I have a client who needs her home in Fairfield Ohio staged. This 1400 square foot home will be listed in June for approximately $132,000 and it will be fully furnished. This project would be an excellent addition to the right home stager’s portfolio.

Based on current statistics on Trulia.com, the average listing price there is $183,860 with the average selling price being $112,000. Given the estimated list price for this home, it will probably be priced correctly for its market but with your staging the seller could probably list for more than they anticipate now.

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 “Fairfield, OH 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 Staging Diva 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 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 which you can build into your fee 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 projects 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 Staging Diva Graduates.

I generate tons of traffic for anyone listed on the Staging Diva site. Only one good project would more than pay for your entire Staging Diva Training Program plus building and hosting your web page on the high traffic Staging Diva 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, Ohio home stager, home stager Ohio, Fairfield home stager, staging diva, directory of home stagers,   home staging jobs

Master bedroom before staging

I’ve featured New York home stager Donna Dazzo before here in the Home Staging Business Report after one of her impressive media appearances. I’m happy to have the opportunity to write about Donna again because she is such a model student!

In January, this Staging Diva Graduate was featured in Yahoo! Shine with her inexpensive and easy design tricks for selling and she was also recently featured in Newsday’s weekly paper and online in the “Long Island Makeover” column.

Donna certainly deserves this recognition because she so obviously knows what she’s doing as demonstrated by her latest success story.

Donna’s home staging company, Designed to Appeal, was contacted by the owner of a Manhattan apartment who was relocating to a different state. She and her husband had one month to move due to a job relocation, so needless to say they needed to sell fast.

Master bedroom transformed

Luckily, these homeowners had family members on the West Coast telling them they just had to have a home stager because “no one puts a home on the market in California without having it staged.”

It wasn’t too difficult for Donna to evaluate what wasn’t working in the space as it was. The dining room had a sofa, the living room had two dining room chairs and little else, the master bedroom had a set of bunk beds in it and the children’s room had a full-sized bed and was also doubling as a home office.

Donna made recommendations for the furniture placement and the homeowners decided to simply move their own items out and bring rental items in to show the apartment in its best possible light.

What happened after staging was finished?

• The real estate agent booked 35 showings the first week
• The homeowners received 3 offers at the first open house
• The house sold in 8 days after the first showing

This homeowner was happy she listened to her family members so she could carry on with her move with that much less stress.

About her home staging training Donna says, “The Staging Diva Program’s emphasis on continuous marketing and marketing to more than one group (not only real estate agents) has helped me with increased exposure and more clients.”

Donna is obviously focusing on marketing to the media just as she was taught in Course 4 of the Staging Diva Program. Home stagers, do you consider the media one of your target markets? What have your experiences been? How have you managed to get noticed by local media? Please share your experiences and let’s discuss!

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. More than 4000 Staging Diva Students around the world have been trained by Debra.

Technorati Tags: home stager, home stagers, home staging, donna dazzo, home staging training, home staging business, staging diva

You’re in a neighboring town running errands on a Saturday morning when you see an open house sign. You don’t have anyone with you today and you have nowhere else to be for an hour or two so you walk inside. The home is a FSBO and the hostess, the homeowner, looks very tired sitting next to her box of one dozen doughnuts.

The house is very sad. It’s dark and it’s vacant. All there is inside is the homeowner, a crucifix, a TV on the counter, a kitchen table and two chairs.

There are no buyers in the house and you decide you have nothing to lose so you introduce yourself to the woman and tell her you’re a home stager before asking how long the house has been on the market.

The woman says, “To tell you the truth, we’re at the end of our rope! We’ve been trying to sell for almost three years. We’ve dropped our price by more than $100,000 since then and we’ve even buried statues of St. Joseph in the yard but we still can’t even get an offer.”

How do you respond?

I’ll share my thoughts later but first, I’d like to hear what you would do in the same situation.

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: home staging, home stager, home stagers, home staging, home staging dilemma, St. Joseph statue, buried st joseph statue, staging diva

This time last year, I released a special report called, “Can I grow a home staging business in a depressed economy?” with the intention of helping aspiring stagers who were feeling defeated by friends, family members and negative news headlines.

Thousands of you downloaded that free report but between now and then there have been some changes in market conditions. That’s why I thoroughly scoured that original report and updated it with current research, up-to-date statistics and some recent real-life examples from Staging Diva Graduates about how the economy is (or isn’t!) hurting their businesses.

If you’re feeling discouraged by a spouse saying this is the wrong economy in which to start a business, you should have the facts you need to make an informed decision. That’s what this report is for and that’s why I decided to make it free for everyone to download, despite the significant amount of hours I’ve put into researching and putting it all together!

