Over half of the 123 Home Staging Professionals who answered my survey question on the “Climate of Competition” in their markets rated it as “Mild, we are all friends.” Only one rated it as “Hostile, we are fighting for every advantage”

That said, those with 2-4 years experience were the least likely to claim competition as Mild. My guess is after two years of business, they were more likely to have run into competition and not necessarily come out ahead in every case.

The “Top Dog” category in the survey seemed to share this attitude, although a few seem to have arrived at the point where they had developed strong relationships with Realtors which was providing them with a steady stream of new business. For them the competition was less relevant. In in many cases it may have been seen as asset as it provided an overflow valve when they were too busy.

The unasked question I refer to in the subtitle, was the “Null Set.”

The biggest competitor Home Stagers face is the number of Realtors and Home Owners who decide to not stage at all. Or who never consider the possibility.

While a few markets report large percentages of homes being staged, that is not true in most markets.

When you think about competition in that light, I think most markets could accurately list competition a

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, Home staging survey, marketing

One of the more surprising aspects was the fact that over half of the survey respondents reported calling fewer than five Realtors in the past three months as part of their marketing efforts.

This floored me. In the survey report, I break out seven different categories of respondents, and it turns out in this case that those with more experience are far more active in contacting Realtors, than are the newer stagers.

The new guys should, in my opinion, be burning up the telephone lines to get their businesses in front of as many Realtors as possible. How else are they going to get those initial jobs to develop their portfolios and referral business?

One anecdotal comment captured in the many essay questions on my survey suggested that they were calling a lot more than the three Realtors they were advised to contact in their training course.

I have to believe this was a misinterpretation of a comment that maybe all they needed was three regular Realtors to build their business with regular referrals. At any rate if this is being taught, I have to wonder about the wisdom of the instructor and the school employing them.

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, Home staging survey, marketing, Realtors

If you are a Home Stager, or considering joining the ranks of Home Stagers, you should be interested in what you can learn about the business from others in it.

In May and June of 2008, I conducted a series of personal interviews with several home stagers and gathered some initial information about the industry.

From there, I developed an internet survey which I presented to over 600 home stagers from around the US and Canada. I got responses from over 180. These I analyzed and broke the data into eight different categories, the first being all responses, then those who had less than two years experience in the field, those with two to four years, and those with four or more years.

I also asked how many actual homes respondents personally staged in the prior three months. Some had quite a few, with two reporting over 120. Many however are far more part time and so I split all the responses into two groups, those who did 9 or fewer in the prior three months and those who did more.

I also pulled a group out who were clearly Realtors in addition to being Home Stagers as I saw these as a distinct group.

And finally, I used a set of criteria to pull out what I referred to as the Top Dogs.

These multiple groupings allowed me to observe differences in the responses by various groups. This provided insight into the differences between new stagers and those with more experience.

The differences were significant in many cases, and
should be useful to those trying to emulate those more successful in the business.

This Blog will discuss some of the survey results and collect comments from those who have a copy of the report.

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, Home staging survey, Survey