Most home staging courses tell you to focus all your attention on the real estate agent. It’s an obvious gateway to potential clients.
Staging Diva students learn that the real money is with home sellers.
That said, I don’t ignore them entirely. I wrote a series of articles about marketing to real estate agents at their open houses.
After all, you have a captive audience to introduce your services. When you handle it well, it can lead to home staging jobs.
Another reason to visit a real estate agent at their open house: You can evaluate whether they are agents you want to work with at all.
It’s important to work with the right real estate agent.
Just like any profession, there are good agents and bad agents. There have been many open houses where I’ve decided NOT to introduce myself as a home stager. Instead, I say I was just passing by and I’m curious about the house.
When you visit an open house pay attention to the real estate agent’s behavior and what they say.
Here are 5 things I watch out for:
1. Does the real estate agent greet people nicely and do they get them to sign in?
A professional real estate agent will care about the first impression he/she creates and ensure that any visitor feels welcome. After all, the whole reason they are giving up a couple of hours on a weekend to sit in this house is they hope to generate some business out of it!
If they aren’t greeting visitors warmly, then how caring are they going to be with actual clients? And, how caring would they be with you?
Visitors are all supposed to sign in. If they aren’t ensuring this happens then they are either too lazy, they don’t care, or they’re afraid of asserting themselves. None of these reasons bode well for a future business relationship.
2. Did the real estate agent prepare an attractive feature sheet on the property including proper photos?
Now if the house is a total pigpen, don’t expect to see lots of interior shots. However, if the house looks reasonable (even if it’s not staged) and there are no decent photos of it, you have to wonder how much care the agent takes to market the home effectively.
If they don’t care or don’t bother, you can’t reasonably expect them to go out of their way to recommend staging to their clients. Especially when they’ll worry about being asked to help pay for it.
3. Did the real estate agent turn on the lights for the open house?
It amazes me when I walk into a beautifully staged (or at least well-presented) home and the agent hasn’t even taken a few minutes to turn on the lights. They don’t care if visitors can see it properly.
Their lack of care annoys me even more when I think of the size of their commission in an expensive home.
Call me judgmental. Not taking the time to turn on the lights tells me the agent is lazy, unobservant, or apathetic.
It also tells me that they weren’t the driving force behind the staging, the client was.
This is not a real estate agent who will be a source of business for you, don’t waste your time.
4. Does the house look well presented, clean and organized except for the real estate agent’s coat, shoes and newspaper?
This shows a total lack of respect for the home seller. This real estate agent is unlikely to appreciate the attention you’ll pay to staging and will never be a source of referrals.
(Be glad this person is not your spouse!)
5. Does the agent hosting the open house criticize this particular listing, or give out information that puts the seller at a disadvantage?
This sounds unbelievable but I’ve personally experienced it many times. Here’s an example of an actual conversation I’ve had.
“Gee that seems like a low price for a house of this size in this neighborhood.” The listing agent (not knowing if I’m a potential buyer) replies, “That’s because the lot is small, there’s no parking and the view from the third bedroom is awful.”
As far as I’m concerned, this is your signal to say thanks and leave immediately!
What more do you need to know than this agent lacks integrity or is just plain dumb. In either case, this is not someone I want to work with in any capacity.
Here’s another example from a recent condo I went to see (in a market I was actually thinking of buying in):
“So why are they selling?” The young agent replies, “I really shouldn’t tell you but they’ve already bought a house because they have a baby on the way. So they need to sell really fast.”
Now, before you accuse me of real estate agent bashing, please know that I have total respect for the truly professional REALTORS®. Unfortunately, there are many agents who don’t act in their client’s best interest. They need to be called out for this kind of behavior.
As I’ve tried to demonstrate here, by visiting open houses, you can learn a lot about real estate agents in your area.
By observing how they handle an open house, you’ll know whether this is an agent you want to work with. Or recommend to your home staging clients. Then you can take the next step in introducing your services to them.
Please share your thoughts and comments below, so we can learn from your experiences and opinions too! Have you ever had an experience with a real estate agent and you knew you didn’t want to present yourself as a home stager because it was not someone you wanted to work with?
This is a great post, Debra! Although I have yet to attend any open houses to introduce/market myself to agents (one of those things on my list I just haven’t gotten around to), I HAVE attended open houses at the request of other agents and been appalled by the laziness/lack of concern or lack of education on the part of the agents to showcase the homes properly. I have toured VACANT open houses where all the toilet seats are up showing dirty toilet water, wastebaskets are overflowing, lights aren’t turned on anywhere, and the blinds are all closed! I got into a conversation with that agent — who knew I was sent there as a stager by her manager — and found out she’s been an agent for years! So she should have known better — she kept telling me I had a “good eye.” ROFL! I’d call it “good old common sense.” I have always toured open houses as a buyer where I was not asked to sign in, or asked to sign in and never called afterwards. You bring up excellent points, Debra — there are quite a few agents who will just not be good candidates for us.
