Home Staging. Designs. Life.

I tour homes very often. I see stagers who leave their cards out but many either don't have a website nor a professional email.  Even my 5-year-old niece has a website, do you?!

 Here is why not having a website or a proper email will hurt your business:

1. It's the internet age, get with it! Don't look like a dinosour in your client's eyes. Like I said, even my 5-year-old niece has a website, do you?!
2. Getting online is incredibly easy. I can buy anything ranging from socks to a car or a house online now (thank you ebay!) My father who is in his late 50s now, used to swear that he will never touch computers (he said that it's a waste of time but I think it's really a fear of learning something new. Also he runs a construction business, so he has staff to use computers for him.). Now he is ADDICTED after my mom taught him how to go online to read news and stocks. Even when we are family vacation, he specifically requests that his laptop needs to come with him. (It's a good think I haven't taught him online shopping!) If my stubborn dinosour-minded father can do it, you definitely can! Which this brings me to the next point...
   
3. It's the modern world. Buildings are getting taller, lives are getting busier and more complicated, so are people's privacy & efficiency demands. At least 70% of home buyers started their search online. Similarly, they shop for their real estate professionals online. Why? Because they don't want to talk to you until they are ready. They want to see who you are first. Then they decide if they like your style and wants to talk to you. So having information about your business and your past work is very very very important. They will want to check you out before they make that choice. Afterall, haven't we all seen some really awful staging jobs? Checking you out online is also the most efficient way in their decision making process.
4. Like a fisherman, cast the net as big & wide as opssible. One thing I learned in my Realtor life is PROSPECT IS SURVIVAL. You must diligently prospect. There are no excuses. Your leads result reflects directly on your prospecting efforts. Real estate is a numbers game. Say your success rate is 1 out of every 5 bids, so don't you want to increase the number of the bids that you go on to so you can receive that 1 bid that counts?
5. I am sorry, you already graduated from high school, shouldn't your email address? caligirl80@aol.com or youthgonewild@net.com just doesn't project the same professional image as say cindy@staged4more.com. Having a professional website address and professional email projects a professional image. You may be a stager who is working in your own garage, but it does not matter. You are still a professional. So be a professional in your image as well. It's important. There are more and more stagers graduating every day, therefore more competition. You will be compared to someone else. Like I said, it's very easy to set up a site nowadays. Afterall, it is the DIY age as well. You can get a domain name for $2.99 through yahoo and their web hosting programs are very reasonable as well. This is a very affordable way to start. Once you build your skills or business up, you can consider going with something more sophisicated or have a professional to do it.

I recently spoke with a homeowner who has relocated for her job and recently also had a baby. She and her husband had decided to put the home on the market for sale. But then a natural disaster had happened that caused the portion of the freeway by their home split (Devil's Slide) so there weren't a lot of activities because it was difficult to show. The the Slide had reopened finally after a few months, the golden time of the listing had already passed, of course. So now they are paying for 2 mortgages, one is the one in the bay area and the other in Virginia.

I had asked her bluntly "Why do you think this home has not sold?" "Because it is not staged, it's empty." "Why didn't you stage it?" "The Realtors said we don't need to."

Already feeling her pain, I asked, "So what do you plan to do now?" "The Realtor said we should think about a price reduction."

WHAT?! Staging a home costs SO MUCH LESS than a price reduction which generally runs about $10,000 or more depending where you are. I cannot even imagine what kind of sensible agent would recommend such thing when they had committed to work for their clients' best interests. Additionally, what financially smart agents would recommend such option to reduce their own commission significantly?

Why staging is a much superior option than price reductions?

1. It's cheaper! The typical cost of staging a vacant home is well below $10,000 for an average home (this number is varied because of location, square footage, conditions of the home, entry and exit issues, etc.), but the cost of price reduction is DEFINITELY more than $10,000.
   