If you still haven’t downloaded your own free copy of “Can I grow a home staging business in a depressed economy?” now’s the time to do so because you’re getting the most current information available about the real estate market and how your staging business may be affected.

Some of the topics you’ll learn about include:

• Why you must stay positive even in the face of adversity
• The 3 rules key to a home stager’s financial survival
• 16 ways to get money NOW to build your staging business
• 3 common myths about the economy
• The silver lining behind the cloud of the downturn
• 4 reasons why home staging works in any economy
• 6 reasons why home staging actually thrives in a slow real estate market
• Much more!

>Download this free economic report for home stagers now and share it with anyone in your life making you doubt your choice to start a staging business!

To those of you who have read this report, did it help you forge ahead despite what you were seeing in the newspapers? What was your best takeaway after reading it? Please share your thoughts and let’s discuss!

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. More than 4000 Staging Diva Students around the world have been trained by Debra, who encourages anyone concerned about starting or growing a staging business in this economy to download her special report: “Ask Staging Diva: Can I grow a home staging business in a depressed economy?”

Technorati Tags: home stager, home stagers, home staging, economic report, home staging training, home staging courses, home staging business, staging diva

If you’ve been thinking of buying the downloadable Staging Diva Program (the cheapest way to get these home staging courses) but are reluctant to do so because you’re intimidated by the technology, I want to rest your fears.

The courses are downloadable but you don’t actually do the program online.

You simply download audio recordings and printable study notes, so you can sit at your desk with a cup of tea and pore over the material. You don’t need to do something complicated with your computer in order to participate, you’re really just reading and listening.

As long as you can download the files, there is no technology barrier to worry about.

“Download” just means you are clicking a link you’ll get as soon as you order, and when you click, the material will automatically be transferred (downloaded) onto your computer. Then you open the files from your computer and they will play (in the case of the audio files), or you will read and print them (in the case of the course notes and checklists).

If you’re concerned about what happens if you want one-on-one attention along the way of listening to the material, as this is a self-led program, you’re going to be given the option when you put the program in your “cart” to also get an hour of staging business accelerator coaching with me for 50% off. You’ll have six months to use our time together and you can split the time up into 15-minute sessions, 30-minute sessions or one-hour sessions – whatever you like. You’ll be given access to my online calendar and you can book your appointments when it’s convenient for you. Then I phone you at the appointed time.

During our calls, I’m all yours to discuss whatever challenges you’re facing as you study your home staging courses. Most students don’t have questions about the course material so they use their time for help with coming up with their business name, advice on combining staging with an existing business, or help with their website or other marketing materials. The time is really there for you to get help with whatever you need!

You can order the Staging Diva Program in a home study kit delivered right to your door. It costs a bit more than the download option though.

However, if you can figure out how to go through the online shopping cart and buy the program, you’re tech-savvy enough to handle the downloadable version!

Staging Diva Graduates, did you struggle at all as you worked through the downloadable courses? Hearing about your experiences with the program (especially if you’re not a computer whiz) may help someone debating over whether or not they can handle the technical aspect.

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 while helping others at the same time.

Technorati Tags: home stager, home staging, staging diva, home staging training, home staging business, staging diva graduate, home staging courses

Home stagers who take the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program know that I emphasize using staging stories to pull your audience in rather than throwing a bunch of staging statistics at them.

Please know that when I say “stories” I’m not suggesting making anything up. What I am saying is, use real life examples of what home staging has done for real home sellers who have had trouble preparing or selling their home on the real estate market.

While it’s fine to quote studies that say that the average staged homes sells x number of days faster or for x number of dollars more, it’s hard for the listener to put their own situation into the numbers.

If on the other hand, you share a meaningful staging success story, especially if it’s one that relates to their situation, they will connect with the power of what you do.

Here’s a great example of what I mean. It’s an ad for Google, but watch the unique way they had of sharing what their search engine can do.

If you’ve just watched the clip, notice how you feel right now. Realize this could have been an ad where Google told you how they dominate the search market, how many seconds it takes to get a result after typing your query into the search box, etc.

But would that have had the same effect? Would you remember the statistics an hour from now, or would you remember the story? What about later when you’re trying to decide which search engine to use?

Home stagers, I’d love you to share your comments about this topic. And please share examples of how you’ve successfully used staging statistics or staging success stories in your marketing and whether they helped you connect with your potential clients.

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

Debra Gould has an MBA in Marketing and has been writing about the subject since the 1980s when she was a regular contributor to Profit Magazine. She has been running her own home staging company, Six Elements Inc., since 2002 and knows first-hand how to make money as a home stager. She developed the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love.

