Portland, OR home stagers David Peterson & Nik Murrow have been two of my top home staging professionals for years. Their work is clean, sleek, and stunning. They have the kind of aesthetic that you immediately know it’s them when you see the photos. I’m excited to have the opportunity to tell their home stager story.

How long have you been a home stager? 5 ½ years 

Why did you decide to become a home stager? My partner and I moved from LA to Oregon. He was working as a Costume Designer in LA and we were looking for a new opportunity. After speaking with our Real Estate agent we learned of Home Staging which was a great way to incorporate Nik’s design skills and my experience in Real Estate.

What did you do before you were a home stager? I worked in the music industry for 15 years as a personal manager. I had also been an operations manager for a Property Management Company as well as a high end IT Networking Company.

Tell us a little about your business, how it operates and who your clients are: We have a boutique business that specializes in vacant home staging, although we also do occupied homes and Redesign as well. We use exclusively our own inventory and service the Portland Metro area. Our design aesthetic has a modern flare with a full, lived-in look. The rewarding part of the business is to approach each property with a unique design while avoiding a result that is cookie-cutter and ‘staged’ looking. The majority of our clients are investors, banks, and Realtors. We have noticed that more individual home owners are beginning to contact us again as the market begins to reinvigorate.

What’s your favorite part of the business? Seeing the transformation of each property. No matter how many homes we stage, witnessing a property transform from cold and vacant to warm and inviting never gets old. And then this is followed by the reaction of our clients and ultimately, the satisfaction of helping them sell their home quickly, while allowing the buyer to experience the best way to live in their new home.

What’s your least favorite part of the business? Getting to a property that is not Stage Ready. Remember, we are not professional cleaners!

Who are some of your favorite stagers? This question isn’t fair – there are too many to list! Aside from our many talented Portland colleagues and friends – the first that come to mind are Jackson West, Ryan Dressel, Matthew Finlason, David Cieslak, Kathy Nielson, Margaret Gehr, Michelle Minch, and Annie Pinsker-Brown just to name a few.

Tell us about your best staging experience. We have been staging in a development with new construction for several years. The first home had been on the market for many months and after staging it sold at the first Open House. Each time a staged home sells we stage another house in the same development. Inevitably every home that is staged has sold quickly at asking price. This partnership has been very rewarding and successful. It has led to many other projects with the same client.

Tell us about your worst staging experience.   In December 2008 we were having record snowfalls in Portland. We were scheduled to de-stage a property on December 22 that had sold and was scheduled to close on 12/31/08. Unfortunately the closing got moved up to Christmas Eve and we couldn’t get to our warehouse and the truck was snowed in. We agreed to drive to property in our CR-V, 30 miles away, and move the staging into the garage since we couldn’t drive our truck. We then had to schedule another date to pick up everything from their garage. Needless to say, the new owners were happy, but spending hours each way on the freeway was not our idea of a fun Christmas Eve. Here’s a blog post with more details and photos!

What was your favorite room or art or accessory? (if you have a photo, please include it) There are so many to choose from, but the attached photos of some of our staged living rooms are among our favorites.

If you were to pick a theme song for your career as a home stager, what would it be? True Colors

If you were going to write a book about your staging career, what would it be called? A Tale of Two Stagers

What would you tell someone new, thinking of getting into home staging? It can be a very rewarding profession, but it is not glamorous and is more physically intensive than you’d expect. When investing in furniture and décor, make sure you have a clear vision on your design aesthetic. Don’t just buy lots of things because they are on sale. Investing in fewer nice pieces will ultimately give you a more satisfying stage.

Connect with Synergy Staging on facebook or twitter.

Learn about home staging with Synergy Staging.

Read more home stager stories in our, “I’m a home stager.” series.

In an article release this week by Tara-Nicholle Nelson, columnist for Inman News, home staging was cited as the #1 tip for receiving multiple offers when selling your home.

1. Pristine and staged. The homes that I’ve seen get multiple offers in my own market recently are immaculately clean — not a whiff of anything within noseshot, so to speak — and dressed to the nines. Their photos look like something out of a home decor catalog or design magazine — like no one lives there, even if someone does. Their owners have often spent months in advance cleaning, decluttering, organizing, primping and otherwise sprucing their homes for sale with the intention of blowing the competition out of the water.

I won’t purport to capture the art of staging in a sentence, but prepacking is a good visual to hold in mind as you prepare your home. (And anecdotally, I will say that it strikes me that a large proportion of multiple-offer homes have actually been professionally staged. I’d urge a seller who wants multiple offers to explore whether there’s some level of staging service or even staging advice that is worth the investment, before dismissing it as too expensive out of hand.)

That’s right, not only should the home be staged, but at a minimum, sellers should have a home staging consultation with a professional.

And while Tara-Nicholle isn’t comfortable stating what staging is in a sentence, I am. (Well, OK, two sentences….)

