Stagers are not Interior Designer wannabes

I spend a lot of time on on the Internet. I am active on Q&A sites like Zillow, I participate in Staging discussions on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, and I devour information from a number of blogs.

I notice a lot of real estate agents and a lot of sellers seem to think stagers are failed Interior Designers.

Sorry guys, most stagers are fanatics.

Most stagers love staging.

Imagine having a job that, repeatedly, gives people hope in one of the most stressful times in their lives. Imagine a job that frequently provides positive feedback within days or weeks of completion. Stagers know staged houses sell because our clients tell us.

Imagine how it feels to spend two days planning and sweating and tuning and making changes aimed at marketing someone's property. Then imagine getting a call two weeks later that the property is under contract. Imagine how it feels to get that call while you are driving home from the job.

When stagers describe how they feel about their work, they use words like "euphoria" and "great" and "joy".

Is knowing the latest trends in Interior Design part of the job? Of course it is. So is knowing when the latest trend is not the best approach to marketing the house. Because, depending on the style of the house, sometimes the latest trends are counter-productive to the sale.

Stagers are color experts, research to stay current on the latest findings in buyer psychology, are artists who use furniture and accessories to paint on 3-D canvases (houses). Each painting has underlying, standard rules and each painting is unique enough to require a lot of creativity.

There is no feeling like looking over a Staging Plan and knowing it will make a difference in the sale of your client's house. There is absolutely no feeling like the one I experience when I look around a house I just staged. Okay, "euphoria" comes close.

The last day of my staging training, the class traveled to and staged a house. Before the class began, local realtors had been invited to nominate clients, someone who really needed all the help they could get. Six months before my class, on the same day she learned she was pregnant with her third child, our client learned her husband had been killed in Afghanistan. She needed to sell before the baby came. She needed to sell so she could move her little family closer to the support structure of her beloved husband's family. There was a lot of motivation to succeed that staging day. And there were a lot of tears. Quite a few of those tears came from the Realtor who dropped by to see what was happening and walked through the staged rooms saying, "I can sell this. Oh, this will sell." Because of the client confidentiality agreement, I do not know how quickly this house sold. But, I know the house was very marketable, was transformed, when we finished. (As usual, I changed a little bit of the story to hide the identity of the client.)

Hey all you stagers reading this. Share.

Tell us about those staging experiences that make this job so very special, that make all the hard work worthwhile. I will gladly bring your stories up into the body of this blog. In fact, if you wish I will post your story, your company name, and a link to your website on my website.

Or, if you disagree with me, say so. Let's talk about it!

I wish you all a Happy Monday.