Expert Home Stager Spills Staging Secrets to ‘This Old House’

Summary

Debra Gould (The Staging Diva®) appears on This Old House’s online magazine, sharing her staging secrets that maximize a home’s selling price, especially in a slow real estate market. The piece is a prelude to a feature article which will appear in print in the months ahead.

Expert Home Stager Spills Staging Secrets to ‘This Old House’

(United States) July 2, 2008 – Today’s slow real estate market makes it difficult for a home to sell at all, let alone at a fair price to the seller. Homeowners in parts of the US where the market is almost dead are certainly not seeing bidding wars like they may have just a few years ago. Expert Home Stager, Debra Gould (The Staging Diva®) was interviewed recently for a feature article in an upcoming issue of This Old House Magazine.

She shared some of the secrets that have helped her clients sell homes that had been sitting ‘un-staged’ on the market for far too long and sometimes for tens of thousands of dollars more than their agents’ originally intended list price.

“Home staging is critical in a slow real estate market,” says Gould who has trained almost 1000 home stagers through her home-study Home Staging Training Business Program. “People don’t take the time to think about it, but when things aren’t moving, the house in the neighborhood that shows like a model home is going to sell first.”

The article on the This Old House website features several before and after photos and pricing information; the original list price, in some cases the price the agent had suggested before staging was complete, and the final sale price. Each set of photos is accompanied by the tricks and methodology used by Gould when staging the rooms.

This information not only gives homeowners a clear visual on what home staging can do for them, but the advice given could and should be put to use by anyone considering listing their home in a slow real estate market.

“The goal of a good stager is to transform a family’s home into a space that prospective buyers can envision as their own. That can’t happen when the rooms are full of family photographs and clutter, or when they’re vacant,” remarks Gould. “In many instances a home stager has to remind homeowners of the market they are in. If my clients are empty nesters in a neighborhood springing up with young families, I always suggest taking a guest room and staging it as a child’s bedroom. It helps the buyers see their lives there. That’s key!”

For more tips from The Staging Diva, read the article at thisoldhouse.com.

About Debra Gould – ‘The 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 almost 1000 home stagers to start and grow their own businesses through http://www.stagingdiva.com.

Debra has gained international recognition through features in major media in the US and Canada including: 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
Email
http://www.stagingdiva.com

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