Home Staging helps to control a buyer’s eye, with careful placement of furniture, art & accessories, so as to minimize the flaws of a home while enhancing the positive aspects. We help any home, regardless of age or occupancy status look and feel like a model home so that buyers will emotionally connect with it, increasing the odds of a quick sale at the highest possible price.”

Want to know the rest of the 4 Insider Tips for Getting Multiple Offers are? Read the article.

Email marketing has been on of the most income generating activities that I engaged in when I decided to become a home stager. In the first year of business, more than $100,000 of our sales could directly be linked to our newsletters and other email marketing campaigns. I’ve seen some do really well in this and others do poorly. If you follow the tips in the infographic above, you are more likely to have a positive outcome.

The launch for our Jacksonville Home Staging Company, Rave ReViews, is in full force. Since my last update, just about two weeks ago, I’ve set up an agent meeting and lunch & learn at Watson Realty, the largest real estate company in our area.  I have also registered for Real Estate School, which begins on Monday.

Why real estate school when I’m a home stager? It makes sense to have your license for several reasons. The first is because you have access to MLS and a lockbox key. This means that you can provide seamless service for your agent clients, without waiting for them to let you in and out of properties. It also means that you have access to statistics – a tremendous part of showing how we help Realtors and home sellers beat market stats. The second is REFERRAL FEES! That’s right. Often home owners contact us before they choose their agents. When you are a licensed agent, you earn referral fees for sending business to them. And finally, you should know the language and business of real estate if you are going to be a home stager.

Now I should mention that having your license and being a home stager, you don’t want to do what we so often accuse agents of doing – being divided in your attention. Let Realtors list and sell homes. As for me, I’m a home stager. I do not sell homes, I only prepare them for sale.

Want to know whether you should rent or buy? Take a look at this infographic by SheaHomes.

I loved this infographic because it seemed to go so well with yesterday’s Tech4Biz session when I discussed my favorite WordPress plugin for SEO. Why is it my favorite? Because it helps you remember whether you are doing your SEO right or wrong by actually saying “yes” or “no” to various wickets that you should know.

If you missed our Tech4Biz session, you can get the recorded copy for only $5 or join Conversations with Market Leaders and get unlimited access to more than 80 courses in the next year for only $240.

In this week’s Tech4Biz session, I featured an SEO wordpress plugin that will let you know if you’ve done your SEO properly by telling you “yes” or “no” to various wickets you should be paying attention to. I also featured two different smartphone apps -one that is perfect for keeping and tracking expenses and job related information – and another that will help you make stunning multi-media videos of your work or listings in minutes.

Our weekly Tech4Biz sessions are included with Conversations with Market Leaders membership or can be purchased for only $5.

Angela Batchelor, one of Wilmington’s best Realtors, shared this fantastic video of one of her most recent home seller clients. Angela, a proponent of home staging, (You may remember her from our impromptu dinner conversation at the RESA convention where she discussed how to have the home staging discussion with home sellers.) requires as part of her sales package, that the homeowner consult with a home stager and follow their advice. Just Perfect! Home Staging & more is Angela’s preferred Wilmington Home Staging company.

This client, like so many others, was initially resentful of the idea of having their home professionally staged. Knowing that they were already going to lose money on it, based on the current real estate market in Wilmington, why should they spend more money? The candor of this home seller is the perfect match for so many of us in the home staging industry. We know that nearly every home seller feels the same way. They simply don’t understand that staging is more than just adding or removing furniture. It’s more than just moving the bed from here to over there. Proper staging will show off the home to its best advantages.

I love the fact that the homeowner seems nearly speechless when it comes to describing the different in his home after home staging. Kudos to Angela for making her taking of listings contingent upon the agreement to have them staged, despite obvious trepidation from the client. Kudos to Just Perfect! Home Staging & more for turning another home seller into a believer.

What I really love the most about this situation is that it’s a win-win-win for everyone. Home sellers rely on their agents to apprise them of what reality in today’s real estate market is really about. The agent cared enough about her clients, and understood the market well enough to know that NOT staging was going to cost them more money than the investment of staging and then stood her ground. To take the listing without it, would have reflected negatively on her because it may have taken longer to sell, or worse, not sold at all. This would cost both her and the client time and money – and in a declining market, that’s a lethal combination.

No, instead, she used her expert status, to bring in another expert, a home stager, to make the changes necessary to properly market the home. The results? This home was listed for 9 months with another local real estate agent unsuccessfully. After being listed with Angela Batchelor of CENTURY 21 Sweyer & Associates and following her strategic marketing plan this home closed in less than 90 days.

Conversations with Market Leaders is getting an overhaul this month as we add new programs to our annual membership. One of the big new changes is our monthly broadcast of Tech4Biz exclusive to CML members.

This weekly webinar will showcase some of today’s best tools, including wordpress plugins, websites, programs, android & iphone apps.

Our weekly broadcasts will be on Mondays at 11am EST and begin May 7th. Sessions will be recorded and available to members if they cannot attend the live call. (May 14th & May 25th will be rescheduled on different days due to holiday & previously scheduled events)

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