Home Staging Tips for Vacant Homes

I am often asked about staging vacant homes.

Do you really need to show a house full of furniture for buyers to fully appreciate the home? Not really. Placing some key pieces of furniture like a small sofa or loveseat, arm chair, coffee table, and dining set is ideal. But you can do a lot by using vignettes in a staged home; and you can put fake beds in the bedrooms using the air mattress-on-boxes trick.

Some examples would be:

1. A small bistro set in the kitchen set up with “wine for two”

2. A luxurious bath gift basket in the bathroom with some rolled towels tied with raffia.

3. Tea cups and a pretty tea pot on a tray on the bed

4. A bowl of lemons, a pretty glass pitcher, and a wooden cutting board placed on the kitchen counter. An attractive sugar jar can go with this set-up, but leave out the knife

5. A cozy white wicker chair with pillows and a throw, placed on a wrap-around porch or in a shady back yard spot. Leave a good book on the chair, too.

You wouldn’t want to use ALL of these suggestions in the same house. Try a couple of vignettes along with fresh flowers and large candles on countertops and mantles. Just putting a bright throw rug in front of the kitchen sink does wonders, too. Next time you stage a vacant house, if furniture rental isn’t in the plan, you can create tons of warmth and appeal with vignettes and a few accessories. These tips will help sell your vacant house fast!

It happened again.

A non-staged home was on the market for 4 months with no offers. And the thing is, it was priced well because the seller is relocating and looking for a quick sale. 4 months later…I did some staging at this pretty piece of country real estate.

Since it is a country farmhouse I kept it casual, nothing fancy. The stage was set in the kitchen with a few colorful objects to move the eye around the bare countertops, a “making lemonade” vignette (pretty glass pitcher, bowl of gorgeous lemons, glass sugar jar, nice wood cutting board, flour-sack dish towel that says “sugar”); I also added a small mirror hanging at eye-level, a basket of apples, and a bright red colander. The key is the energetic red color placed in three areas (small but effective splashes of color) that the eye can bounce off of, moving around the space.
10 days later there were two offers…one of them was $15,000 OVER the asking price. Amazing–home staging works!

Home owners please take note: staged homes bring faster, higher offers generally speaking (more often than not!)
I would not even think of putting a non-staged home on the market, especially with the current conditions for home sellers.

How to Start a Home Staging Business

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Love decorating? You may love being a home stager! Setting up a home staging business is easier than you think. Keep reading on how to start your own staging business.

Steps

1. Build on what you know already about design.
2. Talk to other stagers to find out tips and tricks to starting a successful business.
   • Talk to stagers in different towns. Remember, you’re about to be the competition.
   • Learn from their mistakes
   • Take your housing market into consideration
3. Keep track of trends in your town’s real estate market. Also look at neighboring towns.
4. Discuss your idea with someone familiar with real estate and your area. Each town is different and may differ from what you see on TV shows.
   • Determine trends in your market that will help you help agents sell homes.
   • Find out what types of homes are needing this service
   • Establish what range you can expect to successfully get business and make a profit
5. Create a business plan to help you stay focused.
   • Establish what funds will be needed and outline how you will spend them
   • Even if you aren’t needing a loan for start up a good business plan is an excellent way to stay on task. It’s also good to have handy and follow should your business take off and you start considering loans to grow.
   • Determine how much you will need to set aside to market to real estate agents, home sellers, home flippers and small builders.
   • Outline where you will spend your money to avoid getting in over your head.
6. Go to the small business administration and understand what permits, licenses, and taxes you need to know about. (This step seems more overwhelming than it is.)
7. Come up with a business name or use your own name.
8. Create a business card. This is one of the most important tool for getting started. Talk to a local printer and have a card created and printed. Also consider other marketing swag such as pens, note pads, refrigerator magnets, etc.
9. Aggressively market your business.
10. Market your business on a website. Show pictures of staged rooms. Create before and after photos.
11. Hand business cards and marketing items out to people who can refer business your way. Also consider businesses that would be good to work with to help you make more money.
    • • Realtors
      • Residential painting companies (people often use painters when getting ready to sell)
      • Residential contractors or repair companies (people often use repairmen when getting ready to sell)
      • Office managers in condominium and townhouse offices. (Many larger complexes have security, offices, staff, etc. They will know of people about to sell and it’s in their best interest to sell at a great price.)
      • Large companies and military relocation offices
      • Moving companies
    • Follow up regularly, remind them you’re still in business, take them to lunch if they can provide substantial leads and when someone does send you a referral you should send a thank you card and a gift appropriate for the amount of the business (dinner gift certificates, cash, flowers, spa certificate, etc.)
12. Collect props for staging homes. You may be able to buy great furniture and accessories from moving sales, thrift stores, etc. Make sure they’re free of odors or stains. You don’t want to defeat the purpose of staging by adding dirty or smelly items.
    • You may need to store some pieces
    • Develop a relationship with furniture rental businesses (not just ones that rent to the public but also ones that furnish corporate apartments as they can give you a good deal, make a little money and save you some.)
    • Consider renting a storage facility or having a building added to your property.
    • As your business grows you may be able to rent part of a warehouse at a discounted price.
13. Hire another “hand” to help. Think of some people you can bring along on a job with you.
    • Think of friends with great decorating skills. This could be a great project for retired friends, soccer moms, etc.
    • Consider working with a local contractor or painter and bring them along. It’s often more than just moving or setting up furniture. You may need to suggest paint and other cosmetic work.
14. Learn that when you get a client, set up a consultation.
15. Create a step by step plan that specifies what you will do.
16. Listen and establish clear, open lines of communication.
17. Listen more than talk. Remember it’s their home. The more you listen the more you’ll be able to help.
18. Set your rates to cover your business costs and expenses.
19. Under-promise and over-deliver.
20. Be on site to supervise everything. Your clients don’t want to feel passed off to employees.
21. Ask clients for reviews of your work. Not only will feedback help to create potential problems but you can also use positive feedback as references.

