Have you ever noticed how well-dressed the families are when “surprised” by Ty and the rest of the Extreme Makeover crew? What about the fact that everyone is always home the moment the bus pulls up and available on a moment’s notice to go on a one-week vacation?

I hate to spoil the magic, but these houses are being worked on for months before the cameras start rolling. It’s completely unrealistic to believe that an entire house can be demolished, rebuilt, painted and furnished in a week, but it makes for great television!

Like any form of “reality TV”, most decorating shows on HGTV, including those focusing on home staging, are pretty unrealistic. They’re more about “entertainment” then they are about “reality.”

While they might show a home stager going through and cleaning the house, painting the walls, buying the accessories and replacing the hardware and lighting fixtures, that rarely happens in the real world. Plus, few of us arrive with a complete crew including a seamstress to make custom window treatments and cushions on the spot, a carpenter to whip up a wall unit the same morning, or our own electrician!

Think about it. If these shows featured a solo home stager walking through a house telling someone what had to be done and then showing the final product it would be pretty boring to watch.

If you’re using those shows as a guideline for what you might have to do when you’re staging homes, don’t be too quick to assume you’re going to have to do everything yourself or that becoming a home stager means you’ll be physically exerting yourself every day.

If you arrange your business the smart way, you’ll be sourcing other people to do the heavy lifting for you and you can still make money from their services. You don’t have to lift a finger to do anything you don’t want to.

Think of your role as a home stager as being more of a creative director of the entire re-design project.

You have the vision and figure out what needs to happen to make it come to fruition. Put away those cleaning supplies, paint brushes and strategies for lugging heavy furniture around!

You can source the cleaners to give you a fresh canvas to start with, you choose the paint colors and recommend a painter to apply the color to the walls. If you feel the counter tops need to be replaced, you should have a contractor you can recommend to get the job done.

Home stagers come in all shapes, sizes and ages. The eldest graduate of the Staging Diva program is Jean Smith in Florida who is 76 years old. She’s having the time of her life but I can assure you she’s not moving furniture or cleaning floors, and neither do I. I’m 5’1” and a lot of the furniture that needs to be moved is bigger than I am, yet I’ve staged hundreds of homes.

Go ahead and keep watching those HGTV shows, they’re great entertainment and you might pick up design ideas. They’ll help inspire and motivate you in your career as a home stager, but don’t believe everything you see. If you’ve been holding off on starting your career as home stager because you think it will be too physical reconsider that faulty assumption!

A number of home sellers are often wondering what makes other properties sold that fast and why their own house for sale still stay in the market for an extended period of time. One of the most valuable secrets that has been used by many creative home owners and realtors is home staging. To ensure that their properties are on top of all the competition, this viable technique is sure to give you astounding results and draw innumerable buyers in considering the purchase of your house.

How does home staging improve your selling chances?

Home staging is primarily the art of preparing and enhancing your property in order to make it appealing to buyers, thus facilitating the sale and profitability you expect to get out of your investment. This is actually the missing link why most home owners fail to improve the market value of their property and generate potential buyers. The notion that people make significant decisions the moment they set eyes on your house is quite relevant especially in the modern trend of the real estate market.

How does it work?

There are actually two distinct techniques you can use in home staging, both in the exterior and interior areas of your property. Curb appeal or the impression that people get about your house right from the outside is vitally important since it is a stimulating factor that invites buyers to explore your property further. Curb appeal is therefore catered through upgrading the outside appearance of your house.

Here are some of the ways to beautify your home exterior.

Get rid of all the clutters found in the outside area of the property through doing a general clean up. Sanitation marks a good impression on home buyers since it gives them an idea of the quality of your property based on the way you take care of it. You can also do some trimming especially for overgrown bushes around your yard or lawn.

Put out simple flowers and other attractive items right on the front porch of your house to improve its appearance. You can also add a new doormat to creatively welcome and invite buyers to explore your home interiors.

If you can afford a good landscaping job, then it will certainly add a significant amount of value to your property. You can do the landscape yourself by putting up fresh sods or exterior items like water fountains or exterior lighting.

Here are tips on how to improve the interior of your home.

Decluttering your surroundings is a very salient step to do inside the house. Take out unnecessary items you no longer use, trash and your personal things like family pictures and the like.

Put up appropriately sized furniture to enhance the appeal as well as spaciousness inside the house. Fresh paints and wallpapers are likewise great alternatives for interior home staging.