Depending on what email lists you belong to, you may have recently received a message or two attempting to sell you virtual home staging software. I know this because I’ve heard from many of you curious about my take on this new practice.

In my opinion there are two types of “virtual staging.”

The first (which I practice), is virtual because I don’t actually go into a client’s home but I give them staging advice by phone based on photos they provide me with to analyze. This allows clients to have my staging advice and do the work themselves at a lower cost than if I were to do an actual consultation in their home. It also allows me to offer specific staging advice to clients outside my geographic area.

The second meaning of “virtual staging” I don’t practice and don’t recommend because I think it’s a waste of a client’s money.

Virtual staging companies have entered the home staging industry that use virtual staging software which allows you to load photos of vacant rooms to a computer and manipulate them to make it look like the rooms are furnished. The goal here is to sell attractive listing photos to real estate agents for them to use on their feature sheets and on MLS.

No stager goes to the home and no real furniture goes in the house.

The software (used by a stager, decorator or interior designer), is doing the “staging” by creating images of fully-furnished rooms to show online. While I can see the application of this software as a way to simulate what you’re going to do in a home to get a client’s approval for a decorating project where you’re asking them to buy new furniture, I don’t believe it has any place in staging in the way it’s currently being promoted.

Why is virtual staging, using software to manipulate listing photos, a waste of a homeseller’s or real estate agent’s money?

Because potential buyers are going to be quite disappointed when they arrive at a showing and see that the house looks nothing like the photos they viewed online. And everyone knows a buyer in a bad mood is not a buyer that makes an offer.

Potential buyers might even find themselves wandering through the empty house wondering why the owners had to move out so suddenly. Sensing desperation, this might attract a low-ball offer, certainly not the goal of home staging!

Your job as a home stager is to romance the buyer and while photos count (considering 90% of Canadian buyers and 70% of US buyers look online for a home before ever calling a real estate agent) they don’t count for everything.

The buyer needs to be romanced when they pull up to the drive and take in the view from the curb. They have to fall in love when they walk through the front door and they have to fall deeper in love with every single room in the home they look at until they have the feeling that it’s the property they’ve been looking for.

That’s why virtual staging software misses the mark and it’s not something I promote.

Home stagers, have you heard of this new technology? What are your thoughts? Do you agree with me, do you have a different opinion or do you see potential in such technology? Please add your thoughts in a comment below so we can have a discussion about this.

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

With two very young children at home it was a risky move on Fabia MacNair’s part to quit her job in the residential development field to run her Ontario home staging business, Styling Spaces, full-time. But it’s a risk that continues to pay off for her and her family.

Fabia has worked hard to put what she learned in the Staging Diva Home Staging Training Program into practice (she was obviously motivated to make her business work having given up her steady job). She has even been mentioned in her local newspaper after giving a staging seminar to local members of the community.

In December of last year, Fabia received a call from a homeowner who was listing his home and despite the fact that his real estate agent did not feel the home needed to be staged, he called in Styling Spaces to do the job anyway. After being a home stager for 7 years, I can assure you what happened to Fabia in this case is common. Savvy home sellers use their own common sense even if their agent isn’t a believer in staging.

When the agent came back and saw the transformation she was “wowed” and immediately hired Styling Spaces to stage four of her other listings.

One of those listings had been on the market on and off for a year before staging and it sold that same weekend.  Two of the homes sold same day and one that had been overpriced for its market sold for $15,000 over market value.

That skeptical real estate agent became a big fan of Fabia and spread the word around her office leading to lots more work for Styling Spaces.

This story proves you cannot depend on real estate agents for your business. (That’s a lesson covered in Course 4 of the Staging Diva Program when you learn about the four key target markets a home stager has). Obviously the homeowner in this case had been educated about the value of staging and look at the snowball effect that followed.

Fabia writes, “The Staging Diva Program, hands down, has given me the answers I need to run my business. My class notes still guide me when I am stuck. Debra Gould is very knowledgeable about this industry and is willing to teach it. When you have spent enough time with those other courses and you are ready to get to work call The Staging Diva.”

Stagers, I would love to hear your best “agent-proven-wrong” stories! Please share yours in a comment below and perhaps I’ll compile them for a future post if we get a good discussion going.

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

Debra Gould knows the key to success in business is in how you market it. She’s taught thousands of people around the globe how to make money using their natural creative talent as home stagers through the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program.

Technorati Tags: home stager, home staging, fabia macnair, staging diva, home staging success story, home staging program, staging diva graduate, home staging course

I lived in 3 different cities in 4 years and learned my way around all of them by car. This was before GPS of course, and even though the technology exists now, I still don’t use it.

