Home Staging Indianapolis Blog

The Following is a new press Release

Linda Barnett, Founder of Home Matters Home Staging of Indianapolis, Indiana announces that the long awaited and highly anticipated CSP™ courses, for Real Estate Staging will be taught in Indianapolis.
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CSP™ certified staging courses are cutting edge and recognized by leaders in the field of the home staging training industry. The Certified Staging Professional Organization offers a variety of specialized courses.  The CSP™ Staging Course is a 30 hour course which provides the foundation for those wanting to start a career or own a business in real estate property staging. The proven CSP™ process is a blend of interior redesign techniques, along with business, marketing and communication skills, to effectively market a house for sale. Owning a business involves so much more than talent; like pricing, invoicing, communications and vital marketing components.  The program includes a one year membership in the CSP Alumni Association, which provides the support and resources crucial to building a profitable, home staging business.

The CSP™ Elite Course is a one day course for Real Estate agents that provides comprehensive training and insight on staging principles, best practices and strategies for agents to assist property sellers to maximize equity gain during the sale of a property.

Barnett, founder of one of Indiana’s largest, most successful and fastest growing Home Staging, Training and Rental companies, recently became a certified instructor for both the 3 day CSP™ Stagers course and the CSP™ Elite Real Estate agents’ course. 
Barnett is also an Indiana State certified instructor through the Indiana Professional Licensing Agency and the Indiana Real Estate Commission has been offering certified training to Home Stagers and Real Estate agents for several years, including a GRI Continued Education class for the Indiana Association of Realtors at the IUPUI Campus at Kokomo, Indiana. “I could not be more pleased to be offering the CSP™ Stager and CSP Elite Courses.  CSP has developed first class training courses and I feel fortunate to be their Mid-West instructor,” Barnett said.
For further details about the CSP Training Courses please visit the training page on our web site or go directly to the CSP web site at www.csptraining.com

Several weeks ago, I was contacted by Michelle Boggs, Interior Design Teacher at the Art Institute of Indianapolis.  Michelle was inquiring about me putting on a brief presentation to her Interior Design students regarding home staging.  I saw this as an opportunity to spend time with some impressionable minds that had already made a strong commitment to working towards a degree in the related field of Interior Design.  Once I had finalized the arrangements and set the date and time with Michelle, I took some time to reflect on how far we have come in the arena of home staging.

 
When I started Home Matters in 2004, it was the first Home Staging Company in all of central Indiana.  Approximately 1.5 million People in the Indianapolis area and me, one lone stager.  Even with having been a former Real Estate Agent, in 2004 I would talk to my old Real Estate colleagues and they would squint and reply, “What is it your doing?”  And now, here we are 5 years and eight hundred plus staged homes later, the Art Institute of Indianapolis wants me to educate their students about Home Staging.  Gary simply smiles and says “You’ve come a long way baby.”  There are moments like this that it feels like a long way, but then again, so much of my time these days is still spent on the education of; Realtors on how to use a Home Stager, new stagers on how to stage homes and run a home staging business and the general public on the psychology and value of home staging.  Eight hundred homes seems huge to me, but then again, it is really just a drop in the bucket considering how many homes have been on the market here in Indianapolis area over these past 5 years. My take on this business is as the educational journey continues, the evolution of our companies will continue.

 
To my delight, last Tuesday, the day of the presentation, Michelle and 13 of her students, along with Fabiola Malerbi, Academic Director-Interior Design for the Art Institute, battled a treacherous storm to come to our training facility to participate in a 2 hour discussion about Home Staging.  What a great bunch of students they were.  So involved in home fashion and so many questions.  Without a doubt they were the most informed and yet inquisitive group I have ever had the pleasure of talking with. I’m hopeful that we may even have converted a few of them to become future Home Stagers.  Thanks to Michelle, Fabiola and all of the Students from the Art Institute of Indianapolis for being such a great group to spend the afternoon with.
So, what does this all mean, besides the fact that I had a really great experience with them?  Well it simply means that I am more convinced now than ever before that we have to keep on teaching about home staging.  We have to teach them and then teach them again and again and then teach them some more!  We have to teach our communities and most importantly, we have to teach each other.  And if we do this really well, then we can all be known as stager just like we planned to be.

The Following is a press release that was published today about the addition of Home Staging Training which will be offered to both Stagers and Real Estate Agents effective this month.  Click on the Home Matters web site training tab above to see the details.

