Home Staging Designs of California

HGTV or Reality?

Beth Lester with HGTV's Bethany Souza from "Designed to Sell"  

Home sellers are sometimes surprised at the dollar amount when they receive a proposal to stage their home for sale, especially in the case of a vacant property.  If they watch television shows such as Designed to Sell on HGTV, they might think - “But they don’t spend nearly that much money on TV!” 

Does HGTV = reality?

Why do professional home stagers charge "so much" to transform an empty space into a warm and welcoming home - and is it worth it?

Answer:  Simply because of the costs involved and YES!

You can skip to the end if you want the rest of the answer without reading all the details!

Home Staging businesses are typically run by entrepreneurs who have significant overhead, as with any small or large business.  Some of those expenses (besides labor) include: 

• Inventory purchase - accessories, furniture, plants, artwork, outdoor furnishings, etc.
• Storage of inventory - a significant expense in Southern California.
• Marketing costs - website, advertising materials, local ads.
• Insurance for the storage facility, liability, damage during transportation of goods, etc.
• Automotive expenses.
• Employee salaries & taxes.
• Professional fees for real estate, staging and design organizations.
• Continuing education costs - travel, classes and time.
• Usual business fees - telephone, utilities, computer & copier equipment, supplies, legal counsel, tax & accounting counsel.

If rental furniture is used, the cost of that must cover another business’ expenses, including warehouse, storefront, employees and transportation.  Furniture is typically the single largest expense in staging vacant homes.

Labor fees.  The most common comment I receive from people when I tell them what type of business I own is “How fun - that looks like such a fun job!”  To be honest, there are certainly parts of home staging and redesign that are “fun.”  I enjoy the design process, often lying awake late into the night designing a home staging or decorating plan for a client in my head.  However, the vast majority of hours spent in this business are much more mundane.  Here is a sample of some of the hours and tasks involved:

Occupied Home- Calls from client and/or realtor setting up appointment, research of property and other properties in the area, travel time, actual consultation time with the client, writing up checklist, often multiple emails and phone calls with follow-up questions & answers, sometimes photographs - taking & editing, sending to realtor & client. The charge for all of these hours is typically $200-400, which actually is a very low fee per hour.

Of course, if the stager  participates hands-on in making changes at the home, those hours are additional.  

Vacant Home- This is where the serious hours and hard work come in!  Here is a blow-by-blow example in more detail than you probably ever wanted to know!

• Schedule appointment.
• Travel to & from property to preview home with the owner or agent.  Consultation for recommendations often included.  Take pictures, make notes & measure major rooms.
• Design rough plan enough to make proposal.  Send and call to be sure it was received.
• After acceptance, create the full design plan, make color selections and decide furniture placement.  Choose furniture online and order available items for delivery date.  Sign & return contract.
• To prepare for delivery, sort through current inventory in storage facility to choose artwork, accessories, lighting, rugs, plants, candles, bedding, bath linens, etc.   Shop to fill in any gaps.  (Of course, many hours were spent earlier to purchase and maintain all those items).
• Now wrap everything up and prepare to deliver.  Make as many trips as necessary and wait to meet furniture delivery truck (tip them well!).  Lug every box and item into the property - sometimes far from the parking lot, down hallways, or up and down stairs.
• Each item is unwrapped and placed - sometimes it takes several tries to find the perfect place.  Hang all artwork (how long does that take you?)  Steam & press linens as necessary. 
• Once your home has been transformed, we clean up and load all our supplies & boxes back into the car, which are unloaded and re-sorted back at the storage facility. 
• Take "after" photographs, which are then selected, edited, sent to realtor & owner, slideshow & flyers created and posted to Active Rain, Energized Seller, Trulia and other real estate website.  Marketing pieces and blogs are written to promot your newly staged home to all our data base. . 
• When your home is sold and it is ready to go to its new owner, we return to the property to repack all items as we wait for the furniture truck, load up and return to the storage facility where each item is restocked, ready to repeat the process for our next staging. 
• Finish up all job-related book work - keeping & recording receipts, invoicing, recording payments, banking, etc. 

All of this is done so that you will receive the best possible price as quickly as possible! 

We do everything we can to serve our clients above and beyond the call of duty. 

We care very much for our clients and the homes we stage.

So how can they transform a home,including construction changes, on only $2000 on HGTV?  Simply put - commercials!  That’s right - every designer, carpenter, landscape designer, sewing professional, lighting technician, workman & host is paid for by the commercials we watch.  There are assistants performing every job from selecting furniture, working with rental companies to use their furniture (apparently without the minimum that real life stagers have to work with), hunting down bargains at thrift stores, shopping for paint - you name it, someone is doing it, but they don’t show that on TV and it is not included in the cost given.  So the real value of what they do is thousands of dollars - and it brings many more thousands in return on their investment.

The latest Home Gain Statistics surveying real estate agents show that home staging has a 586% return on investment!

This means that statistically, every $100 you invest will return you almost $600 on the sale of your home - plus save you money by selling it more quickly. 

Every month your home stays on the maket, plan on receiving 1% less.  Add that to your monthly costs to own the home, and selling sooner is a MUST!

Beth with Matthew Finlason of "The Stagers"

HGTV Canada

2010 Real Estate Staging Association Convention