On this Month's Cover:
1925 Adirondack Ct.
$289,900
MLS#: 98347

Presented by:
Tom Kuhn
Coldwell Banker United

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Avoid Mistakes When Hiring a Home Stager
By Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®

When you decide to hire a home stager to decorate your property to sell faster and for more money, you need to make sure you’re investing in the right person. After all, you’re entrusting someone with the sale of your largest asset, your primary real estate, so you have to be careful to put that trust in an experienced professional.

Having operated a successful home staging business since 2002, and having trained more than 1000 people worldwide how to become home stagers, Debra Gould, aka The Staging Diva®, knows what to look for when selecting an expert home stager and cautions home sellers to avoid these 5 mistakes:

1. Focusing on Price
Saving a few hundred dollars in fees and getting bad advice will cost you thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars. Of course you have a staging budget in mind, but you stand to make a profit from effective home staging, not to mention how much faster you’re likely to sell your home. It’s important to consider hiring a home stager as an investment in the sale of your largest asset. For optimal results, invest in the most talented stager you can find. 

Professional home stagers earn anywhere from $250 to $500 for their initial consultation. Beware of anyone willing to work for significantly less for doing work that you stand to make anywhere from $10,000 to $70,000 profit from.

Rates will vary, depending on your geographic location and the stager’s experience, but don’t hire someone just because they charge a ridiculously low rate. As with most things in life, you get what you pay for.

2. Looking for Credentials
Don’t let your decision rest on a candidate’s "credentials," since none exist in the home staging field. There is no governing body or official organization ruling over the home staging industry. There are no official home staging accreditations or certifications in this completely unlicensed field. The letters you see after some home stagers’ names simply come from a particular home staging training company who pushes them as part of their marketing strategy. 
Instead of relying on unofficial credentials, look at testimonials from past clients, before and after photos and real estate knowledge.

3. Hiring someone without looking at a website or portfolio
Professional home stagers should be professional enough to have a web presence. Because hiring a professional in this visual field, you want to see how they express themselves through their biggest marketing piece – their website. As an alternative to building their own website, many graduates of the Staging Diva Home Staging Training Program list their businesses at www.stagingdivadirectoryofhomestagers.com which allows homeowners to find a stager in their area and view their online portfolio to learn more about their business.

A professional portfolio of before and after photos is a must. How else will you know what kind of results you can expect from a real estate stager? Because some companies provide ready-made portfolios to home stagers as part of their training programs, it's important to ask questions about the photos someone presents as their own work. If they can't tell you details about the property or you've seen the same shots on another stager's website from the same "school" or training program, this should raise a red flag. 

When you try to find a particular home stager’s website or proof online of their existence, if you can’t find them you have to question how serious they are about their business. Alternatively, if they have a very unprofessional looking website, you have to wonder whether they’ll be capable of staging your home the way you expect from a professional. 

4. Not looking for references or a proven track record
Read through the testimonials you’ll find on most home stagers’ websites. If there are none available (or they only provide initials and not full names), contact the stager and ask if they have any references. You shouldn’t hire someone to stage your property without hearing about others’ experience with them. 

Every stager has to start somewhere. If they haven't staged a client's home yet, they should at least be able to tell you about the many homes they've bought, staged and sold of their own and be able to provide real estate agents they've worked with for their own homes. The point is to look for practical experience.

5. Neglecting to hire someone with real knowledge of the real estate market
You're not looking for someone who just knows how to decorate. Make sure the home stager knows the local housing market. A home stager is as much a part of the real estate industry as a real estate agent, and they should have a good grasp of the market they’re in. If they don’t know what homes usually sell for and how long they can sit on the market, you should look for another stager in your area.

Because there isn’t an independent organization or association monitoring whether or not a house stager is operating professionally and providing quality service, it’s buyer beware. If you avoid these five common mistakes as you search for the perfect expert home stager for your needs, you should be pleased with the professional you choose.

To find a Staging Diva Graduate in your area, visit the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers. Debra Gould, president of Six Elements Inc and the Staging Diva® Home Staging Business Training Program, developed the directory to help homeowners and real estate agents find a professional home stager in their area. 

Author Bio
Debra Gould, aka The Staging Diva®, is President of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company. Inspired by many requests from aspiring home stagers wanting to start similar businesses, Gould created the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. Gould has trained over 1000 Staging Diva Graduates worldwide to start their own businesses.

Buying decorating and selling six of her own homes in four years lead to an interest in real estate staging which she turned into a career with the launch of sixelements.com in 2002. Since then she has staged hundreds of homes in addition to teaching home staging training. 

Gould created the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers to help homeowners and real estate agents find a Staging Diva Graduate in their area. She has also authored several home staging resources including a series of popular ebooks made up of a Design Guide, Color Guide and Portfolio Guide.

In addition to HGTV, Debra Gould's media coverage includes: CNNMoney, Wall Street Journal, Woman's Day, Reader's Digest, This Old House and many more.