If you have heard about a professional home staging career, you might think - wow, that’s attractive! There is no need to study for long years at the university, you can be self-employed and manage your own time, and your income doesn’t have to have any limits - the market potential is just huge, if we realize that only in July, the number of houses and condos sold in Toronto has reached almost 10,000. Doesn’t it all look just great? The administrative part of becoming a stager is not very complicated. All you have to do is to accomplish a staging course and get a certificate you can present to your clients. With options to rent furniture, you need only a small capital for the start-up. And then the most crucial thing is your real abilities. But first, you have to understand what home staging is.

Home staging is NOT home decoration, it’s actually the opposite! When you are decorating, you change the client’s home to suit his/her needs the best. On the other hand, home staging means taking out the client’s personality from the place. Since you can’t know who will come to see the place as a potential buyer - maybe a young professional? Elderly couple? Philosophy student? You have to point out the advantages that the property offers, but you have to leave some room for buyer’s own imagination.

A good visual imagination, creativity, but also the empathy towards all sorts of people - those are the “must have’s” of a successful home staging professional. You will arrange dozens pieces of furniture, art and decoration into a single coherent composition. The proper eye for detail is necessary – you have to determine whether the candle, bowl of fruits or book along with a pair of glasses will underline or destroy the atmosphere. If you look closely, at every property you will find some pros and cons, asking to be emphasized or downplayed.

Practise a bit. Try it with your home, your parents’ house, your son’s apartment and always ask for opinions. As soon as you are confident enough, start your own business! Contact some local real estate agents and leave some business cards with them, and check for furniture rental shops in your vicinity - get some newspaper adverts for this. Hard days, weeks and months will start. But hold on and resist, if you maintain sufficient quality with each place you stage, it will help you to obtain some referrals and soon you will be able to breathe more freely. If you endure some time, home staging business will for sure honour your creativity and determination.

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