   
2. It just makes more sense economically for both sellers & agents. Doesn't it? Investing couple thousand dollars on staging is definitely losing several tens and thousands of dollars in your final net profit? Additionally, if you are an agent, think about your commission.
   
   Let's say the home is listed at $899,000 un-staged. And it has not sold and you are thinking about price reduction. A typical price reduction is generally more than $10,000. So let's say now the new listing price is $875,000. That is $24,000 less in your net profit as the seller. As an agent, that's $360 less in your commission (based on the 6% seller-buyer agent splits, and 50-50% split with the agent's office). Now in San Francisco bay area, a typical home is at least 1 million dollars. On a million-dollar home, your damage can be significantly more.
   
3. Sure, price sells the home, but staged homes show better. Therefore, staged homes will SELL your home BETTER. It is often very difficult to imagine your own belongings in someone else's home (therefore, the golden rule of staging is to de-personalize). But most people don't even realize that it is even more difficult to imagine your own belongings into an empty space. The normal tendency is that you feel the empty space is smaller than it really is. What staging does is to provide a spatial relativity to how big and small things are. Think about in CSI type of shows, when police collect evidence, they would place a common everyday object like a quarter next to the evidence (when they don't have a ruler) to show the relativity of the objects. Similiary with staging, our job as stagers is to show your buyers that your furniture will be able to fit in this space! It is actually a large room! That's why we arrange furniture to trick the eyes so people will feel the room is bigger than it is.
   
   
4. Our other job as a stager is to show buyers that you too, can live in a space like this! I often tell sellers & agents that we try our best to achieve the model home or hotel look. Why? Simply because everyone wants to live in those spaces!

so this past tuesday i went to broker's open house and left my cards there for the realtors that come through. late sunday night i received a blocked caller id call, and it was this angry woman "cindy? is this cindy? cindy lin? blah blah many people are angry at you right now? how would you feel that if someone takes credit for your staging? blah blah.. *click.*"

i was in horror. frankly that was not intention at all to take someone's credit. (i left 3 cards and a few pens.) the marketing materials i left were meant for other realtors that came through the home. but i can see how that can be seen as improper to do so. i just wished she wouldn't 1. called me out of the blue at 10pm on sunday night caught me off guard 2. bitch me out without letting me explained. 3. and who are these "a lot of people who are irritating with me?" i went to like 3 houses! 

but anyway, i was in arizona at the time and i was horrified when i received this call. i was on the phone with my sister for like a hour (who was so irriated by the end of the conversation) afterwards to talk about damage control. which frankly there is nothing i could've done since she didn't have the balls to tell me who she was.

but the lesson is... i must be more careful and sensitive in my marketing plan in the future! 

:: the horror!!! :: 

I was researching online on trulia.com yesterday. (I do that sometimes to see what are some of the staging trends on the market and what my competitions are doing.) And I was shocked by some of the photos that I have seen online. 

Trulia is a HUGE website now and it's well known among sellers & buyers. So it's so important to have great photos on the site. Not to mention the competition is fierce among realtors. Wouldn't it make sense to put your best foot forward and attract potential clients through your listing presentations? Here are some deadly mistakes that I have observed:

1. No photos! NO PHOTOS?! In the age of internet shopping where we can even buy houses & cars on ebay. Not to mention in a 2005 National Association of Realtors study, 79% of buyers now shop on internet first, and that number is rapidly growing. Internet has changed the buying patterns and has shifted the way real state professionals work. Buyers no longer need to depend on Realtors to get the latest housing news. They can do so proactively online on sites like trulia.com. How can your Realtor be so lazy that didn't even bother to put a picture up online where 79% of buyers first visit the internet? You ARE paying for his/hers services, correct? Shouldn't he/she put some effort into the presentation to attract as many buyers as possible?!
   
