Reinventing Herself as a Home Stager

Former stay-at-home mom finds her dream career: Rearranging decor for houses going up for sale

by: Lindsay Zoladz, from: AARP, May 16, 2011

Q: Any specific advice for aspiring stagers?

A: Chances are if you're thinking of becoming a stager, you probably already have a knack for decorating.

If you want to see if you can translate this knack into something a little bit more professional, I would go to somebody that I knew who was planning to put their house on the market, and ask them if they'd let you try staging it for free. Rearrange the furniture —– bring in some pillows, lamps, flowers and do some other things, just to see if it's something you can do and something you enjoy doing. You don't want to invest any money until you know that this is going to be something you enjoy. In the beginning, try to get a couple of people to let you do it for free, and see what happens.

"You don't want to invest any money until you know that this is going to be something you enjoy."

Q: What's next for you?

A: I certainly don't see myself adding any more employees. The business has grown to the point that I do need a lot more help than I used to, and I don't want to lose the control over the individual projects. I would not be able to devote the attention to detail that I really feel is so necessary. So I think that for the time being, I can probably keep on along with the way I'm doing things. When I get to be in my 80s, will I be doing this? Probably not. But for the foreseeable future, I can't imagine doing anything else.

Staging Your Home: Is It Worth It?

So you're ready to put your home on the market. You've got plenty of other things on your mind — the realtor, the prospective buyers, the upcoming move — so maybe you're wondering why you should hire a home stager. Is it just another superfluous expense, or is it necessary in today's real estate market?

Staged homes sell faster, says the Real Estate Staging Association (RESA). According to its annual study of more than 100 homes, a house that is staged spends 78 percent less time on the market than one that isn't. This means money in your pocket: RESA estimates that the average seller in their study would have saved more than $14,000 in prolonged expenses and carrying costs if they hired a stager. This figure varies depending on your home's mortgage and a few other factors, so visit RESA's website for a more personalized calculation.

From the consultation to monthly furniture rental fees, staging brings with it expenses of its own, but in most cases they're not nearly as high as the expenses of keeping a house on the market for many months — the fate of many unstaged homes. Many in the real estate industry believe that staging will become even more popular as the Internet becomes more ingrained in home buyer's lives.Home stager Catherine Silverman agrees.

"Stagers are everywhere. It's just part of the landscape now," she says. "People do a lot of their shopping for houses on the Internet. If they look on the Internet and see a house that's empty, they're not going to remember that house."