All the efforts, time and money you actually invest on home staging are geared towards home improvement and eventually a successful sale and profitability. Competition is extremely tough thus it is imperative that you resort to all kinds of home enhancement to stand out among the rest.

If you have been having trouble selling your house, then perhaps it is time to do a home staging to help you sell it.  It is no secret that home staging has evolved into an art that attempts to create the illusion that your house is more than what it is.  Home stagers are professional artists who know how to create moods, feelings and emotions which will have the people looking at your home feeling comfortable, cheerful, warm and right at home.  If you manage to make a buyer feel at home, then you are well on your way toward a successful sale.

Stagers typically try to create moods feelings and emotions through the artful placement of sparse furniture as an attractive group or vignette.  Drapes around the house cover the windows with simple lines so as not to detract from the overall appearance or draw too much attention.  Staging a home is not unlike dressing up for a party where you try to look your best and cause a good impression.  The home stager is trying to dress up your house and make it look its best.  If the home stager manages to make your house look its best, the chances of a sale will be much greater than if you show an empty house that has lost all of its hominess. 

Artfully placed knick-knacks, a bowl full of shiny fruit in the kitchen, mirrors, lamps, rugs, cushions, pillows and fabric with luxurious textures will all be used to stimulate the buyers’ senses and make them feel as if they have walked into a place where they want to live.  Spaces will be dressed so that they appear airy, roomy, light and well-lit.  Good lighting gives the house a great visual effect and creates a feeling of openness.  Smells will be pleasant but not overpowering because the home stager does not want evoke a negative memory through an overpowering smell.

In dressing up your house, the front is just as important as the inside.  In fact, curb appeal will go a long way toward accomplishing the goal of selling your house.  The front yard will get mowed and perhaps some plants and flowers will be added to make it more attractive as the buyers walk up to the house.  This is all done with the knowledge that buyers make up their minds whether they like a house within the first eight seconds of having seen it.  In home staging, first impressions really do make or break a sale and the home stager will try to create a memorable impression.

How much is the home staging going to set you back?  Well, that would depend on the size of the house you are selling, demand and the home stager.  Fees can range from 500 to 5,000 dollars and perhaps a bit more if you have to stage a mansion with 20 rooms.  The point is that you house will be looking its best during a showing.  Buyers will not be walking into an empty shell that has absolutely no feeling of home.

It’s amazing how it happens. When you were starting your home staging business you worried that you’d never get any clients. And now that you’ve built a great reputation and your business is growing rapidly you want to stop marketing because you don’t think you can take on any more clients.

Sound familiar? If so, you need to get that thought right out of your head.

You can never stop marketing your business, not even when you’re so busy you can’t see out from under all of your projects. Why? Because if you stop marketing, your successful home staging business will dry up and you’ll be stuck wondering why you don’t have any clients anymore.

As long as you’re marketing and you have people interested in working with you, you have possibilities. When you stop marketing and the phone stops ringing and everyone forgets about your services, you don’t have a business anymore.

Never worry about being too busy. If that day has come, or is quickly approaching, you’ll figure out a way to deal with it. You’ll either raise your rates, or you’ll have a waiting list. Maybe you get an assistant to help you out on a part-time basis.

There are lots of ways you can deal with the “problem” of having too many clients, but if you go from having lots of buzz about you being this great home stager and then you suddenly stop marketing, everyone will quickly forget about you. Then you’ll have no more clients and that is a much worse problem than being too busy.

When I started Six Elements Inc., my home staging business, I assumed that if someone wanted me to stage their house, I had to schedule that appointment within the next week. This put me in constant “urgent mode,” thinking I had to drop everything in my life to run to these clients’ homes right away. This belief put tons of undue pressure on me during the busy season when I found myself trying to squeeze in 20 clients over a two week period.

But in my second year of business, I was forced to change my ways. I was really busy and I had to start telling people if they wanted to work with me, it would be a six week wait. Much to my surprise, people were fine with this. They wanted me to stage their house bad enough that they would wait until I could squeeze them in. In fact, the wait seemed to make my services even more desirable!

So if you’re afraid that you’re getting too busy and that’s making you want to stop marketing your business, stop and think about it for a minute. Is it really a problem that you have more people than you expected wanting you to stage their homes?

Curb appeal is the attractiveness of your home as seen from the curb.  Curb appeal is always desirable and is especially critical when selling your home.   Even if your home is absolutely beautiful on the inside, potential buyers may drive right by without stopping if your curb appeal is lacking.  Therefore, when you are preparing your home for sale, be sure to remember to stage the exterior as well as the interior.