I often pulled over to the side of the road on the way to a new destination to look at a map, convinced that I was headed in the wrong direction. It happened to me so often that I coined the phrase “giving up a block too soon,” because I realized I was letting self-doubt force me to pull over and wondered if this wasn’t a metaphor for how I was living my life in other ways.

Self doubt is a powerful emotion, stopping us dead in our tracks both literally and figuratively.

When you started your home staging business you may not have expected to be an overnight success but perhaps you expected to grow faster than you’ve been growing.

I’ve heard home stagers complain that they started their business 6 weeks ago and still don’t have their first client! The self doubt is already kicking in and they’re wondering if they have chosen the wrong business. The more they listen to that negative voice in their heads saying “this will never work,” the more their enthusiasm starts to wane and they start to hold themselves back.

It took me three months to get my first client but I made $5,000 on that one project. Imagine if I had given up just before that first call from a potential client?

Even if you’ve taken a bunch of home staging courses and have been doing everything right, it will take time to get your name out there, to prove that home staging works and that there’s value in the services you provide.

If you’re feeling frustrated because things are harder than you thought they would be, the worst thing you can do is give in to that feeling and give up. Because you haven’t given your business a real chance if you “give up a block too soon.”

The truth is your first year in business is going to be tough. Giving birth to something new is never easy!

You’re coming out of nowhere and you have a reputation to build; a buzz to create. You have an added challenge being in a relatively new industry like home staging because you need to educate your market that home staging works. (This is also a blessing by the way, because when you’re educating your market, you are also positioning yourself as the expert.)

So in your first year, you’re getting yourself established, you’re trying to carve a niche for yourself if there are other home stagers in your market, you’re working hard at promoting your business and you’re learning how to be your own boss. It’s not an easy year!

If you don’t give up and pull over to the side of the road, and instead hang in there and stay motivated during those difficult first months, you’ll get to experience how much easier it all becomes. As you master being in your own business and more and more people know about you and your home staging services, many projects and opportunities will present themselves.

In your second year as a home stager things will be even better because you’ll reap the rewards of all that marketing you did in year one. Plus you’ll feel so much more confident in your abilities and those moments of self doubt will be largely a thing of the past.

Over time it just continues to get easier but that isn’t to say you won’t experience peaks and valleys because that happens with any business. The important thing to remember is that you don’t have to panic when you hit another valley.

When you find yourself in the middle of a slow period thinking there’s no business anymore and you’re going to give up, remember that you’ve seen this trend before and you made it. The customers are still out there, you just have to keep marketing and things will come around.

If you’re just starting out, or if you’re currently experiencing a “valley” in your business, stick it out because you never know if you’re giving up a block too soon.

Home stagers, do you have any tips to share about keeping that momentum going? Did you feel like giving up but kept on persevering? 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 Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love.

Technorati Tags: home stagers, home staging, home stager, home staging training, home staging courses, home staging business, staging diva

Many home owners choose to sell on their own instead of working with a real estate agent and giving 5% or 6% of their selling price over in real estate commissions. These properties are known as FSBOs, an acronym for ‘For Sale by Owner.’

The very fact that they’ve chosen to sell without an agent tells you these types of clients are interested in making more money on their sale. Home staging is an excellent way for the owners of FSBO properties to maximize their selling price, as demonstrated in the following story about Staging Diva Graduate and Omaha home stager, Dolly Dewald.

Bedroom before home staging

After doing an initial home staging consultation for a busy couple with three young children who were selling their home without a real estate agent, Dolly was asked to stage the home for them.

The home owners spent weeks cleaning and painting their home. They had little in the way of furniture so Dolly helped them get set up with a furniture rental company and assisted in selecting furniture for 4 bedrooms and an entertainment room. Dolly went on to purchase bedding and accessories. The home took an entire day to stage.

Bedroom after staging

Each Sunday they held an open house and they ended up receiving multiple offers, not bad for a FSBO. The couple eventually sold for 96% of their asking price.

The clients were thrilled with the results and later told Dolly the buyer said her staging is what sold the house.

About her home staging training, Dolly writes, “My goal was to have a job I loved. The Staging Diva® Program gave me the structure and know-how to create a business and make it work. With Debra Gould’s help I now have an outlet for my creative juices and a job I love.”

Do you have a story like Dolly’s that proves home staging works? Just follow this link to share it with me and you can be featured in a post like this too!

Have any of you worked on FSBOs? Have they provided any special challenges or opportunities? Please share your thoughts and comments below.

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

Debra Gould knows the key to success in business is in how you market it. She’s taught thousands of people around the globe how to make money using their natural creative talent as home stagers through the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program.

Technorati Tags: FSBO, staging FSBO, home stager, home staging, dolly dewald, staging diva, home staging success story, home staging program, staging diva graduate, home staging course