Real Estate Staging FAQ
Learn how to boost your real estate commissions

How Will Home Staging Boost My Real Estate Commissions?

If your listings show well it reflects well on your professionalism and helps your clients sell more quickly and for a higher dollar amount.

After all, it’s your name on the sign on the front lawn and people driving by notice whether your listings usually say “SOLD” or whether they sit for a long time.

Turning your listings more quickly results in less hassle and higher profits for you.

You know what it’s like to be stuck with a weak listing. Your clients call you daily wondering why it hasn’t sold, when you’ll be running another ad, when your next open house is scheduled.

You know the issue isn’t how many ads you run, but how bad the house shows. But how do you tell them?

Home Stagers address issues you may not feel comfortable discussing with your clients.

Staging Diva Graduate Home Stagers know how to tackle sensitive topics like maintenance issues, cleanliness, odor problems, ugly decor, clutter, etc. in a diplomatic way. This way you don’t have to worry about offending your clients.

Home Stagers free your time to focus on what you do best.

Staging Diva Graduate Home Stagers take over the worry of getting your listing showing-ready on time for photography, open houses and listing appointments.

Imagine how nice it would be to arrive for a showing or open house knowing that all you have to do is unlock the door and everything else will be perfect!

> Read these staging success stories for proof home staging works.

If I Recommend Home Staging, Do I Have to Pay for It?

The short answer is “no, you don’t have to pay for real estate staging just because you recommend a home stager.”

Many agents just refer their clients to home stagers, in much the same way as you would recommend a home inspector or real estate lawyer. You aren’t expected to pay those fees so why would home staging be any different?

Some agents include an initial consultation with a Home Stager for their high-end listings. Others will reimburse the home seller for a portion of the fees after they’ve collected their commission. This way your home seller still has “skin in the game” because they’ve made the upfront investment of paying for home staging.

Obviously, the higher the price point of the listing, the more room you have to maneuver in terms of what you invest to sell the property.

Many home sellers have seen TV shows or read about the benefits of home staging and are asking their agents to recommend a home stager. So it’s a good idea to have one or two good stagers in your list of contacts.

If you can’t find someone in our Directory of Home Stagers, you can use our FREE Home Stager Locator Service. We’ll gladly locate a Staging Diva Graduate Home Stager for you at no cost.

If you need content for your web site to help your clients understand the need for home staging, we can supply FREE articles to you in exchange for links. Please email to arrange and include your URL in your request.

Why Do I Need a Stager? I Already Tell My Clients How to Prepare Their House for the Real Estate Market.

You’re in the service business and you have only so many hours in a day!

Every hour you spend inside one of your listings discussing how to improve it for sale, is another hour you aren’t spending marketing the property or getting another listing!

Many agents suggest obvious repairs, cleaning and decluttering. But do you really want to spend hours deciding the best place for every piece of furniture or accessory?

Not to mention having to source all these items for your clients if they don’t already have them! That would be a real drain on your time and give you too many details to worry about when you should be focussed on getting and selling your listings.

Plus, you might be able to recommend a painter if your client needs one. But are you really comfortable recommending paint colors?

If you have a vacant home, do you know how to get it fully furnished? Is this how you should be spending your time?

What if your client has terrible taste? Do you want to tell them their furniture has to be replaced? Do you want to tell them to put away all their treasured family photos, heirlooms and collection of 60 house plants?

Staging Diva Graduate Home Stagers are ready to deal with all of these issues quickly and diplomatically.

This makes your real estate job easier and lets you focus on what you’re good at (and where you earn your commissions) — getting and selling your listings!

The Real Estate Market is Hot. Why Should I Bother with Home Staging?

While it’s true that in a seller’s market it sometimes feels like all you have to do is stick a sign on the front lawn and the house will sell.

Yet, you know that not all properties sell fast, even in a hot market. There are always the listings that languish on the real estate market while everything else sells.

You know how bad you look to your clients in that situation. Plus, it’s embarrassing having your sign on the lawn in front of a non-selling house, in a hot market, week after week.

Even with your listings that show relatively well (and will sell regardless of what you do), you know that if you can generate a bidding war the price will go WAY up!

