Are you ready for the holidays?  Do you love to decorate for Christmas?

I know many of you LOVE holiday design, so I've put together "7 Reasons You Should Add Holiday Design to Your Business"...

Let's face it...the holidays can be EXHAUSTING for most of us!  Between the gift shopping, parties, wrapping and vacation planning it's hard to carve out time to sift through our massive amounts of holiday decorations. Most people would love a service that works with them to dial in their holiday home while saving them time.

The very nature of holiday design is to save clients time by doing the design for them, so typically the folks who don't have that kind of time but do have the money are in a higher-end, income bracket.

What do this mean for the designer?  It means you've just created a wonderful referral source for multiple design projects!

The great thing about a offering a holiday design service is that those client's whom you did an excellent job for the previous year, will invariably have you come back every year!  That's right...you only need to cultivate a handful of client's to have regular, steady business every year.  In fact, a stager friend of mine says that she earns almost 15% of her business yearly on only a few, holiday design client's that LOVE her.

Sometimes I hear stager's complain that their staging business really dips during the holidays, so having a steady, holiday design clientele that keeps you busy, year after year, makes perfect sense!

Home Stagers and Designers have the uncanny ability to "see" interiors in creative ways and part of that skill-set goes toward Re-purposing items to their best showing. Why pack all of your current decor away before decorating for the holidays when you can easily to the gorgeous decor you already have and "holiday, bling it up!"

Not only is this kind of service highly referral based...it's easy to market using Facebook Ads, post cards and online directory key words...

HOT TIP!

Simply add the term "Holiday Design Services" to your Yelp listing and you're already ahead of the game!  Look how few providers come up in the entire San Diego area...

I've put together an hour long video training that walks you through the process, pricing and marketing of offering a Holiday Design service to your clients...

I love what these Santa Cruz home stagers did to this million dollar vacant listing!  This Santa Cruz Home Staging company, Pacific Home Design merchandised this space so well...I'm building an article off the work they did about staging trends I'm seeing in the industry...

4 Hot Staging Trends You Can't Ignore...

Before Staging

After - Pacific Home Design

After by Pacific Home Design

In a 2014 Staging Trends post, I named the color navy as a staging color trend you will see more of in the coming years and I'm happy to say that three years later...I'm not tired of it.  You can see how these Santa Cruz home stagers (Chrissy and Corrine) really tap into the design vibe of the city of Santa Cruz in that their staging design enhances the view and creates a "lounge like" feel.

​

Before...

After by Pacific Home Design

Part of the art of staging is "merchandising" the space.  The definition of merchandising is "displaying a product in such a way that it stimulates interest and entices customers to make a purchase."

The two photos above show this concept beautifully!

A buyer would go onto the deck and marvel at the view in the unstaged, empty deck photo BUT the buyer who goes onto the staged deck will sit in the chair and imagine spending sunsets with their partner over a glass of wine and teaching their children the constellations in the evenings...do you see the difference?

In my staging and design training, I call this building "Emotional Connection Points" in the home, so that buyers feel home in the each room...

Staging by Pacific Home Design

For the first time in the 2017 National Association of Realtors staging statistics they mention the importance of staging outdoor areas, so this is a trend we are going to see grow in the coming years!

Don't you hate how fast color trends seem to change?:) 

After staging by Pacific Home Design

Expect to see more white walls in the staging realm since this trends is growing.  Having said that, it takes extreme, design expertise to work with white walls since "white" needs lots of white furnishings and texture to work well.

Luckily the Santa Cruz home stager gals at Pacific Home Design had taken my Certified Color Expert (CCE) training course, so they knew the right way to work with white on the walls in this home!

More Gorgeous Photos from Their Staging Project...

After by Pacific Home Design

I never get tired of hearing "success" stories from people who "took the plunge" and decided to invest in our certification training AND themselves to become a stager!  This featured stager story is about starting a business semi-retired and doing the travel you love to do too!  There is no "one size fits all" in this business and in Week 1 of my training, I walk people through finding the business model that will fit their life style.

Kathy "Kiki" McNair of Kiki Staging based in Folsom, CA wanted a business she could do while also retiring to her condo in Kona, Hawaii twice a year for 2-3 months.  This may sound like a tall order but believe it or not, the Department of Defense used to completely pay for our training for military spouses because it is such an ideal, portable business model when you incorporate both staging and redesign.

Before Kiki's Redesign

Kiki finished the training in April of 2017 and send me this email a mere 3 months later...

Kiki McNair

Audra, I thought it was high time that I let you know how my new business is doing.  I started the course on 2/21 while at the end of our 2 month stay in Hawaii.  My husband is retired and we are able to come to our condo twice a year for 2-3 months. Pretty great, right?

We are currently back on island for 2 more months and I hated to leave my new business!