Amy, thanks for sharing your experience!
To your excellent list, I would add: whenever possible before going to the open house, look at the quality of the internet photos. If the pics are blurred, dark, and/or out of focus then the agent does not ‘get’ visual merchandising and is only posting the first impression seen by more buyers than will ever walk into the house because someone told him/her to. If my time is limited and I cannot make it to all of the open houses, I visit the ones with clear photos (even and especially if they are in need of staging) because that agent has a clue.
Excellent point Nancy!!
Thanks so much, Debra, for putting things in perspective for us. I tend to blame myself for doing something wrong when in reality, it was the other party who might not have been a good fit. Would love to hear the next in this series, and learn so much from others, too. Thanks, Nancy and Amy, your insights are so helpful.
My neighborhood has around 1400 homes with about 5% on the market. I have gone around and pulled the flyers from most and have to comment that the photos in most are terrible. If I were in the market to buy, I would not even consider viewing the home. There are 3 primary Realtors that have listed the majority of the resales and are all retired. While I have talked to each of them from time to time, It is as if they really don’t care. I decided that since the agent doesn’t care to suggest staging with the client, what have I got to lose by sending a personal letter to those home owners that obviously could use staging assistance and provide my business card? I will let you know how it works out.
I thought it was just my demographic area that had more than its fair share of these types of real estate agents. I am glad to know I’m not alone in my frustration that the one profession that should be our biggest ally is ironically the one profession that employs our biggest obstacles.
Kathi, Believe me it’s everywhere! You’ll really enjoy this article . It explains how the shifting power dynamic of real estate agents relative to their clients effects home stagers:
Freakonomics has a lot to say about real estate agents
Thank you for this information. Look forward to learning more through your articles. Make it a great day! Thx again.
Deborah, thanks for commenting. Glad you found the article helpful! If you’re not already a subscriber and you’d like to be notified whenever I post a new story (maximum one per week), just sign up at the big green box at the top of this page, or the sign up box at the bottom of the article. You’ll get an email when there’s a new story that includes the photo, headline and first paragraph with a link to read the rest if you’re interested. It’s also a great way to be the first to find out about new home staging job postings.
Last year, when my husband and I were looking for a new house, we attended an agent’s open house for her own home and I was shocked that many of the blinds were closed and most of the lights weren’t turned on! I actually had to ask her if she could turn on lights in some of the rooms so we could SEE the spaces, they were so dark. Made me wonder what kind of agent she was, too . . . clearly, not a smart one!
Amy, thanks for sharing that! It does boggle the mind doesn’t it?!
My first staging job was a condo which the agent took horrible pictures and just made sit on the MLS with no marketing efforts outside of that. The owner fired him, kept the staging and sold with a new agent shortly after in the middle of the Christmas season. Since then, I’ve joined with a photograher to ensure beautiful pics on all my projects. I offer it for free on any vacant staging jobs which is a great incentive for the client to do business with me instead of the competition.
Thanks so much for sharing this experience (and what you did about it for the future) Juliet!
I think that agents who are savvy about modern marketing for real estate, are far more likely to be good partners for home stagers. Not only do they know that presentation is just as important as price, but they do everything they can to make sure a house looks its best (online and in person). Agents with more achaic views of real estate are prone to the 1) terrible photos 2) poor home presentation 3) old fashioned way of selling real estate. I have met more than a few of these at open houses and remember one agent who tried to convince me that the house was ‘staged’ because they had set the table with fiestaware. We tell our clients – if they don’t have an agent – to look critically at an agent’s listings. If presentation is obviously not emphasized in their listings, there is a good chance the agent won’t do a great job marketing and selling the property for what it’s worth.
All good points Heather, thanks for commenting!
Just wondering.. we went to see a home that was on the market for 30 days plus.. photos where great online, but we got to see an empty house.. Is this normal. The agent said, he staged for 30 days and did not renew.. I felt cheated! Is this normal practise? I felt like false advertising!
Jeanine,
I love that you shared your thoughts as a potential buyer. I’ve been writing for years about why I feel “virtual staging” is a waste of money and the importance of romancing buyers when they’re actually IN the house, not just when looking at photos. The agent who was too cheap to renew staging beyond 30 days really shot himself in the foot in my opinion. Most of the costs had already been spent getting it staged in the first place. Subsequent months would be a fraction of the initial investment. If he didn’t want to invest that money in his listing, he should have had the client pay for it. Frankly, I don’t believe agents should be paying for staging anyways!
Buyers are not “supposed to sign in” You would not believe how fed up Buyers are with this tactic to build lists by Agents and this is why I do not do it. As an experienced agent I can tell in a few moments whether or not they already have an agent and if I can work with them without having a sign in sheet with mostly false answers on it. When a home is a clear fixer upper no amount of BS is going to save a “competitive advantage” for the Seller. Truth in advertising works well, is ethical and creates a win/win. I am sorry that all you see is the fluff in this business.