House Selling Secrets of a Home Stager
by Debra Snoonian

Excerpt:

When this story first hit the This Old House website, it was on their front page for a week, as shown above.

Based in Toronto, Gould has trained a network of 1400+ home stagers across the U.S. “Most owners aren’t seeing bidding wars the way they were a few years ago,” she says. “But with the right staging, you can get close to your asking price.”

Here are before-and-after photos of rooms in houses Gould has staged in the Toronto area, along with information about fees paid and sales prices. . . ”

Read the full story here

Summary

Home staging expert, Debra Gould, releases an updated version of her popular free report, written for those worried about starting a home staging business in light of today’s economy. This new version includes current research, updated information and real estate statistics for 2010. 

Staging Diva Releases Updated Version of Economic Report for Stagers

(UNITED STATES) March 8, 2010 – Exactly one year ago home staging expert, Debra Gould, released a special report entitled, “Can I grow a home staging business in a depressed economy?”  In the past twelve months, thousands of aspiring home stagers, feeling defeated by negative headlines about the real estate market, have downloaded their own free copy of this informative report.

Because this economic report has helped inspire so many home stagers despite less than ideal market conditions, today Gould, also known as The Staging Diva®, is announcing the release of a newly updated version of this special economic report with information and real estate statistics specific to 2010.

“Every day I hear from another aspiring home stager who wants to start their own business, but can’t take the next step because of nay-saying family members and friends who don’t think it’s a good idea. Add that to news of a poor real estate market and their dream of being self-employed as a home stager is crushed,” states Gould. She adds, “This new version of my free economic report compiles all of the advice I give these stagers with recent real-life examples from Staging Diva graduates, updated statistics and more current research of real estate conditions around North America. This report is still available for free so it gets into the hands of as many home stagers as possible. It will be as informative for established stagers as it will be to aspiring stagers trying to make an informed decision about their career,” states Gould, founder of the Staging Diva® Home Staging Business Training Program.

Besides busting some common myths about the economy, this free report also explains why home staging businesses actually thrive in a slow housing market despite what  most people think. It teaches aspiring stagers sixteen ways to get money now to help build a home staging business and shares real-life examples of how home staging has helped non-selling homes attract offers within days.

Gould has succeeded in difficult economic conditions before having started her first successful business, a marketing consulting firm, at the beginning of the 1990s recession. She states, “When everyone said I was crazy to quit my high-level job to start a business, I knew there would be more security in working for myself than for someone else.” Of course Gould was right and she was soon earning more than she ever had as an employee while her fellow MBA graduates were being laid off from their corporate jobs.

“After reading this special report, my hope is that home stagers will feel more secure in their decision to go ahead and start a home staging business. They should also be inspired after learning about the significant opportunities that exist for stagers today regardless of what the economy is doing,” says Gould.

To learn more or to order a copy of the free Ask Staging Diva® Special Report: “Can I grow a home staging business in a depressed economy?” visit http://www.stagingdiva.com/economyreport.html

About Staging Diva

The creator of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, Debra Gould has staged millions of dollars worth of real estate, including seven of her own homes. She is the president of home staging firm SixElements.com and has trained over 4000 home stagers to start and grow their own businesses.

Debra has gained international recognition through features in major media in the US and Canada including: This Old House, HGTV, CNN Money, CBC National News, CBS Radio, Global TV, City TV, The Wall Street Journal, Women’s Day, Reader’s Digest and more.

Contact

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva
Six Elements Inc.
416-691-6615
debragould@stagingdiva.com
http://www.stagingdiva.com

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Home Business Magazine – Debra Gould Success Story

Excerpt:

“Debra Gould bought, decorated and sold six of her own homes in eight years while she ran her marketing consulting business from home. This led her into a new career as a home stager. It was the perfect way to combine her passions for decorating and real estate without being on call 24/7 the way agents are.

Gould finally found a way to fully use her creativity without becoming a starving artist. In fact, she was able to earn up to $10,000 a month staging homes by her second year in business.

During those first two years, Gould heard from so many others who wanted advice on how they could have the same success and recognition she had. That prompted her to create the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. . . ”

Summary

Founder of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, home staging expert Debra Gould, cautions home stagers, decorators and Interior Designers against a new email scam targeting them.

