What home stylists learn in Home Staging School doesn’t always give newbie stylists a full picture of the industry. Like all market-driven industries, real estate sales can be a bit tumultuous, particularly when supply outstrips demand. Such is the situation in which we now find ourselves in the Greater Sydney area. Not everything that happens in this industry can be learned from a book on real estate sales theory. Sometimes it just takes a bit of OJT.
On-the-job training is a fine thing. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can replace it as a learning tool. Whether you’re flipping burgers at McDonalds or designing investment strategies, there’s nothing quite as valuable to you in your work as old-fashioned, hands-on experience. The same is true for home stylists.
The work that home stagers do is intuitive to begin with. We start with a ‘feel’ for design and décor, but we still have to train in the belly of the beast. We have to learn how to translate the insecurities of home buyers into confidence and certainty. This must be accomplished without ever laying eyes on the buyer in question.
So, how does a home stager create a house that speaks to the buyer without ever actually seeing or speaking to them? Stagers must be more than artists – they must also be scientists, and it is this scientific information that gives a good stager the edge. It’s all about demographics.
People in the home staging industry understand the first rule of marketing more than most. If you’re going to succeed at marketing you must first know your target market. For this reason the home staging world is awash in data. We spend huge amounts of money and time learning about the people who buy houses. From the data we gather, we’re able to tailor our home-staging efforts to the needs of buyers.
It’s not unlike the mechanisms behind the most popular online dating sites. When you gather enough information in the first place, you are very likely to be successful in identifying and providing a good match. Bingo.
We know, for example, that people over a certain age are more likely to want a big yard to putter about in. People of a certain income want this amenity and not that one. In other words, we can sift through the data and know what features of your house will be most attractive to which buyer. Then we decorate and style accordingly. Simply put, we find the buyer’s triggers and make them totally irresistible.
There is also a very important psychological factor in preparing a house for presentation. We know that emotion is the key to unlocking a profitable sale. We humans make big buying decisions in the part of the brain that controls emotion. We need to feel good about the purchase and the best home stylists study all the things that make buyers feel wonderful. It goes beyond wall colour and furniture style. It goes all the way to feelings of security and even more primal instincts like power. Dressing a house for a successful sale leaves no emotional stone unturned. It is this that separates an exceptional home stylist from the wannabes.
In our thinking, the qualities of the superior home stylist are a mix of equal parts training, experience, and intuitive empathy. Getting all of these abilities in one package isn’t always easy, but in our challenging real estate market, each of them is critical to making the big sale.
When you begin to seek the right home styling company you have lots of clues. First of all, your selling agent will have stylists he or she prefers to work with. If your agent loves them, you can probably rest assured that their work results in exceptional sales. You also have friends, co-workers and family members who have worked with stylists. They can also make suggestions. You want to find someone with a proven record before you hand over your biggest lifetime business transaction – the sale of your house – to them.
After you’ve checked the references, and verified the online reviews, we think you’ll be calling Urban Chic Property Styling. We’re standing by to help you create a phenomenal sale.