   
2. Bad Picture. Having a picture even if is bad doesn't mean it is better that no photos. Internet buyers are very used to scanning and skimming pages to get to what they want, since there are usually at least 25 items on each page. If your pictures are not attractive, it is easy to be overlooked. Here are some of the examples of bad pictures:
   
   
1. The picture itself is crooked, which can be easily corrected by programs like photoshop. It is human nature to seek for horizontal & vertical lines. (See Craig's blog: Someone needs to tell the truth: PHOTO LIES!) Don't know how to use it, well, it is time to learn! You want to make money on your equity, you need to do something about it. In this competitive market, sitting on the couch waiting for offers to come in is no longer the case. It's not a seller's market anymore. So be proactive!
   
   
2. The photo is blurry. People are going to spend a big chunk of their savings and probably going into debts for this purchase. How would you expect them to come to your open house based on a blurry photo while your competitions have perfectly clear photos to lure them into their open houses?
   
   
3. The photo is too dark. No one wants to live in a cave except vampires and cavemen. Bright and airy sells. That is the human nature. We want new things or things look like new. No one wants to buy a drab and old and dark house (unless they are flippers then it's older the better).
   
   
4. The image is too cluttered! Every photo tells a story, correct? Well what does a cluttered photo tells?
   A. The Realtor is too lazy or Seller is too cheap to hire a stager or didn't even bother to clean before the photographs are taken.
   B. Speaking of dirty, this house doesn't look well-maintained.
   C. Where is the focal point of this room? What is going on here? All I see is a mess. I don't want to live in a messy house, I want to live in a clean house.
   Once the buyers have judged your house based on your cluttered photo, they will skip over and move on to the next clean feeling photo because they can mentally move into that home without imagining removing clutter first. Plus, everyone wants to live in a model home. Have you seen a cluttered one?

i received a call yesterday from nbc (NBC!!!) wanting to do a segment on staging and see if i have an staging gig this weekend so they can film it. ARGH! wished they would've called me LAST week when i had that staging job! oy! i was talking to a local stager friend who mentioned this is pretty common. a reporter called her the day of to see if she just happened to be staging. ack. (this totally shattered my illusion about tv people being organized!)

do you have any press experiences to share? and how did you receive these?

have a great weekend,

cin 

The longer I am in the staging profession, the longer I see staging everywhere. When I go to friend's house, I no longer see the house, I see how their furniture is placed and how I would place them. When I am out on business trips and staying at hotel, I notice how their furniture is "staged." When I am out shopping, I no longer head toward women's section, I go to home furnishing first. My magazine choices have also shifted from people (wait, to clarify i don't subscribe i just flip through them at markets, okay? ;) ) to business week and home furnishing magazines. I was in the theater watching x-men 3 with my sister, during the scene when the boy was being rescued toward the end of the film, I grabbed my sister "look, that's from IKEA!"

And I actually had a dream last night that I was in some room and I could take all the tools that I wanted. I was SO happy. Isn't it crazy? haha 

In this competitve real estate industry, prospecting is key to our survival and to our success. Now that the market has started to slow down,

• what are YOU doing to prospect?
  
• Are you planning ahead for 2007?
  
• What have you don differently this year to market yourself?
• What are you going to change in your marketing methods?

This year, for me personally, here is what I have found that have worked for me:

• Being listed on directories, such as stagedhomes.com where I was a graduate of it.
• Craig's List. I have received many business leads this way.
• Research and talk to others and see what works and what doesn't
• Leaving pens (with my company info) & business cards at broker's tour & open houses
• Bringing  past work with me on job estimates
• Attending more continue education courses
  
• BNI (so far so good, we will see)
• Redo my business cards to make it more professional
  

What had not worked:

• Joining San Francisco Chamber of Commerce
• Printing ads in local newspaper (and too costly!)
• Yahoo Local ads

Goals for 2007:

• More steady job stream (that means I need to prospect more!)
• Generate more traffic to my site www.staged4more.com
• Redo the website www.staged4more.com
• A stronger & more consistent marketing plan
  
• Systemize the the day-to-day nitty gritty business stuff so there is less time spent on chores and more time on generating actual business i.e. decreasing passive work time and increasing actual working time
  

I attended a business networking group (for the very first time!) on Wednesday and surprising I got a lead right off the bat. Everyone seemed very friendly and most members I spoke with have been in the chapter for awhile now. Seems very promising so far. Frankly I have heard of many people dismissed the ideas behind it, being it's a waste of money, etc. However, I think the idea behind the group is actually quite genius and it's what we call "warm calls."