Home Stagers and Interior Designers Targets of New Email Scam

As true confirmation that home staging has become a well-established field, stagers are now being targeted by scam artists attempting to con them into sending money.

In a new twist on “assist a diplomat who needs help getting millions out of the country and you’ll be rewarded” or “send money to a foreign country to rescue a dying relative” – scam artists have rewritten a script for stagers, decorators or interior designers who may do work for home owners living abroad.

In this scam the home stager is sent an email from an out-of-country “homeowner.” The sender leads the stager on about a project and tries to build a rapport all in the hopes of tricking the stager into handing over their money.

News of this scam recently reached Staging Diva® Debra Gould who states, “In the specific case I’ve heard about, the stager said the man was very vague around details of the home. He wouldn’t answer the stager’s questions. Instead, he seemed focused on whether or not she had credit card processing abilities. Even though the stager didn’t provide an estimate for staging fees (because she didn’t have enough information from the “client”), he told her that she was to charge $16,000 to his credit card, keeping $8,000 for herself and sending $8,000 to his ‘artist.’”

Gould advises decorators, stagers and designers to look out for schemes like this because, unfortunately, some people are trusting enough to do something like this to try and help someone out. If that was not the case, email scams would not still be so very prevalent.

“Thankfully,” adds Gould, “this home stager didn’t fall into the trap of being blinded by the promised $8,000 fee, and when she questioned this arrangement she never heard from the man again.”

About the author

The creator of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, Debra Gould has staged millions of dollars worth of real estate, including seven of her own homes. She is the president of home staging firm SixElements.com and has trained thousands of home stagers to start and grow their own businesses. Gould created the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers to help home sellers and real estate agents locate staging services in their area

Summary

Home staging expert Debra Gould was one of the experts quoted in a story on MSN Real Estate’s website in a feature article about decluttering.

Excerpt from “The slacker’s guide to decluttering your home before a sale or move ” by Melinda Fulmer:

“With most homes, you could get rid of 30% of its contents and never miss it for a second,” says Debra Gould, aka The Staging Diva. One family Gould worked with got rid of 6,000 pounds of clutter that they didn’t have to pay to move.”

Read the entire decluttering story here on MSN Real Estate.

Summary

Author of the Home Stager’s Guide to Twitter,  home staging expert Debra Gould, discusses how social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are powerful marketing tools for small business owners.

Facebook and Twitter Powerful for Marketing Small Business

At one time, Facebook might have been nothing more than a meeting place for teenagers and college kids, but those days are gone. There are roughly the same number of people on Facebook today as used the entire Internet a decade ago.

Social media is the ideal way to grow any type of small business, including a home staging business, because it’s an effective form of marketing while costing nothing more than an investment of time.

Staging Diva® and marketing expert Debra Gould says, “If you own a business and you’re already on Facebook for the sole purpose of communicating with your friends and family members, you’re missing out on how powerful this tool is in growing a business.”

A Facebook account is essentially a large, interactive database of friends, acquaintances, former colleagues, family members, etc. You’re able to send a “friend request” to anyone on Facebook so it’s easy to build a big list quickly. Because most of the world is on Facebook you’ll be surprised at who you can find from your target market.

Your database of contacts gives you access to your friends’ photos and you can read your friends interactions with their friends on their “wall” (where most discussions happen on Facebook).

That means your friends’ friends can see what’s going on over on your wall too. And that’s incredibly powerful when you’re talking about your business.

“To promote your home staging or decorating business,” says Debra Gould, founder of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, “all you need to do is publish a new set of before and after photos of a home staging or interior redesign project and write a couple of sentences about the transformation, and all of the people on your list can see them.”

Gould adds, “If they can comment on your photos or on your wall, their friends lists can see that information as well. Suddenly, you’ve exponentially increased the number of people who are aware of your services and have seen a sample of your portfolio.”

It’s true that Facebook is a good way to waste time (especially if you’re playing on FarmVille or doing any number of silly quizzes), but if you use your time differently it can be an outstanding way to grow your business.

Twitter is easier to use than Facebook and requires much less of a time commitment.

In many ways  Twitter is also an even more powerful marketing tool for a small business owner. There is no need to approve friend requests since anyone can follow anyone else (and there is no need to follow them back unless you want to). Twitter offers the ability to search for “tweets” (140 character Twitter posts) on any subject. That makes it a fast way to identify experts on a given topic. Since tweets are indexed by Google they are a powerful way to drive traffic to your own website or blog.

