I wouldn’t want to be dependent on real estate commissions in a slow real estate market (or even in a hot one for so many reasons I’ll discuss).
If you are one of the millions of real estate agents in North America, there’s a good chance your business is struggling.
I hear complaints from Realtors® all over whose commissions are so intermittent that they’ve taken to staging their clients’ homes themselves for free, hoping to attract more listings and then sell them faster and for a better price.
This practice of staging their own listings for free just creates more problems for overworked and underpaid agents.
First of all, as a real estate agent, your time is money. While you’re donating your time to help your client rearrange their furniture, sort through their junk, choose the perfect paint color for their den and decide whether or not to move the baby’s crib out of the office, do you realize the significant amount of time and money you are wasting? Not to mention the risk of offending your client and losing the listing altogether?
It’s time to do the math
If you list four properties this month and spend an average of four hours staging each of them, you have wasted sixteen hours, or two entire workdays.
How many homes can you show in sixteen hours? You could have planned, advertised and attended five open houses in that amount of time.
When you’re in the business of selling real estate, your strengths are presumably finding and selling property for your clients and negotiating the best deals for them. If you are personally staging your clients’ homes for free, those negotiation skills are being wasted on domestic disagreements over paint chips and furniture placement.
Many real estate agents approach me, looking for information on the best way to use home staging to boost their business. Before I can answer that, I have to ask:
Do you want to be a home stager with a real estate license, or a real estate agent who stages houses?
Your answer will determine what approach you should take. A significant number of real estate agents who take the Staging Diva® Home Staging Business Training Program do so because they’re tired of selling real estate as their primary source of income with all the inconveniences this entails. They no longer want to be on call 24/7, miss family time on evenings and weekends and feel like they live out of their cars. They want more control over their schedules and to be paid for their time.
Real estate agents enrolled in the Staging Diva program are there to learn how to make a very good living staging homes, not how to stage houses for free as real estate agents.
As students of the Staging Diva Training Program, they learn how to be home stagers who also happen to be licensed Realtors®, rather than real estate agents who happen to stage their listings. If you are an agent first, your focus needs to be on turning listings, not fluffing pillows and sorting clutter.
If you fall into the category of wanting to be a home stager with a real estate license, there is a great chance you will be given a lot of real estate listings. The majority of my home staging clients are homeowners who are just about to list their properties, and they haven’t signed with a real estate agent yet. Many would happily list with me because of the relationship we’ve built as I staged their home. For a home stager with a license, that’s a great listing opportunity!
So what does all this mean? Basically, if your passion for selling real estate has fizzled out and you’re sick of being on call 24/7, you might want to shuffle your priorities and start thinking of yourself as a home stager with a real estate license. You should focus on promoting your home staging services, which is a very profitable business if approached correctly. Along the way you will also pick up real estate listings and find yourself competing with other Realtors® on a whole new level.
A good home stager will earn a tremendous amount of trust from their clients. (It’s amazing how the intimate task of sorting through personal possessions can bring strangers together!) If, at the end of the staging process— which you’ve already been paid for— you also get the listing, isn’t that better then staging your listings for free?
Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging
Entrepreneur and Home Staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva, knows how to make money as a home stager. Discover her secrets to business success in the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program.
Debra,
Excellent article!
. At one time, I was a real estate agent who soon realized how unprepared sellers were for a competitive market. My love for staging began with my first agent “go see”, & long before I knew the term.
. Before signing, the seller first had to agree on two main points: (1) to “make necessary changes” to their property. I explained other properties problems & why those properties were unsellble. (2) List their home/property for a fair price. We want to attract the right buyers right now.
. I presented proposed changes to be market-ready before the home/property was MLS listed. My “staging” reasons made sense & (surprisingly) every client agreed. We returned rooms to original spaces, painted, updated, rearranged. The interior & exteriors were market-ready. I took a photography class: the MLS photos were top-drawer: I learned that (at times) less is more.
. Despite the market, listings sold quickly & often for more money. [NOTE: I listed properties @ fair market value.] At times there were bidding wars. Now the problems: clients were pleased, my business increased, & I became too busy. I hadn’t charged for staging, necessary to sell property. So now what?
. As I stated, my love had always been staging. I love being creative & enjoyed being my own boss. I let my real estate license expire & happily became a certified Home Stager / ReDesigner.
. An agent is dollar & dimed to death: the hours were impossible: clients are frustrated & frustrating: the market today? I can’t imagine the pressure an agent is under.
. Does staging assist an agent? Yes.
A friend had her home listed with a Realtor who lived in the neighborhood however at close to the end of the 6 month contract called me and asked about a more professional Realtor who I had mentioned to her long before she originally listed. She decided to make the change and I was hired to stage the home. I was almost done, when the original Realtor came by to pick up her lockbox, saw the home was staged (and my car in the driveway with my magnetic Staging sign on the doors) and actually commented “oh, you are having the home staged, I thought it looked pretty good before, I wish you would have given me another chance before changing Realtors”. What a careless comment! Yes, my Clients home was already clean, and looked nice, but……she never thought of all the things I changed, recommendations I made (like cleaning out the closets, removing excess furniture and things like that which made an 1100 sq. ft. house now look huge!
Leigh Anne, your comment says it all! Thanks for sharing!