I had a fundraising background in the non profit sector before I jumped into the real estate industry. Warm calls tend to be much more effective and result driven than cold calls since people generally lean toward what feels familiar, in these cases, a friend's words. It is human nature. (Similarily, remember bad expierences also will go very far in these circles). In grant writing, grant officers receive hundreds of grants every week. How do you expect the grant leader differentiate your grant among hundreds and even thousands of grants? We used to have a joke that grant writers sit in this dim and windowless office surronded by piles and piles of papers. And it is actually very true. These grant officers are bombed with these papers everyday, and individual grant usually ranges from 10 pages to 100, depending the size of the foundations and the size of the grants. How can you differentiate yourself from the other stacks?

1. One of the techniques is Warm Calling. In fundraising, we are always trying to establish these "warm" connections (not "hot," you don't want to drive them away!). Something that connects you with these potential leads. Just something like a teaser (therefore not hot ones) that "lure" your prospects to find out more about you and then you can start pitching your purpose. But remember, warm calls will only get you in the door, prompting your reader to pull you out of the stack, your content is still very important.
   
2. Before we can actually make that pitching call to ask for dough, research the target funder, in this case, your target audience, i.e. potential clients. Do your homework, don't assume. If I am going to ask Bill Gates for 1 billion dollars for donation, asking him to donate toward technological issues will be pointless, since it is not his foundation's concentration. However, if you ask him for health care organization, he might give you a chance and listen to you.
   
3. There are many variations to establish warm calls, such as business networking groups, toastmasters, chamber of commerce, realtor associations, etc. Once people start seeing you in the community, start to recognize you, then you can work your branding and messages into their brains.
4. Then, stalk your leads (in legal manners, of course). Once you sink the bait, it's time to hook it. You want to create chances for encounters. (Hmm, it's kind of like dating, isn't it? You always want to run into your crush "seemingly by chance as God intended since it is meant to be.") I don't mean you have to literally stalk your target audience, but create those chances so you bump into each other and you can sell yourself one more time. If you focus your prospecting on Realtors, attend realtor functions will benefit you. If your target audience is the builders, then you need to hang out with them.
5. Be persistant. It's easy to get disencouraged (like I was yesterday ;) ) and feel hopeless and want to give up.  And maybe you are shy, afraid to speak with strangers and hates talking on the phone (I am actually talking about myself. I HATE talking on the phone with clients. It's a daunting task for me.). Breathe , you will be fine. The worse that can happen is you will never see them again. As long as you are sincere in your efforts, I am sure people will see that! Before I set into the breakfast room at Cathedral Hill Hotel yesterday, I actually walked right past it and went into the bathroom. I stared in the mirror and literally took a deep breath. I said to myself "You are already here, so make the most of it! I didn't wake up this early to leave!" Silly, huh? But I did walked into that room and made my elevator speech. And I got a lead 1 hour later.
   