After Kiki's Redesign

Before Kiki's Redesign

I also staged 2 homes and both sold within a month of listing. The homeowners and realtor were very happy with my work. One was completely empty and the other partially empty. I also did some consultations for redesign and color.

After Kiki's Redesign

I am so thrilled to have a new and fun business that I can even do in Hawaii.   An interior designer here contacted me to assist her with a job.

I am fortunate that I can work as much or as little as I want to!

Before Kiki's Redesign

After Kiki's Redesign

Another Happy Client!

You are welcome Kiki!  It's so wonderful to see how people make their business...their own.  Being semi-retired but having a business that you love is absolutely not work!  Just ask Kiki.

Now what will your story look like...

Could “ Home Staging" be a Career for You?

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New 2017 Home Staging Statistics Are In!

The "actual value" of home staging is hard to quantify because who has the crystal ball to know what the home would have gone for had it not been staged?  Having said that, I get emails daily from HSR Grads who stage homes that have been sitting only to have them receive multiple offers after they staged the home. 2017 home staging statistics are hard to come by but luckily a new survey has been done.

Click to Open Report

Statistical Changes from 2015

In 2015 the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) created a survey profile of home staging for the first time and the staging industry went wild!  Finally, staging which has become commonplace on HGTV was being acknowledged in a real way by NAR.  I'm so pleased to see that NAR has updated those statistics for 2017 and while not much has changed, here are some key differences in the report:

My mission has always been to "make hiring a professional home stager when selling a home an industry standard" and it's statistics like the ones below which help our industry EDUCATE, EDUCATE, EDUCATE the value of what we do!

Does Staging Increase the Home's Value?

Yep, agents are "getting it" and the "Seller's Agents" are really seeing that the homes that are staged are getting a better price than the un-staged homes.  While it's hard to quantify exactly how much more a seller is getting for their home, it's easy to say that improving upon a product usually nets you more.

Does Staging Effect the Buyer's Viewpoint?

The Buyer's Agent sees that taking their client's to homes that have been staged provides a more likely offer since the staging does effect the way the buyer views the home.

Do you have a home on a busy street, small lot or in a more undesirable area?  Check out this stat...

FREE Download of All Statistical Images for Your Use!

How Important is Each Room from a Staging Standpoint?

How important is staging every room of the home?  It turns out that each room has it's own value of importance according to these 2017 home staging statistics.  In fact, this is one reason why I train my students to do good, better, best type bids when it comes to staging a vacant home.  Providing options to clients in a way that fits their budget while maximizing return on investment is important and my HSR home staging certification training teaches this critical business concept.

Living Rooms and Master Bedrooms Top the Chart!

Staging the key areas in a vacant home which include the living areas, master bedroom, dining areas and kitchen are obviously an important factor to most buyers according to these 2017 home staging statistics!

I've long been saying that outdoor areas are trending in importance to the aesthetic and return on investment, so it was nice to see that this area of staging was right behind the kitchen in importance!

Who Pays for Staging?

A lot of times the agent feels like they should be the ones providing the staging service or paying for staging but this is simply not true.  The home seller benefits the most by having their home "move-in ready" and staged, so they should be the ones to pay for this critical service. 

In fact, now more than ever home seller's are contacting a professional home stager BEFORE getting an agent...

Did you know that by using certain paint colors in specific rooms of the home you can statistically increase it's value by almost $10,000 alone?! We have a "Paint Color Cheat Sheet" that shows you exactly how much...

I know this seems incredible but according to Zillow's Paint Color Analysis which looked at more than 32,000 photos from sold homes around the country...it's true.  "Homes with blue bathrooms alone typically sold for $5,440 more than expected" in this study!  We created a "Paint Color Cheat Sheet" according to this study, so your clients know which specific Benjamin Moore colors in each room of the home will garnish them them the most....

Paint color has a tremendous influence on the way a buyer views a home according to the Zillow study which calculated the increase in potential value per room depending on which "buyer preferred" paint color was used. 

"Color can be a powerful tool for attracting buyers to a home, especially in listing photos and videos," says Svenja Gudell, Zillow chief economist.  "Painting walls in fresh, natural looking colors, particularly in shades of blue and pale gray not only make a home feel larger, but also are neutral enough to help future buyers envision themselves living in the space.  Incorporating light blue in kitchens and bathrooms may pay off especially well as the color complements white counter-tops and cabinets, a growing trend in both rooms."

Personally, I think they are miscalculating in the sense that homes that usually have these gray and blue colors usually have white cabinets and marble counter tops which are REALLY HOT right now.  I never get tired of seeing photos like the one above which was done by HSR Grad Leia Ward of LTW Design a Greenwich, CT home stager.

Color evokes such a visceral response that I created a Certified Color Expert program, so people can navigate choosing color schemes for clients in the right way.  Color is not just about paint but about all the colors in the space, so it's important to work with what we cannot change in the space to find the perfect, complimentary color.