Tips

• Watch decorating shows, read magazines, and go to home decorating stores. Ask questions such as, “What is the style chosen here-traditional, modern, contemporary?” What colors are being used?” Are things being grouped according to color, texture, scale?” To whom is the show, magazine, and store trying to sell to?” How is the furniture arranged.” Come up with other possible arrangements. Decide if the furniture arrangement you are looking at is best for the room or space.
• Once you have a business card, you can start working. Leave your card by an area or ‘vignette’ you staged during an open house, hand your card to homeowners selling their homes with tips on how they might sell their home quicker, and most importantly- Realtors.
• You can wait to buy props until you get more clients but you may need things like pictures, lamps, books and magazines, fabrics, end tables, chairs, plants, place settings, and area rugs. Do you have room in your basement or garage to store these props? If not, you may want to get in touch with a furniture rental company.
• It can really be of great assistance to have another person to move furniture with you, haul items in and out of your van, run out for some more props. You may want to even consider training a potential apprentice.
• Give classes on decorating and home staging, write articles for a local newspaper, create color brochures or a portfolio of your past work, stage a friend’s home and have them write a testimonial up for you, give presentations to real estate offices, go to open houses.
• Your website must be a website that ranks highly with the search engines or people will not be able to find you, your site will only serve as your brochure.
• To set your rates, write down all your projected costs and divide that amount by the hours you intend to work to get your hourly rate. Remember, home staging is meant to save the homeowners money-even make them money! So your staging fixes are not huge cosmetic makeovers. Still, if you are doing a job you love and feel passionate about, you will succeed.
• Establish contacts such as a cleaning service, a house painter, and a handyman. Often the home will require these things that will be outside the scope of what you offer. Tell the homeowner, for example, that you have a painter with very reasonable rates if they want to consider changing the brown walls in the kitchen to a color that will make the room feel “more spacious and airy”. Of course you’ll need to investigate to find people that do good work, but it’ll be useful info because homeowners may or may not want to do all the work themselves.
• Instead of investing a lot of money on artwork, buy frames when you can find nice ones on sale. Buy a lot and fill them with black and white photos.
• Use local businesses whenever possible. Use local printers and locally owned furniture rental, storage facilities, etc. Locals look after other locals and local business owners are often very well connected. They can also provide referrals for your new business.

Warnings

• Remember, change can be threatening so don’t go in and immediately make changes. Listen to their story and gently ask questions, ‘What is your goal (besides the obvious). What do you think could be improved in this room? What kind of changes would you like to see in here?? Guide them in coming up their own answers- those are the ones that will feel most comfortable for them. Only then will trust be established. Once the homeowners trust you, most likely, they will allow you to make all the changes you feel need to be made.
• Be honest about what you can and cannot handle, and set up a clear action plan outlining the parameters of the job. Being clear about the job will help you in deciding what your job cost is. Only name your price after creating a job action plan and after a consultation. If an extra room ends up being staged that was not initially laid out in your action plan, you will know to charge for that extra room.

Related wikiHows

• How to Inexpensively Increase the Value of Your Home
• How to Stage Your Home for a Sale
• How to Start Your Own Business
• How to Sell Your Own House
• How to Buy a House

Sources and Citations

• http://www.home-staging-tips.com
• http://www.homestagingsuccess.com
• http://www.thestagingsource.com the Staging Source has free home staging tips, frequently asked questions about home staging, and a free newsletter for more tips.

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