RISMEDIA, August 22, 2007—The real estate industry, while morphing through its tough time adjusting from a sellers’ market to a buyers’ market, has created quite a buzz surrounding home staging. While home staging isn’t a new concept, it has certainly found new life in the eyes of today’s sellers and real estate professionals.
Although there have been many quality courses around for many years, and being a “Professional Home Stager” is unquestionably a unique and full-time career for many people, there is a growing need for agents to improve their general knowledge about this subject to effectively serve their clients.
According to Thomas M. Mitchell, SVP of RealtyU, many of today’s sellers are anxiously looking to use every advantage they can get to ensure both the highest possible price and the fewest number of days on the market. Many may opt to use a fulltime stager to “re-make” their house from a home to live in to a house to sell, while many others are just looking to their real estate agent to provide general staging tips and guidelines on how to make their home show better.
“For that very reason, the one-day Accredited Home-Staging Specialist (AHS) course was created,” says Mitchell. “At RealtyU and its school network in over 42 states it’s all about helping the agent become more knowledgeable and better prepared to provide the home buyer and seller the best and most professional experience they can.” The AHS course provides an excellent overview of staging and guides the agent through the entire process providing hundreds of tips, suggestions and solutions to every staging issue.
The AHS course does an excellent job of preparing the agent to not only intelligently explain the process to the client but also assist them in putting together a staging plan. In some cases this may require the assistance of a professional stager and in others it may just involve showing the client how to “de-clutter” and “clean” to their greatest advantage.
Asked if this course is designed to make the real estate agent a professional stager Mitchell noted, “The AHS course is basic and fundamental in its format. It was designed with one purpose in mind – clearly and effectively provide real estate professionals with a solid understanding of the staging process and the elements involved. They need to be able to respond effectively when the sellers ask the question – what about staging? Real estate professionals are consummate facilitators and staging has become just one more part of the process they help their client through,” Mitchell said
The course is now available in over 200 classroom locations from one of the accredited RealtyU Affiliates (visit www.RealtyUSchools.com to locate the location nearest you) or online through a cutting edge, multi-media format at www.RealtyUOnline.com (check under (Designations).