Real estate staging makes it that much easier for bidding wars and back up offers to happen.

> Read more about why home staging works.

Can Home Staging Help Me Turn Listings in a Slow Real Estate Market?

CNN Money did a story on 5 strategies homeowners can use to get top dollar in a slow real estate market.

Real estate staging was the top strategy and they interviewed Home Staging expert Debra Gould, also known as The Staging Diva® to explain why.

Basically, the slower the market the harder you have to work to turn your listings.

Anything you can do to get a competitive edge over comparable listings in the area will make your sales job easier, and make you look good to current and prospective clients and your fellow real estate agents.

Don’t you owe it to yourself to do what you can to blow away the competition?

How much nicer will your job be when you don’t have to convince your clients to lower their asking price because their home won’t sell?

By staging the listing to be as physically attractive as possible, you are romancing real estate buyers and lowering the chances of needing a price reduction.

Wouldn’t it be great to sell faster and potentially get competing offers because your listing looks so much better than everything else listed in the same price range in that neighborhood?

> Read more about why home staging works.

How Much Does Real Estate Staging Cost?

Home staging fees can range from a few hundred dollars for an initial consultation to thousands of dollars to furnish an entire home. It completely depends on:

• The current size and state of the home
• How much of the work your client is willing to do themselves once they have the stager’s advice
• The price point of the home

For example, it costs more to furnish a million dollar home than a $250,000 home, because of the square footage and the calibre of furnishings that would be required to fit the home’s target market.

If the home is already furnished, fees may range from $250 to $800 depending on the home stager’s experience level and how much needs to be done.

Whether you are paying for the consultation or simply recommending real estate staging to your client, it’s important to remember that home staging advice is an investment in a potentially significant financial return. Don’t base the choice of stager purely on price, consider who will do the best job.

> Read more about what to expect when you hire a home stager and what effects the costs.

How Do I Find a Home Stager in My Area?

We get inquiries from all over the world and have a database of thousands of excellent Real Estate Stagers.

If you can’t find someone in our Directory of Home Stagers, you can use our FREE Home Stager Locator Service. We’ll gladly locate someone for you.

Another reason to connect with local home stagers is that they’re often hired BEFORE the real estate agent.

Wouldn’t you want home stagers recommending you as the listing agent after they’ve already staged the home? Talk about a hot sales lead for you! The home seller is so committed to listing their property right away, they’ve already invested their own money in preparing their home to sell quickly and for top dollar.

Click Here to Find a Stager!

What if I Have a Vacant Listing?

Selling an empty home is a bad idea. Buyers have great difficulty envisioning how their furniture should be arranged and they have no sense of how big the rooms are with no point of reference.

Vacant homes tend to look depressing and they also draw attention to every possible construction flaw since there’s nothing else to look at.

It’s hard for buyers to make an emotional connection with an empty house. That’s why builders use model homes.

> Read how home staging establishes that emotional connection.

> This vacant home sat on the market for 5 years and sold the first weekend after staging.

What If I Want to Become a Home Stager?

Several Staging Diva Graduates are also Realtors®.

Many of the agents who take The Staging Diva Program are looking for a way to transition out of the 24/7 demands (and often lower than expected income), of being a real estate agent.

> Learn more about the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program.

If you want to keep your real estate license and also stage homes, you’ll have to decide whether you want to be an agent who happens to do home staging, or a home stager who happens to have a real estate license.

That distinction makes a huge difference to how you market your services and how you spend most of your time.

The Staging Diva Training Program is NOT for you if you just want to stage your listings for free. In that case, you can learn what you need in the Staging Diva Ultimate Design Guide: Tips, Tricks and Floor Plans.

If on the other hand, you want to earn income from decorating homes to sell, than the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program will give you a complete step-by-step business model to follow (whether you maintain your real estate license or not).

You’ll learn how you can use home staging as a lead generator for your real estate practice, how to avoid ever doing free estimates, how to get paid as soon as you do a home staging consultation and more.

> What to do if you have a real estate license and realize you prefer home staging.

> Read our FAQ for aspiring home stagers about the business of home staging.