6. Talk about your job ALL THE TIME. Sure, why not, you love your job, right? This is why you are in it.
   
1. Talk about it so often that your parents can recite what you do. A Realtor that I once met told me that he trained his teenagers to answer his phones for him professionally whenever the clients call his home for him, even hung up their conversations for him. Most people at the table was like "No way, your TEENAGERS?" He smiled and explained that once his kids knew how to answer the phone, he told them that "Know what I do and know how to answer my phone calls. Whatever I earned you will have a piece of it." It worked like a charm. Your family and friends want you to succeed. No one is going to be proud about a daughter who is living off her parents and doing nothing. Real estate & running a small business is a very lonely business. Chances are you work by yourself for yourself, so it's always great to receive support. So ASK for them and train them so they will sell your business for you.
2. Talk about it with people in your industry. Share! You will receive more than you give. ;)
7. Think Outside of the Box. Okay, so you have heard about this all the time. In fact you are so sick of it you just want to throw that freaking box out of the window. But it is very true whether it is in the fundraising world or in the real estate world. Why would someone care for your ideas if they sound exactly the same or just slightly different from other hundreds and thousands of grants, and in your case, your competitions. My fellow bloggers Derek and Mariana Wagner have written in their blog You're Doing WHAT?! (Unique Ideas for Getting Business) and these are wonderful ideas. Be different is going to get you business, because people will remember you.

My BNI experience has inspired me to write this blog. Hope this is helpful to you. Feel free to share any more lead generation ideas!

Cheers,

Cindy 

i stage to sell, live (redesign) and work in san francisco bay area!
cindy@staged4more.com
www.staged4more.com
http://stagingtipsandmore.blog.com/

an unpleasant situation arrived in my inbox today. actually i was so angry that i almost burst into tears. GRRR

so the staged home was sold and i sent an invoice for the additional month's rental, which was stated in the bid of how much additional it is going to be, also contract said that additional rental fee will occur if the rental is more than one month (however i didn't state how much it's going to be additionally per month. now looking back at it, for the future, i will spell out everything like my client is a 3-year-old. but we did have a conversation about this in the beginning. i did tell her how much it is additionally per month). 

now the realtor is saying that i never stated it or tell her how much additional rental is even though i had. and then she proceeded telling me how she added accessories in the home (which i let that slide because i tried to hide them and then they keep reappearing) and tells me not to take them when i de stage the home (oh because i was going to steal her 1 dollar candles from ikea and 2 dollar loofah from target). oh and "best of luck to you!" i was SO PISSED.

 i had bent over backward for this client. i had changed the staging date TWICE because her contractors never finished the jobs on time which resulted those inventory sat in my warehouse and couldn't move elsewhere. i even re staged part of the home because she insisted it (and without additional fees). her contractors had left some strange stains on my bedspread (okay don't want to know what they are). and one of the table cloth was ruined because of her accessories (which i did not ask her to pay for).

*SIGH* i think dealing with customers is really the most challenging part of the job! 

what would you do when you are in my shoes? 

i was driving around today and received a staging inquiry because she saw my car sign. i have to say, i have had this car sign for 6 months now, this is the FIRST call. not to mention that she ended up NOT being a client. she called to inquire how to become a stager... hmmm food for thought. for awhile now i am contemplating perhaps it is the sign itself that is not effective?

my current signs read:

staged4more
stage your listings to sell 4 more
hello@staged4more.com
xxx.xxx.xxxx.

has anyone had any luck with their car signs? if so would you mind sharing? or offer some positive critism on mine?

thanks!!!

cheers,

cindy

Are you afraid of your garage or basement? Every time you walk near it, you *sigh* or *cringe* because of the clutter and things that you no longer use are eating up all the space. Now your storage is limited. This is why when I am out with clients at consultations, I always say:

• (If it is Staging to Sell) "Clutter Eats Equity!" which is very true since buyers usually get so blindsided by your stuff, they can not see anything else, including their own belongings in your space. If they cannot visualize themselves living in that space, you can kiss that offer goodbye. So yes, clutter does eat your equity.
  

• (If it is Staging to Live) "Clutter eats Tranquility!" You get annoyed when you can't find your papers, checkbooks, keys, due bills, the list goes on, because they are all buried underneath your junk. It puts you in a bad mood and you feel annoyed and cannot concentrate in your space. Your mind feels cluttered as well. And then you get drawn into this vicious cycle where you just dumps everything on top of every other thing. Then your room looks like pecks and valleys -- a pile then a pile then another pile then.... It bothers you and you can't get things done.

