things to keep in mind:
• Ask around instead of finding a random name online and hiring the stager sight unseen. • Ask your agent, other agents, and friends about their experiences, and ask for a referral. • Interview several professionals and choose the one you believe could provide the best value to you. You get what you pay for. If the price tag is low, it’s probable that the quality of service offered will match that price. If your stager is a well-known expert in the field, your price tag will definitely be considerably higher than someone running a summer gig. Can your potential stager provide references and photos of successful past projects? If so, take a good look and be sure you actually like how they set things up. Also, see if you can get any information about how well those houses sold! Stagers will ask you many questions. Just like a doctor, a staging pro wants as much information as possible from you about your needs. For your part, you also need to ask any questions you can think of during the initial consultation to ensure this is the stager for you. Ask questions about how they work out their rates, how long they will take, what you can do on your end to keep the costs down, how many homes they’ve staged, and whether they’ll expect anything from you during the process. Remember, they are staging professionals. Not agents. Not bankers. However, they do need to know enough about real estate to understand that their job is to increase a home’s salability. Their job is to make your home as appealing as possible to potential buyers, so they won’t (and shouldn’t) talk to you about negotiating pricing with those buyers.
Once the staging’s done, make sure to get in and dust regularly.
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