What New Stagers Must Know with Edi Keech

Cindy: I’m so excited to be talking with Edi Keech again today. I spoke with her recently about staging luxury homes, and you can check it out here if you missed it. Edi is a seasoned and very successful home stager based in Seattle. Today we cover quite a bit, especially for those of you who are interested in learning more about pricing home staging services and building your home staging business.

We talked about how can new stagers can get a leg up and compete with seasoned stagers, pricing your home staging services, how to style and stage your home without looking cookie cutter, building different streams of income as a home stager, prop styling for production companies, how to generate more leads from your existing clients, and also how to work with real estate agents. Let’s get started!

Cindy: I want to start by talking about pricing. There’s no standardization in pricing in our industry, and there shouldn’t be because every stager does things very differently. So of course our service is going to be different. But the thing is, I feel like most consumers, they just look at the final number, how much they’re going to pay and make the decision. How do you personally approach pricing when it comes to your home staging services?

Edi: I’m very transparent about what I’m charging for each different aspect of the staging process. When I talk to people after I’ve seen the property and I’m preparing a quote, I tell them that they will see three general things and that is the staging fee, which is how I and anybody working for me gets paid. And then the other two aspects are the delivery and pickup, and then the rentals.

I do let them see what each of those costs are. I also have tax included. And then after the initial month, I charge on a daily basis. My requirement for removal of staging is seven business days with advanced notice. When we moved to a daily rental fee, I charge them for seven days in advance. So basically they’re getting billed once a week for the daily fees. And there’s two reasons for that: psychologically it’s way easier for them to get a couple of hundred dollar charge than it is for the entire monthly charge. And, it really helps my cash flow if I’m simply billing them once a week and it’s always on the same day.

I require my clients to pay me in full before I’ll guarantee their staging date. Sometimes they pay me two months ahead, especially if it’s a luxury property. That’s why I send a letter as soon as the stage in done and then it’s on them.

Cindy: When you are pricing, how much does that differ with a starter home versus luxury?

Edi: The price per item is elevated because it’s a higher quality and they’re almost always brand new for luxury homes. I try not to bring in things that are old and used. It needs to have a different presentation because there’s a different expectation from a potential buyer and also luxury homes tend to be larger, so there’s many more items every time.

My quotes are only good for five days. So on the sixth day, I call them and I say, “Well, the guaranteed price that I sent you in the proposal was only for five days. So that price may change because the items that I would have used may no longer be available and different items are different prices. So I just wanted to check if the lack of response was that you were considering or you were uncomfortable with letting me know you did not choose me.” Because a lot of times people don’t know how to say they chose someone else.

I’ve gotten sellers email me back with a screenshot of another stager’s pricing. It’s apples and oranges. I don’t know what the stager is offering you. So I can’t really say why she’s doing $500 less than I do. I want to say is that if you want the result that you see on my portfolio, this is the price for it. Anything less than now you’re compromising it.

Cindy: I think that’s the tricky thing for home sellers because they’re looking at proposals and it could be a wide price range for home sellers. How can they figure out which stager is the right one for them to hire?

Edi: They need to ask some really important questions. They need to find out, for example, if the person has any kind of education or professional training, they need to ask about experience. If you own a luxury home, then you need someone who has done work in luxury homes.

And there’s business aspects. Are they licensed? Do they have insurance? A lot of people are hobby stagers where they kind of take stuff from their house or borrow it from a friend and they don’t really have any of those business things in place. It’s really important to understand all of that. If at the vacant property there needs to be insurance on the brought in content, a lot of the homeowners insurance will not cover rented furniture, rented items, so there are actually now some companies that will offer staging insurance to the homeowner for the contents brought in by the stager. The inexperienced don’t know about this. If there’s any kind of damage or a break in, then they’re totally responsible for the replacement costs of whatever was damaged or taken.

Edi: One of the things that I did when I was starting was I found a stager who had been in the business for awhile. I worked with her — she didn’t pay me — but I got paid with knowledge and experience. So I did that for about six months whenever she needed an assistant. Learned both a lot of little tips and ways to do things and also experienced a lot of things that I didn’t think were the best way to approach something. Things that she was doing.

So when I started getting work on my own, I made sure to do whatever that was differently. Another way is to just practice. Practice in your house. Practice on your friends. If you’re starting, don’t just wait for a paid position. I rearranged my house about four times before I ever got paid and I found just by doing that, seeing different ways to look at a space, not necessarily the first or most obvious arrangement set up is the best I learned.

Cindy: I think that’s great advice. I say very similar things as well. A lot of new stagers, they email me and ask me about a portfolio. Well, you don’t have to do a paid job to be able to build a portfolio. The more you practice, the more you stage, you get better at it. For the first house I ever staged versus the very last house, they look very different. So I cringe a bit think about my first job. But I think that’s how you build experience.

Did you learn anything new from my conversation with Edi? Let me know in the comments below, and make sure to check out my other chat with her here.

About Edi

Edi Keech is uniquely both a graduate architect and an award-winning home stager, with over 40 years’ design experience, located in the Seattle area. Her many talents, education and experience elevate her as one of the most gifted and prominent home stagers & interior stylists in the industry. She trained at Syracuse University and the Architectural Association in London. Her design portfolio includes commercial properties in Philadelphia, offices in California, and innumerable private homes throughout the United States.

Throughout the greater Puget Sound, Edi works with homeowners, realtors and investors to provide extraordinary visual marketing & design for each and every project, be it house, condo, apartment or manufactured home.

Staging Puget Sound LLC
253-315-2454
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