Everyone wants to declutter (I have to smile because a lot of homes that I've been for Redesign to Live, I generally find a book on their bookshelves talking about decluttering ). It's really not difficult to do, but the biggest obstacle is you. There are 4 golden rules:

1. Start small. Rome was not built in one day, neither was your clutter. So to kill off your clutter (which you already probably feel very daunting about the task at hand), do it slowlyyyyy~ take 15 minutes a day and do it. Just do it. Nothing else is more important than your peace of mind. So just do it. No excuses. 15 minutes is not a lot, but ten 15 minutes add up to 150 minutes of decluttering. Now that's a lot!
   
   
2. Be persistent. Decluttering is like dieting. You gotta work at it. There are no quick fixes (no, throwing things in a box and push into your closet does not count as "decluttering" despite its popularity ). Do your15 minutes everyday and you will see the results in a few weeks!
   
   
3. Divide and conqur. Organization and division is going to help you "de-claw" your clutter. Group similar items together and label them properly. You can get organizer containers at IKEA or Target for very reasonable price. I use a label maker for this purpose, especially on filing. It is easy to read and keeps things clean. (I love my label maker!)
   
   
4. When in doubt, call a professional. Iif you have a ghost, you would call ghost buster, right? If you have a plumbing problem, you would call a plumber, correct? So when in doubt, call someone to help you. A 3rd person can help you get rid of your junk relentlessly. It is difficult to do it yourself sometimes since you are so attached to your belongings (this is why you still have them in the first place!). Personally it would be very difficult for me to sell my parent's home, for example, since I can become very emotional and then irrational in terms of my decisions, even if I am a professional stager.
   

   Here are a few professionals to consider:

5. 1. A professional organizer. You can find one through National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO).
      
   2. A professional closet organizer, garage organizer, etc.
   3. A professional stager if you are selling your home. You can find one through www.stagedhomes.com.

Let me know if these articles have been helpful to you, and if you would like to see other tips!

Cheers,

If you run a search on craig's list for "staging" under real estate services, several pages worth of stagers pop out.  All of them promise to sell your home faster and for more. Good or bad, how do you know? Do you dare to use your equity to gamble on a stager you randomly found on the web? Here are 5 tips to hire a qualified stager:

1. Ask for qualifications. But don't mistake this with the letters behind this person's name on his/her business card as qualifications. When I was working as a Realtor, although I have passed my exams, it didn't mean anything until I was out on the field. What I mean by qualifications is how much work has this person done in the staging industry? Ask to see resume, portfolio, past before & after pictures (make sure they are done by him/her, not some stock photos from some website. Usually a good way is "Oh, tell me about the story behind this picture!"), or certifications and continue educations if this is important to you.
2. Ask for their professional policies. As a professional, for example, if you are a bank teller, there are certain procedures to follow when a customer shows up at your window with a wad of cash in their hands, right? If a customer is doing something inappropriate, such as depositing someone else's check into his/her account, there are certain protocols to follow, correct? Similarly with running a small business, which most of the stagers are. You want to do business with someone who has strong ethics and professional policies because this reflects their professionalism. When your potential stager comes over for a consultation (many do charge a fee for coming out and many don't), observe what he or she does and his/hers working style. Is he/she listening to your needs? Respectful? Willing to work with you?
3. Do searches on the internet on the stager or his/hers firm. This is the NEW age of real estate. A web presence is VERY important. If your staging professional does not even have a website, don't even think about hiring them. In a 2005 National Association of Realtors study, 79% of buyers now shop on internet first, according to National Association of Realtors, and that number is rapidly growing. If your stager writes a blog, that is a bonus, read a few entries to get a feel of how this person works and how credible this person is.
4. You have specific needs, since every home is different, are your stager listening to you or just trying to sell you the most expensive option? Expensive does not equal to good work. Sometimes, you will find stagers who are economical and good (at that point, please thank your lucky stars). Don't determine on hiring someone based on price. Price does not mean anything really. A good stager WILL work with your budget. (But of course be reasonable, you can't really have champagne taste on beer budget.)
   