In the Home Stager’s Guide to Twitter Debra Gould provides a comprehensive step-by-step guide to using the free Twitter service to grow a home staging business. Written for total beginners, it also includes more advanced Twitter marketing strategies.

About the author

The creator of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, Debra Gould has staged millions of dollars worth of real estate, including seven of her own homes. She is the president of home staging firm SixElements.com and has trained thousands of home stagers to start and grow their own businesses. Gould created the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers to help home sellers and real estate agents locate staging services in their area

National Post Homes Magazine
by Rebecca Vogt

Ready, Stage, Sell: Hiring a pro to primp your pad before it goes on the market could reap you thousands of dollars

Excerpt:

“‘Every house has a soul’ says Staging Diva Debra Gould, a petite woman in hipster black with a shock of dark hair and an engaging smile. We’re chatting on the second floor of her airy home.

As president of Six Elements Inc., and the force behind Staging Diva, a six-year-old company, which as primped hundreds of homes variously priced from $190,000 to $1.7-million — in addition to seven of her own (she’s also taught home staging from Spain to New Zealand)— Ms. Gould knows what it takes to sell a house quickly and for a hefty sum. A good stager, she says, ‘will set the scene so that the highest number of potential buyers fall in love the the space.’ At her web site, StagingDiva.com, she offers information on services and products geared toward the home seller, before-and-after photos of past clients’ homes and even training for those interested in starting their own staging business— a field that’s been garnering more and more attention in the real estate industry.”. . .

Summary

Home staging expert, Debra Gould, shares a success story from a Staging Diva Graduate who was able to rescue her career as an Interior Designer during Southern California’s housing collapse by learning home staging.

Staging Diva Program Rescues Interior Designer’s Career

When times are tight, nobody is spending money on frivolous things like interior design. But in a recessed economy with people being forced to sell their homes and wanting to keep all the equity they possibly can, they are willing to invest in a designer who is skilled in home staging.

When Interior Designer, Linda Scaglione, found herself in the midst of Southern California’s housing collapse, she became desperate to find a way out of the sinking retail side of design.

A friend suggested that with her skills she should consider getting into home staging and that’s when Linda made the decision to take the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program.

By taking her talent and experience in interior design and combining them with the business knowledge she gained by taking the Staging Diva Program, Linda was setting herself up for great success.

Linda’s home staging business is called Haute Decors. Marketing primarily to the real estate industry, Haute Decors is known for updating existing cabinetry using decorative painting on top of providing home staging services.

Her first project after reinventing herself as a home stager saw Linda staging a condo that ended up selling within 24 hours! On top of that, it sold for more money than many other units in the same condo development.

The remarkable success of that project led to Linda being hired to stage a 2.6 million dollar beach home that had been sitting on the market for more than a year. After a kitchen renovation and Linda’s home staging the owner had several pending offers within one week!

About the training she received through Debra Gould’s home staging course, Linda says, “It gave me the courage to start my own interior design business specializing in home staging. For anyone wondering if the investment will be worth it, I say ‘Go for it’!”

About the author

The creator of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, Debra Gould has staged millions of dollars worth of real estate, including seven of her own homes. She is the president of home staging firm SixElements.com and has trained thousands of home stagers to start and grow their own businesses. Gould created the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers to help home sellers and real estate agents locate staging services in their area.

Summary

Home staging expert Debra Gould offers five tips for handling walls in home staging, in a story on one of NAR’s (National Association of Realtors) highly visited websites.

Excerpt from “Staging Tips: 5 Tips for Tackling Walls” by Erica Christoffer, Contributing Editor, REALTOR® Magazine:

“Walls are a key element of home staging. They are the canvas showcasing the greatest attributes of a house. But where do you start when preparing a home for sale? Staging Diva Debra Gould, president of Toronto-based Six Elements Inc., offers up five rules of thumb for handling walls in home staging.

1. Remove personal pictures: Those wedding portraits and baby pictures have to come down, as do diplomas and awards. Personal items such as these are distracting to potential buyers. You want them to focus on the home itself, not who the current home owners are.”

Read all five tips for tackling walls at Styled, Staged, Sold.