The following 10 tips will be sure to boost your home’s curb appeal:

1.  Trim back overgrown shrubbery  (this also allows more natural light into your home, which is always a plus)

2.  Mow the lawn and add sod to replace any brown patches

3. Weed and mulch gardens to give a well-manicured look

4. Plant seasonal flowers to add color (in winter use ornamental cabbage)

5. Update outdoor light fixtures and be sure light bulbs are in working order

6. Replace the mailbox, if needed, to coordinated with paint colors

7. Repaint the front door; use a color that accents your exterior color palette  (keep your overall color palette neutral)

8. Repaint the front porch if it appears worn

9. Fill any cracks in the sidewalk with filler (available at most home improvement stores)

10. If they appear too small from the street, replace them with larger numbers.

Remember, you never get a second chance to make a great first impression so be sure to make your curb appeal outstanding!  For more information on staging your home for sale visit http://tranquilitybaywellness.com/tranquility-bay-home-staging-annapolis-md for a copy of The Tranquility Bay Step-by-Step Guide to Successful Home Staging.

Your home staging services shouldn’t be seen by you (or your prospective clients) as a commodity. That’s why the goal of your home staging website is to educate and build interest around your services so someone is intrigued enough to call you for more information.

I get asked all the time whether or not home stagers should be putting their prices on their websites. I advise against this and here are two of the reasons why.

First of all, you’re giving too much information away up front. When you leave out a key detail about your services like what they cost, you’re giving people a reason to pick up the phone and call you. The phone is a much better vehicle for building a relationship with a prospect because it gives you the opportunity to really connect with someone after they’ve seen your portfolio on your site.

If you know the right things to say when you sell your home staging services on the phone then by the time you hang up, they are already committed to hiring you because they understand how your services are the solution to their problem. Once they get that, what you charge isn’t a primary factor in the decision to hire you.

Secondly, you’re selling your service like it’s a commodity. When you advertise your rates online, all you’re really doing is giving your visitors a good reason to shop around for the best price as if all home stagers offered the exact same service and result.

In all likelihood, when a homeowner sees your prices on your site, their next move will be to find other stagers to compare rates with. If you’re a professional home stager who values the quality of what you offer, you know that comparing one stager’s rates to another could be like comparing apples and oranges. Why encourage a prospective client to do that? Why give them a reason not to call or email you?

If you had a store and you were selling brand name TVs at cheap prices of course you’d be putting those prices online. You’d be using your low prices as a reason to do business with you. Unless you want to be the Wal-Mart of home staging, don’t even go there! No matter how competitive your rates are, there will always be someone cheaper. And who wants a client who is only looking for cheap staging?

Before finally hiring Staging Diva Graduate Fabia MacNair, a desperate house seller had accepted an offer of $250,000 for her home knowing it was worth more. She wasn’t interested in doing the work needed to complete the home staging to-do list, however, because she just wanted to sell. Fabia hated that her hands were tied and the seller was losing so much equity for the sake of a little elbow grease. But nothing could be done with a signed offer and a date with the lawyers.

In an odd twist of fate, the deal fell through and as soon as she left the lawyer’s office, the homeowner called Styling Spaces.

The homeowner took down notes during her two-hour consultation with Fabia and followed her advice to the letter doing a clean-up and making repairs. Fabia helped choose the rental furniture and prepare the home for showings. The work was done two weeks after the original deal fell through.

After the first open house, the home sold for $330,000 after an investment of less than $6000! Remember this house seller originally accepted $250,000. So that’s an extra $80,000 after spending $6,000. I’ve always said home staging is one of the few legal ways to see such a quick return on an investment, especially when you consider what’s happening on the stock market.

The homeowner was obviously thrilled and now Fabia has this glowing testimonial to use in her marketing, “We were ready to sell the house, as is, because we didn’t want to spend the time or the money fixing it. When the deal fell through I invited Fabia over to see what needed to be done so that I could make my proper profit. My sister and I did as Fabia suggested and with two weeks work, in between my full time job, we went through the home staging to-do list and made all the design and redesign changes. I spent about $6000 on construction materials, furniture rental and her fees. I had doubts about putting in the amount of work that Fabia said I should, but when it was done, it sold on the first day. I’d have to work two years to make profits like that!”

Home stagers often need to either provide or recommend outside services, in addition to doing the actual rearranging of furniture.