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Linda Barnett, Founder of Home Matters, to Offer Staging and Redesign (SAR) Certification Courses

Nearly five years after having founded one of the most successful and fastest growing home staging and redesign companies in Indiana, Linda Barnett is expanding Home Matters to include a new training division. Starting in January of 2009, Barnett will offer a series of 5-day Staging and Redesign (SAR) certification courses for stagers and 2-day SAR certification courses for real estate agents.

The SAR Certification Course for Stagers combines classroom training with field experience to provide a strong foundation for the art and business of staging and redesign in vacant and occupied homes. The SAR Certification Course for Agents utilizes classroom and hands-on training to give real estate professionals the tools to improve the marketability of their clients’ homes and generate faster, more profitable sales. Each course includes personalized instruction, as well as ongoing professional and marketing support, to help ensure participants’ success.      

Both of the SAR courses were created and certified by Melissa Marro of Charleston, SC, who founded First Impressions Home Staging and Interior Redesign in 2005 and helped it become one of the premiere staging and training companies in the southeast. Marro holds several leadership positions in the staging/redesign industry, including the South Carolina State Chapter President of the Interior Redesign and Staging Industry Specialists (IRIS). Marro tapped Barnett to become the Midwest SAR Instructor because of her longstanding record of success in the Indianapolis metropolitan area and her leadership in the staging/redesign industry.  

This collaboration between Barnett and Marro marks the latest step in their efforts to enhance standardization and elevate professionalism within the staging/redesign industry. Also to this end, they are both active in—and have been nominated for various awards by—the Real Estate Staging Association (RESA) of North America and have served as moderators for RESA’s Stage it Forward (SIF) Roundtable Forums, a series of nationwide conferences for staging and redesign professionals.

Real estate and the technological world are like peas and carrots, they just go together. We live in a world of MLS photos, virtual tours, internet directories, press releases, and article submissions.  It’s entirely feasible for a buyer to see every room of a home, in high quality vivid color, from the comfort of their own home, a coffee shop, or just about anywhere they can get an internet connection.  I recently read that as high as 86% of home shoppers will view available homes as well as find their Realtor on the Internet.

As a result of this surge in internet use, many new real estate professionals are relying on the technological highway to improve their services.  The successful sale of your listings will depend on how good you are at digitizing, synthesizing and electronically marketing yourself and your client’s homes.  Curb appeal is no longer the view you get from your 1995 Chevy windows while driving down the street, instead it is the view you get of a home from digitized photos shown on your computer screen.  Finding a Realtor or Home Stager is not a matter of checking with who your friends used in the past, it’s a matter of who comes up first when the phrase “Real Estate Agent, Indianapolis” is typed into your favorite search engine.  And even when you come up high in the results of a search, internet users have learned that they can quickly check the multitude of claims made by eager, computer savvy business men and women, marketing themselves and their businesses.

As a buyer using today’s technology, I can quickly set the price range I want to pay and the area I want to live in and in seconds view every home that meets my criteria.  From that starting point I can start comparing and eliminating with-in seconds.  A home looks to be priced too high compared to others in this same price range and many others look better, well may not make their must see list. If your home looks dark and dated and your photos are dark, blurred and just plain horrible looking well, again you’re not even in the running.  No photos, well that’s just not good at all.  In much less time than it would take to physically visit just one property, I can view every home meeting my criteria and choose the winners. The National Association of Realtors even claims that homes with more and better photos are viewed exponentially more than those with a few or no photos.  Also, it only makes sense that clients require the Realtors and Stagers that they work with are those that are technologically savvy.  I am hearing from many experienced Realtors that their business has and continues to diminish as time goes by.  These are agents that built their lively-hood on referrals.  First year, 10 clients.  Those 10 clients told 20 more and on and on.  So what happened to their ever-dependable pyramid math?  The Internet happened.  Once again, a client can find an agent on the Internet quicker than it takes to make a phone call to a friend for a referral.  The business diminished because the math just didn’t add up any more.

E-mail is also part of the changing technological landscape.  E-mail has now grown to the point of being the communication tool of choice.  We can instantly communicate with anyone, anywhere around the world.  We can send our clients quotes, contracts, updates, inspection reports, offers, counter offers and even closing statements.  And it can be done instantaneously and as sharp as the original.

My how things have changed!  I struggled at age 38 to learn and become proficient at using a computer.  As time went by I also struggled at becoming proficient at using the Internet.  My son learned about computers at age 12 and easily moved into the whole Internet thing at about 18.  Today my 10-year-old granddaughter can do a search and locate every home for sale in my community.  My how things have changed indeed!

