mind when staging. This helps paint a picture for the potential buyer by staging the house the way it would be lived in by them. With minimal furnishings and a few props, it’s easy to show a child’s bedroom!”

Disguising a small bedroom
“If you’re staging a four-bedroom home that has an exceptionally small bedroom without a closet, consider styling that room as a craft room or home office. Homebuyers would only see how tiny it is and that could put them off,” warns Gould. “If possible, include a loveseat with end tables and lamps so buyers will envision it as a fold-out bed. This will help them visualize how the room can double as a guestroom.”

The important thing to remember is that home buyers are in a house very briefly and won’t struggle to imagine how they can change the property to meet their own needs. When they go to a showing, they want to picture themselves living in that home. With good staging, they don’t have to imagine their lives there; they should already feel like they’re home. That’s what sells homes faster and for more money.

Internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould is president of Six Elements and creator of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program with over 4,000 students worldwide. Gould is the author of four home staging guides and 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. To learn more, visit www.stagingdivadirectoryofhomestagers.com
Written by internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®, H© Copyright Six Elements Inc. Used with permission.

NORTHERN LIGHTS HOME STAGING AND DESIGN PROVIDES YOUR LOCAL EXPERTISE IN ALASKA HOME STAGING FOR  SEWARD ALASKA AND THE KENAI PENINSULA. CALL 1-907-362-0065 TODAY. OR EMAIL US AT info@northernlightsstaging.com. 

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