   There are a few different ways stagers determine how much they charge. Some, like me, does it based on how much time, work, assistance and materials I need for the job. Some based on Listing Price, which you may see from the $30,000 price tag on a multi-million dollar homes. Some does it per square footage. In San Francisco bay area, there are quite a few price points. You will expect higher pricing in SF in general, and very competitive pricing in San Jose area. I have heard that it will be tough! if you can get $1.10 per square footage, since it is extremely competitive down there. (Which I concur. I did a consultation in San Jose, the Listing Agent hands me her business card. It says "List your home with me for 1.5%, or let me represent you as a buyer for 1%. List a home at 1.5%? How does she make any money between all the marketing costs, MLS fees, ads, etc.?! Or represent for 1%? Just think about all the gas she spends to drive customers around make me shudder. Typically now agents show about 80 homes before someone buys one.)
   
   If you ask your stager "How do you charge?" They probably will not tell you. BUT, they will tell you how they work. Find out what will they do in your home? You may spend $1000 on a staging job, but the stager may skim on furnishings & accessories just to get your business, comparing to a $3000 stager who will do the job right. So use your best judgment and look at their portfolio.
5. Don't take it personally. If you do, you won't survive the Open House. Stagers may make recommendations that offend you because you feel that your taste in home decorating has been totally dismissed. BUT, staging is about appealing your home to a broad range of buyers. You may have an impressive collection of neon green wall paper, but it is much more difficult to find buyers who like neon green wall papers than finding buyers who like pastel palette in their homes. Usually when a buyer enters a home that has such strong personality, they are blindsided. If they are online, they will immediately exit your listing and jumps to the next one (just think back when you are online shopping). If they are at open houses, they will walk out the door immediately and go to the next one. It doesn't matter if you have smashing view and great floor plan, they will not be able to see themselves live in that home.

Happy hiring! ;)

Cheers,

Cindy
Staged4more Home Staging Services
hello@staged4more.com
http://stagingtipsandmore.blog.com/

so for awhile i have been comtemplating about WHY i blog? what is the purpose of ME blogging? while the iheartstaging blog has turned into a brain dump, a fellow ar stager points out, it is borderline professional. at the same time, when i was reviewing the blog, i found that there is not a central theme to this blog. it is too random and all over the place. so i have decided to get a new blog. starts a new and just devotes on writing about staging tips and staging education. i will keep the old one as my brain dump and relief, but for the customers it's probably not relevant for them to read about my vents. (and they probably don't care) :) also it was great to experiment, but now if i want to be a more serious blogger, i should take it more seriously :) just a thought.

cheers,

cindy   

here is the new blog: http://stagingtipsandmore.blog.com/ 

i staged/redesign a home yesterday for sale. and i re-did their bookshelves as well i think it has become my 2nd obsession at work (the first one is making beds. ironically i actually don't make beds in real life!)

check out some of my before & after pics:

i had a client meeting yesterday that really moved me. it was for a redesign to live. she had tears in her eyes when she started telling me her story. and today when i checked my email i received an email from her saying how appreciative she is about my services and to work long term on relieving her from her current situation. it was just one of those days that make you feel that ahhh... this job is wonderful!

 we change people's lives everyday, who wouldn't want to work in real estate?!

bloomberg announced today that new home prices are likely to fall: "US new-house prices will fall this year for the first time since 1991 and existing homes will have the smallest gain ever as a glut of properties forces sellers to accept lower offers, the National Association of Realtors said." any thoughts, my fellow stagers and realtors?

http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2006/10/12/new_home_prices_likely_to_fall_for_1st_time_since_91/ 

i recently came across this article "weekend businesses for domestic gods & goddesses" from entrepreneur magazine. frankly i am appalled by the inaccuracies in this article.

