How Home Stagers Can Protect Homeowners’ Safety

Summary

Founder of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, home staging expert Debra Gould, shares several tips home stagers can use to keep their clients safe from those meaning harm.

How Home Stagers Can Protect Homeowners’ Safety

In this day and age, there is always the sad possibility that someone looking at interior photos online or scheduling showings is actually scoping out a property with intentions of breaking in later, or plotting something much worse.

The Staging Diva®, Debra Gould, suggests there are several things home stagers can do or suggest to their clients in order to protect the safety of the homeowner.

Hide small valuables. Make sure small items of value such as figurines, jewelry, cameras, iPods and even laptops aren’t out in plain view. Suggest to the homeowners that they have a designated bag or box to stash these items in and to take it with them when they leave for a showing if they don’t wish to store them off-site while the home’s on the market.

Hide paperwork. Not only does a stack of bills and junk mail add clutter to the home, but at a quick glance someone could gain enough information to steal the homeowner’s identity. Tell the homeowners to keep items like this hidden well.

Remove personal items. If you’re having a hard time convincing the homeowners that those trophies and diplomas will distract buyers by making them wonder about the current owners, remind them how much information those things give to people walking through their home. Trophies and photos of the kids playing their favorite sports would give someone plenty of information to use if they were wanting an easy way to lure those children. They’d have their names and their favorite hobbies to work with. Remind the homeowners they need to get rid of anything that identifies their children, where they go to school or what hobbies they enjoy.

Tone down the presence of large valuables. It’s important to note that photos of the home’s interior will be all over the Internet. Valuable artwork and expensive electronics will be shown, which saves a thief the trouble of scheduling a showing to see what goods are in the home.

Protect childrens’ identities. If the homeowners have their childrens’ names on the walls as a decorative item, that gives everyone looking at the photos online or walking through the home a very important detail especially when they have a home address and a map of the home via interior photos. Sure those signs are cute on a wall, but it’s not safe while the home’s for sale.

“The bottom line,” states Debra Gould, founder of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, “is to make sure your clients realize that during an open house, complete strangers will be walking through their home completely unsupervised and that you want to take all safety precautions you can.”

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