Why Home Stagers Don´t Need to Provide Furniture Rentals – Part 1

Many home stagers mistakenly believe they need to carry an inventory of furniture to rent to their home staging clients who have vacant properties, or need new pieces to supplement existing furniture for a resale home on the market. Sadly, many of these stagers end up broke and out of business with nothing but a warehouse full of furniture and a pile of debt.

These unfortunate stagers get so caught up in what they think other home stagers are doing, they forget to look at home staging as a business and consider where and how they will make a profit. They buy truck loads of furniture on credit believing that´s what home stagers need to do. Then, to add insult to injury, they don´t mark up the price properly and never recover their costs.

Their inventory sits in a warehouse racking up storage fees and often when it's not in their warehouse it's sitting in a client's house on the real estate market that may not be selling as fast as they hoped.

One Boston stager made the classic mistake of renting out her furniture for an indefinite period without even making sure that she would collect rental fees along the way. With each new assignment to stage a vacant house, she'd go out and buy more furniture, lured in by those "don't pay a cent events" where you can buy furniture now on credit and pay for it in a year or two. Before she knew it, she owned enough furniture to fully furnish 10 vacant homes and that inevitable day when she'd have to pay for it all was fast approaching!

In part two of this article series, learn what options you have as a home stager that will help you avoid having this same scenario happen in your business.

Debra Gould

Debra Gould, aka The Staging Diva®, is President of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company. Inspired by many requests from aspiring home stagers wanting to start similar businesses, Gould created the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program.

Gould has trained 1000+ Staging Diva Graduates worldwide to start their own businesses. All shared a natural talent for decorating and interest in real estate, but didn't know how to make a living in their own house staging business before learning her secrets.

Debra Gould's mission is to inspire and empower others to use their natural talents to earn a living. She followed her dreams and wants to teach others to be able to do the same.

Gould pursued an MBA in Marketing and began a corporate career before moving to advertising. In the 1980s, she launched one of the first integrated marketing firms, which she ran for 10 years. Wanting a more creative life, Debra gave it up to design home accessories. She created the Debra Gould Home Collection, landing a magazine cover story and book feature, followed by her first of several HGTV appearances.

Buying decorating and selling six of her own homes in four years lead to an interest in real estate staging which she turned into a new staging career with the launch of sixelements.com in 2002. Since that time she has staged homes for hundreds of clients in addition to providing home staging training.

Gould is the author of "Staging Diva Ultimate Design Guide: Home staging tips, tricks and floor plans", "Staging Diva Ultimate Color Guide: The easy way to pick colors for home staging projects", and "Staging Diva Ultimate Portfolio Guide: Winning clients with the perfect home staging portfolio".

In addition to HGTV, Debra Gould's media coverage includes: CityTV, GlobalTV, CBC, CBS Radio, CNNMoney, Wall Street Journal, Woman's Day, Reader's Digest, MoneySense, Entrepreneur, House and Home, Home & Decor, Style at Home, Centre of the City, USAA Magazine, FabJob Guide to Become a Home Stager, Home Style, National Post Homes, This Old House, Home Business Magazine, Globe & Mail and others.

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