1. first of all, this is NOT a weekend business. this is why there is a strong surge of home stagers on the market who are not qualified. i have been doing this for almost a year now and there are a lot of issues that a stager goes through that these articles do not address. such as:

• liability -- what if someone sues you? i know a fellow stager who placed a candle in the home. the open house agent (not even the listing agent) lit the candle and forgot all about it. guess what? the candle burnt down part of the house, and because it was HER inventory, it was HER liability.
• storage -- where do you store 5 couches, 8 coffee tables in various sizes, 6 queen size beds, 22 sets of bedsheets, 13 different sizes of silk trees and......?! your garage can only hold so much (trust me, i know!)
  
• movers -- like i commented about in my previous blog entries, how do you find reliable movers who won't bang your furniture around and will arrive on time, as well as delivery your goods as promised? i have known a stager who have their own trucks and movers which solved that problem, but one day her truck that was loaded up with nice furniture ready to stage was stolen from the parking lot! how do you deal with such inventory loss?
• theft -- speaking of loss, how do you deal with someone steals or damage your inventory? i know a stager recently had her staged home broken into because one of the realtors on tour forgot to lock the back door. all her furniture, gone! i have had lightbulbs stolen out of my lamps. (ridiculous, isn't it? but people do it!)
• inventory-- how do you track inventory? how would you inventory your pillows? and sheets? and....?

2. all these are just the tips of the iceberg. trust me, staging is a full time job. you have to work at it to get results, much like losing weight. many realtors know this as well, if you don't prospect, you can die in this industry, doesn't matter how good you are. if you don't know your stuff either, you are going to buy yourself into debts. i go out every week to research inventory, aka research shopping and bargain hunting. frankly i have not spent anything on me lately (*tearrrr *i miss h&m), it all went into my business. having a small business takes over your personal life. it's always a challenge to strike a balance between your personal and business since you are your own boss, as well as your book keeper, your mail clerk, your own janitor and more..

3. the article also says "some house stagers set their price according to the sale price of the home--1.5 percent." 1.5%?! that is insane. for a home that is $800,000 LP for example, the staging fee will be $12,000! i am sorry, it should not be so costly to stage a home. one of the things i really like about the principles of the ASP and IRIS training is that staging is NOT costly. it is about utilizing what you have and make the best of it. at 1.5%, home owners will be broke before they get their home on market! not to mention LP (listing price) is usually NOT the final selling price. at the current market (at least in sf bay area), homes are sitting from 40-60 days at this time and many are taking price reductions. i cannot fathom even asking homeowners to pay that price myself. i remember watching bravo's million dollar listing and a home was staged for $30,000. i remember thinking to myself, that's a brand new car! (perhaps this price is true in other places but not in sf bay, at least with most stagers i know)

4. the article also recommends to have some sort of interior design background which i feel that's true, you should have a general sense of design, but it is not necessary to go through expensive and lengthy trainings for interior designers. staging is NOT interior design, it is about de-personalizing. the way you live in your home is very different from living in it. when you sell it, it becomes a product for the public. you want to appeal to the public so you can get a good price, correct? interior design is about personalizing your space. someone may think zen living is great, but others may just think it's new age frills. so how you live in your home is very different from how you will sell your home.

but anyway, enough ranting today. it's just that i personally feel that the inconsistencies in the industry frustrates me and it is what gives home staging a bad rap. this is another reason why i got involved with iahsp, because not only i want to establish a community for support, ideas, etc. to grow each other's businesses, moreover, i feel there needs to be a consistency within the industry (at least in the regional area) so the customers will recognize as legit professionals.