The most common of these services needed in home staging include: Sourcing and selecting rental furniture/art/accessories, purchasing accessories (bedding, towels, decorative items, flowers), painting, handyman-type repairs, gathering packing supplies, finding storage facilities, junk removal, landscaping and cleaning (interior, windows, carpets, exterior).

I personally don’t do any heavy lifting or sorting through clutter. I choose paint colors but I don’t do the painting. All stagers do things differently but I built my service list when I started my staging business so I would only offer home staging services I would enjoy doing. However, I have also learned out how to form alliances with trusted contractors offering those other services I knew I’d need to recommend to my clients.

Have you figured out where all these home staging services will come from in your business yet? If not, working on your list of trusted contractors is a great activity to do during slow periods, as it will help increase your business over time. Start jotting down names of service providers you’ve used in the past and find out who your friends and family members recommend as well. Remember, the people you recommend are going to be a reflection of you as a professional home stager, so only choose the best contractors to refer your clients to.

Many home staging projects have to be done under VERY tight time lines. Knowing who you can call for help before you need it will significantly reduce your own stress level when you’re trying to get a house picture-perfect in record time.

While it may not seem exciting to track these resources down, it should be a priority.

Much of your professional image, your public perception and essentially your success as a home staging professional, boils down to the amount of confidence you have in yourself and your abilities. This point is demonstrated brilliantly in a quote about leadership from Adlai Stevenson, an American politician appointed by John F. Kennedy as Ambassador to the United Nations when he said:

“It’s hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.”

How much faith do you put in a seemingly inept professional? I fired a real estate agent I worked with during one of my moves to a new city because she seemed like she didn’t know what she was doing just because of how she handled seemingly ordinary tasks like being organized for showing appointments.

Whether she could have negotiated well for me or not, I’ll never know because she didn’t inspire the trust I needed to have from the start. As a professional home stager you have to appear as a professional stager by how you look, what you do and what you say.

Whether or not you’ve done a paid staging project before, you need to project a confident image.

If you arrive at your home staging consultation with butterflies in your stomach, that’s normal, but you mustn’t let your client know about them! As a professional home stager, you have to look the part. And in order to look the part, you have to feel like you have it all together.

You wouldn’t be reading this article unless you’re a home stager already or plan to become one, and if that’s the case, you likely have the raw talent it takes to be a success in this business. After that it’s confidence you need.

The right home staging training program will automatically make you more confident in your abilities because it will help you build the foundation that will support those abilities. When you have more confidence inside, you project a more confident image automatically to others. They sense it first in your body language and then by what you say.

If self-confidence wasn’t such an important element of being a home staging professional, I wouldn’t have invested time in developing so many products to help you believe in yourself, in all areas of starting your business.

The industrial slump so many people are experiencing these days has made it a requirement for real estate buyers to be concerned about the home they choose to buy.

Staging a home with the aid of a Realtor means sellers can make their houses stand out in the bunch in the buyer’s market.

Staging a home may appear overpowering, but following a few key tips can build buzz and lead to the swift selling of your home.

When a buyer investigates a home that is vacant, it is extremely tough to picture what it will look like with furniture. By staging a home, buyers do not have to use their imagination. When they walk into a furnished home, they get a good feeling and this may in turn prompt them to purchase.

Taking away confusion makes rooms appear bigger and permits buyers to roam the space physically and in their imagination.

If the house is empty, it is a brilliant idea to hire furniture for open house events. Furniture may add to the expenses, but it permits buyers to see the dimensions of the room without measuring the space.

Make the home a neutral ground

When a potential buyer walks into a home, they don’t wish to see the home of the owner ; they need to see how they fit into the space. To try this, the seller must neutralize the space.

Keep it fresh

When a family is living in the home, it can be difficult to keep a fresh appearance, but keeping the home clean and clear of confusion is vital to correctly staging a home. It is highly counseled that before showing a home, put out fresh linens for the lavatories and kitchens.

Appeal to the senses

Potential buyers not only look at a home, they also experience it. Staging a home must appeal to all of the human senses. It has to be visually stimulating and appeal to one’s sense of smell and touch.

Odors turn away many buyers out of fear that the odour can’t be eliminated. Pet odours also are strong deterrents for buyers, especially if the buyer has an allergy.

Giving the home varying fabrics and textures makes the home stand out.

If you enjoy the idea of home staging, start a recession proof home business that utilizes your own creative talents! Click here to learn more about great Home Staging Courses or visit http://www.homebusinessrealestateblog.com