Since creating the “to be continued” blog, I’ve been closing each post with the words “dwell in possibilities.” I must confess that I borrowed this phrase from the great poet, Emily Dickinson. I saw her quote and realized that it summed up what I am doing as a professional home stager and interior designer.

I am most grateful to Ms. Dickinson for her insightful and inspiring phrase.

Regardless of the size or price range of a house, my objective is to find the possibilities in that house. I am looking for those unique features of that house and finding possible ways to accentuate them for the potential buyer. I am analyzing those unusual spaces that buyers find difficult to understand upon first glance and finding possible functional uses for those spaces.

In the end, my mission is to help the potential buyer see how they could dwell in the possibilities of this house!


Friday, June 3, 2011

FOR REALTORS ONLY - Giving Away the Store

I have been asked on more than one occasion whether I am “giving away the store” by sharing too much about home staging in this blog.  It is true that I share quite a bit of information about home staging in my regular blog posts. 

As you know, the mission of “to be continued” is to educate and inform proactive Realtors and savvy sellers.  I am not sure how I can meet that mission by being miserly with the information and experiences that I share about staging. 

My hope is that if you follow “to be continued” on a regular basis, you will learn a great deal about staging.  You will appreciate the challenges and value of home staging.  You will be more discerning when deciding to work with a professional home stager.  You will be armed with facts, figures and anecdotes about what a big difference professional home staging makes in selling a home.

I am not really concerned that I am putting myself out of business by sharing information, ideas and experiences with this blog.  The reality is that home staging is more art than science; more craft than procedure manual.

I perfected my craft (and actually feel that I am continuing to learn my craft every day) through a combination of training, study and on-the-job learning.  Of the three, the most valuable was the on-the-job work.  Each of my more than 175 home staging engagements taught me valuable lessons and helped distinguish my work from that of other home stagers. 

With home staging, you take the principles, practices and approaches and then you adapt, create and innovate based on the strengths and weaknesses of each home.  Home staging is more jazz improvisation and less symphonic note reading – and I say the same thing about the work of my Realtor partners.  Technology can make our work easier but machines will never replace the Realtor or the professional home stager!

It is one thing to understand the principles of room flow and furniture placement and quite another to make those staging concepts work in a real house with real clients under a real deadline (and still make money in the process). 

I do hope that “to be continued” inspires some readers to consider home staging as a profession.  I really hope that it inspires Realtors to use professional home staging in the portfolio of services offered to their sellers.  If nothing else, “to be continued” shows you the possibilities of home staging.


Dwell in possibilities


Cindy
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