Staged home sells in days for $71,000 over asking

This home sold in days for $71,000 over the asking price. The owner credits my home staging advice for getting them so much money, but I didn't even have to personally decorate the house to sell!

They called me for a home staging consultation many months before they were going on the market. The husband and wife followed me around for 3 hours as I went through each room with them in detail. The goal was turning their house into a home that would appeal to the greatest number of potential buyers.

I measured most of their furniture and told them how to rearrange it to create an inviting sense of space. I recommended a new floor and vanity for the powder room, and new lighting for many of the others. I picked new paint colors for the whole house, told them where to get new cabinet hardware for their kitchen and told them what clutter to put in storage. Just like a critical buyer would, I opened every closet and cupboard and told them how to rearrange things to look like they had more than enough room for everything.

They had quite a "To Do" list by the end of my visit, but following through on it really paid off for them! Many homeowners won't have the energy to do all the things I suggest so they get my team to handle it for them. But these folks wanted to save money. Yet, they were smart enough to realize that investing in three hours of a home staging expert's time was a worthwhile investment. In fact I was able to dissuade them from a costly renovation they were contemplating before the sale. That piece of advice alone saved them thousands of dollars!

Bottom line, they invested $900 in my advice, spent about $5,000 on the changes I recommended and sold for an extra $71,000. How many other legal investments do you know of, that produce such a significant return so quickly?

Les Christie, CNNMoney.com just wrote an article on selling a house after the market has turned south, called "5 slow-market strategies". Guess what the number one strategy was? Home Staging!

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Home Staging expert Debra Gould also known as The Staging Diva is president of Six Elements Inc., a leading home staging company that provides free information to raise the standards in the industry and build awareness amongst homeowners and their real estate agents about the benefits of decorating a house to sell. Debra Gould developed The Staging Diva Program to create opportunities for others to grow their own profitable home staging, real estate enhancement businesses.

I took my passion for real estate and turned it into a home staging business

This is a picture of the first home I ever staged, and that was only 3 years ago! Since that time it's been a wild ride combining my passion for real estate and love of decorating into an exciting home based business.

Home Staging company Six Elements Inc. has achieved international recognition in only 3 years, after staging hundreds of homes in the $190,000 to $1.5 million price range.

I turned the knowledge I gained through that and the fact I've been an entrepreneur since 1989 and created the Staging Diva Training Program. In the last year, I've personally trained almost 150 women across the US and Canada to start and grow their own home staging businesses.



Entrepreneur Magazine chose the Staging Diva Program as the only Home Staging business opportunity to include in their 2006 Be Your Own Boss Buyers Guide. An acknowledgement that it's not just about artfully arranging furniture in a room, it's a serious business!

Home Staging, done well, benefits clients tremendously. Many of mine have earned $10,000 to $40,000 more when they sold their homes. Some as high as $70,000 and $100,000. So with those profits going to the homeowners (not to mention the percentage their agents earn), isn't it right that their Home Stager should also be well compensated?

I hear of so many home stagers in this business who run around giving free consultations and writing reports. Some are at the beck and call of real estate agents who think nothing of calling them at 10 PM to go see one of their new listings the next morning. Needless to say, many of them burn out before they make the profit they should.

It doesn't have to be this way and I make sure Graduates of the Staging Diva Training Program know how to be compensated for what their time is worth. They learn about setting boundaries for their business based on their own personal definitions of success and what's important to them.

After all, if you're going to put all the energy it takes into building your own business, shouldn't it be one you'll want to work for?

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Home Staging expert Debra Gould is president of Six Elements Inc., a leading home staging company that provides free information to raise the standards in the industry and build awareness amongst homeowners and their real estate agents about the benefits of decorating a house to sell. Debra Gould created The Staging Diva Program to create opportunities for others to grow their own profitable home staging businesses.