Moral of story; you have to diversify your services and your techniques in making a connection in today’s real estate world.

In today’s real estate market it’s not unusual for smart, savvy home sellers to look at all of their options when it comes to selling their homes. I’d like to share with you a fabulous story of how a smart and wise home seller found their way to look for a home stager despite opposing advice.

I received a call from a homeowner, asking about our services and if we could help her stage her property. She went on the say that they had a second home already bought and time was of the essence. She explained to me, that she had told her agent that she was going to have her home staged and did not want it on the market until the staging was complete. She told me that she was surprised at her agent’s response. The agent had told her that her home was in a terrific location and that the quaint town was very desirable and that she did not need to spend money on staging her home. She continue her story and told me that she thought about her agents advice for a few seconds and asked her agent about why her neighbor’s home is still sitting on the market after 5 months.

I staged her property on Jan. 14th, 2008 and received a call on Jan. 18th, 2008 from a very excited homeowner telling me they had just accepted a full price offer.  “Whoo Hoo” she said. She went on to tell me that she was extremely happy with herself in that she decided to follow her own personal research and listened to her own instinct. We too, are thrilled for her and her family and wish them many happy years in their new home.

I found the book to be a practical, comprehensive, and provides detail,  with all-inclusive information on how to sell a home faster and for more money-even in today’s challenging real estate market. The book features current facts and statistics, resource lists, photographs, room-by-room and step-by-step guidance, and home-preparation checklists. Its target audience includes homeowners, realtors, builders, investors, and home stagers, and those individuals interested in exploring a career in home staging.  I have read many books on the subject of home staging and would definitely recommend this to be at the top of your must read list.

For those of you not familiar with the authors, Christine Rae is an internationally recognized trainer and author in the home staging industry. She is the founder and President of Certified Staging Professionals, through which she has instructed over 2,600 entrepreneurs on how to start and grow a successful home staging business. She has received numerous industry awards; most recently, the 2007 Staging Innovator of the Year from the Real Estate Staging Association (RESA), which has members throughout the United States and Canada.   Jan Saunders Maresh-a Certified Staging Professional-is a bestselling author and nationally known journalist, instructor and television personality with more than 25 years of design experience. In 2005, she founded Naked Room Solutions, a home staging and interior redesign company.  This book is available at bookstores and can be ordered online at www.dummies.com or www.stagerslist.com.

As for me, well I’m just simply blessed to have played a small part in their huge accomplishment. Please join me in raising a glass, and make a toast for their contribution to our industry.  Congratulations Ladies!

When buyers are house hunting, they look for homes that not only meet their financial needs and desired location, but also their perception of a home’s condition and its value. Therefore, we view our role as a Professional Home Stagers, helping to position our client’s home as “moving it up the property ladder.”

The “property ladder” is a metaphor for a home’s marketability position. The “rungs” of the ladder represent the salability of a home: “poor” at the bottom, moving up to “fair” and then “good” in the middle, culminating in “best” at the top of the ladder. The marketability position is directly influenced by the perceived condition/value a buyer places on a property; thereby allowing the art of home staging to be extremely beneficial toward helping move the home to an improved sellable position. A (“best”) home at the top of the ladder allows the HOME SELLER (S) to reap the most successful sale: the highest price and/or in the shortest amount of time on the market.

How is this accomplished?

Our Professional Home Stagers help determine where the property currently is (which rung) on the ladder by assessing its condition and contents. They then determine how to reposition the property by making specific recommendations to move it upward. There are two main variables our home stagers consider at this point; one is meeting the expectations of the home’s targeted market (or demographic) of buyers; and the second is the price point of the home. Why are the targeted market and price point so important? Because meeting the expectations of buyers—by the way the home is styled or merchandised—will help them connect emotionally with the product that is being sold. Understanding the demographics of the targeted market helps our stagers make recommendations that are just right for the home. The price point will tell the stager what quality of furnishings and other home design features a typical buyer in that price range will expect.

Finally, our stager recommends other design elements that help influence home buyers—including color, scale, proportion, symmetry, balance, flow (traffic) patterns and best use of space. When all these variables fall into place, they create a perfect match between what typical buyers in the demographic see and what they expect. This will move any home upward and lead buyers to an emotional connection with the home. Ultimately, this emotional connection is what helps buyers choose a particular property for their next home.

As Professional Home Stagers, we feel it is our professional obligation and responsibility to give home sellers every possible advantage to make their homes more marketable by repositioning/transforming their products (homes) upward on the property ladder. In doing so, we ensure the best end result: A Fast Profitable Sale!