Debra Gould

Entrepreneur.Designer.Speaker.Writer.Trainer

  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Speaking
  • Reviews
  • Websites
  • Media
  • Contact
  • Store

Selling Up: A home stager can help you get top dollar

By Debra Gould Leave a Comment

MoneySense Magazine, Nov. 2003
“Selling Up: A home stager can help you get top dollar”
Written by Gabrielle Bauer
Photograhy by Virginia MacDonald

Excerpt from MoneySense Magazine:

If you’re looking to score on the real estate market, your best investment may not be a house or condo, but an hour with Debra Gould. Through her company, Six Elements Inc., she dispenses design advice to people who want their property to sell faster and for more money.

The results can be stunning. One week after implementing Gould’s suggestions, a Toronto couple sold their house for $12,000 over the original asking price of $349,000. Gould’s hourly consulting fee “was the best $125 they ever spent,” says Cristina van Blommestein, the couple’s real estate agent.

Then there’s the magic Gould worked on her own home in Montreal last year. To prep the place for buyers, she spent $2,000 on new lighting and fresh paint, and also strategically rearranged the furniture. Then came the payoff: her house sold for $30,000 more than she had bought it for just three months earlier in a virtually identical real estate market.

With reports like these spreading through the real estate industry, it’s no surprise that a growing number of home sellers are hiring consultants like Gould. Known officially as “home stagers” (you may have heard the more colorful term “fluffers”), these professionals maximize your home’s appeal and value to prospective buyers.

Home staging isn’t just about boosting your selling price; it can be a big help if you need to sell your house in a hurry. “The prospect of dealing with showings and open houses for weeks was horrifying to us,” says Louise Summerhill, the mother of two young children and a full-time lawyer whose husband is in the same profession. “We wanted a quick sale,” she says, so they hired Gould, who put superfluous items into storage, had the carpets cleaned, moved furniture around in the house, and shopped for new bathroom towels and other accessories they could use again in their new home. She also purchased and arranged flowers for showings and did “dozens of other things that made the house look planned and designed,” Summerhill recalls. The total bill: $5,500. Result: their home sold on the first day of offer-taking.

Looking back, Summerhill muses that “a lot of people would resist staging because it does require you to depersonalize. But it helped us to think that we had bought a new home and were now just custodians of our old house. Our object was to sell quickly, and that we certainly accomplished.”

Related Posts

Filed Under: Debra Gould in Print Tagged With: Debra Gould, home stager, house fluffer, Money Sense, MoneySense Magazine, real estate

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Debra Gould

Entrepreneur and marketing expert Debra Gould is a writer, speaker, designer, trainer and mom. She has reinvented her life many times—building 6-figure businesses around her passions— and teaches others how to do it too. Providing inspiration and practical steps, Debra has taught and mentored 30,000+ people in 24 countries as President of Six Elements Design Group Inc.

More About Debra

Categories

  • Confessions of an Entrepreneur + Artist (1)
  • Debra Gould in Books (3)
  • Debra Gould in Print (42)
  • Debra Gould on Radio (5)
  • Debra Gould on TV (8)
  • Debra Gould on Web (15)
  • Debra Gould Speaker (3)
  • Entrepreneur Articles (54)
  • Home Staging Articles (88)
  • Interior Redesign Articles (6)
  • Press Releases (97)
  • Real Estate Articles (54)
  • Staging Business Articles (161)

Recent Posts

  • I Have a Confession to Make About Debra Gould
  • Debra Gould to Lead Workshop on Shaping Your Future
  • Debra Gould to Speak at HOPE Symposium
  • Home Staging Career for Moms When Kids Go Back To School
  • Staging Diva Encourages Home Stagers to Pursue Their Passions

Looking For a Guest Speaker?

Check out our Speaking page for more information.

Favorite Speaking Topics

  • Reclaim Your Power and Shape Your Future
  • Taking a Leap Into The Unknown
  • Personal Reinvention/Career Change
  • How To Make More Money with Integrity
  • Finding Comedy in Everyday Life
  • Running a Home Based Business
  • The Business of Home Staging
  • Marketing Your Small Business
  • Making Money in Real Estate


Categories:
• Best Entrepreneur, Small Service Business
• Best Canadian Entrepreneur
• Best Blog of the Year
• Best Coach / Mentor
Privacy Policy: We hate SPAM too! Your email address will not be shared, rented or sold to third parties.

® Staging Diva and the Staging Diva Logo are registered trademarks of Six Elements Design Group Inc.
Copyright 2005 - © 2022 Six Elements Design Group Inc. All rights reserved. Republication or dissemination of this content is expressly prohibited without written permission.

For more information contact: 416-691-6615.