Episode 17: Using a Stager Part 1. Interview with Victoria Lindstrum, the number one Stager in Our Area

Scott Williams: Sweet Home Santa Barbara where the skies are so blue. Sweet Home Santa Barbara, what’s worked for me, can work for you.

Jonathan: Well, welcome back friend to Sweet Home Santa Barbara, I’m your co-host, Jonathan Robinson and I am with my friend and Realtor.

Scott: Scott Williams. Hi Jonathan, we’ve got a special guest today, I’d like to introduce you to her. This is Victoria Lindstrom, she’s the top stager in my mind in the City of Santa Barbara, the community on our area here and welcome Victoria.

Victoria: Thank you everyone. Hope you’re having a great day.

Scott: Well, Jonathan and I have some questions for you about the staging process and I think we’re going to just get right into it and ask you a few questions.

Victoria: Wonderful. Go for it.

Scott: Well, in some point in time, you had a former career and then you decided, I’m going to become a stager. What was it that made you think, well, I can do this?

Victoria: Well, when we looked up in the Bay Area, we sold our house and we staged our own home, my husband and I had a home up there we staged it and it sold for way more than we ever anticipated or anyone anticipated. So, when we move down to Santa Barbara, neither my husband nor I had jobs and I thought, wow, wouldn’t it be great to staged homes in Santa Barbara. At that time, Santa Barbara wasn’t doing it. So, we didn’t get that opportunity but many years later, I was able to bring it fruition.

Scott: Great, what was the first one, what happened there?

Victoria: Well, it’s kind of funny. I had been a wedding planner for 7 years in town here. And I decided I didn’t want to do that anymore and I thought I’d retire and just be a stay home mom. I was home for 3 weeks and I got pretty bored. And one of my dear friends who was a realtor said, someone’s looking for a stager, would you like to stage a home? And I said, sure. And I brought my furniture from my own home and put it in a house, and it’s sold very quickly as well. And from there, I made my own business cards, cut them out in weird shapes, put them out and from there my business improved.

Jonathan: Victoria, I don’t know much about staging, and I never staged my house in terms of you hiring someone. What percentage of people hire somebody to stage their house?

Victoria: I’m not sure how many people hire someone, but I think agents such as a great agent, such as Scott, tends to bring me in for any house that needs help. Whether me just walking through and explaining to people the flow of the traffic and what they can do to increase the value of their home or if it’s an empty home and we bring in furniture to increase the value as well and shorten the time of the sale. So, a great agent uses our services as much as possible.

Jonathan: And do you own a bunch of furniture and such or do you rent this stuff and then put it in houses?

Victoria: I owned it all. So, I stage their house and then a lot of homes out there with furniture in it. So yes, we own all our own furniture.

Scott: About how many homes do you have currently in Santa Barbara?

Victoria: I can stage up to 80 homes at the time but because the market is so tight right now as you know, I think there’s only 80 some homes on the market right now. Right now, we only have about 30 something homes, 32 homes I think it is, which is low for us, but inventory is low in general. So, percentage-wise were about the same as usual but number-wise were lower.

Scott: But still, that’s an amazing percentage. That’s almost 40% of the market is being staged at this moment.

Victoria: Yeah, correct, yeah, it’s a lot.

Jonathan: I’m curious and hopefully it’s okay to ask. How do you charge people, is it by the house? is it by the hour? is it by the size of the house? How do you do that?

Victoria: It’s by the size of the house. So generally, I look at the square footage and determined from there how much I charge per the square foot.

Jonathan: Do you have a way of knowing, I’m sure this is an estimate but like what the return on investment is for people hiring you?

Victoria: It all depends on the house. So, for instance, I did a mobile home. Believe it or not, I did a really bad mobile home, really bad. Agent said you’ve got to do this $450,000, he was going to put on the market for, we staged it and he said, I’m now putting it on for $500,000. So even between prior to a staging it and after the staged he increased the value by $50,000 just from that. So that’s kind of a fun little story to tell because that’s a 10% increase.

Scott: Yeah, Victoria. You certainly, I was going to chime in there. We often times had maybe $5000 with a staging, produce $50,000 worth of return and sometimes higher. That’s a 1000%.

Victoria: Yeah, I think it’s well worth it. I wouldn’t be in business otherwise. So, and I have to say that was one of the biggest transformations and I think a lot of people think, oh my house a lot of times they’ll have a fixer-upper and they think, oh my gosh, it’s not going to make a difference. I actually think it makes the biggest difference on the fixer-uppers because it does hide a lot of blemishes.

Scott: Well, sometimes people live in these homes.

Victoria: Yes.

Scott: And we will call you in, how’s different for you if somebody’s living there versus vacant?

Victoria: It’s harder for us actually, for two reasons. One is you’ve got to work with their items and try and mesh your items into that because a lot of times, their items are different than what we normally have in our inventory and it’s emotionally hard for people. So, if they’re living in a home without their furniture, and their things, it makes it harder for them. So, we try and be selective and careful of how we treat these people because it is difficult for them.

Jonathan: If they have difficult kids, can you give other kids to the tenant?

Victoria: Yeah, right. Different animals, different kid.

Jonathan: I’m wondering if you help pack them up for example.

Victoria: I do not do that. I will put furniture in a garage for them, but they need to pack their own personal items because that’s not really our job. And we’re not responsible for those items.

Scott: Well, now you’ve got a house in this example, that has their furniture, plus your furniture. Do you allow them to use your furniture while they’re still living there?

Victoria: I do. I accept they return it in the same condition as I put it in, but yes, I do.

Scott: I guess that’s amazing opportunity for anybody out there who could use a little freshening up of their stuff that they’re allowed to use your stuff and they can still live there. I think that’s terrific.

Victoria: Yeah, it’s pretty unusual. But as I say to people and I tell this to my friends, there are only so many things that are that important to you and that should be a family and friends. Furniture is just a piece of furniture. So, I try to keep that in my motto as much as possible because  it’s kind of emotional for me.

Jonathan: As somebody who is a homeowner and cheap, I think I can make my house look nice. So how do you convince people or what do you tell them why it’s better to hire you as opposed to just them put some dollars into making the house look nice?

Victoria: I don’t always do that. Sometimes I do tell them to put their own money into their house. If I feel like it’s a better value for them to do that, I’ll be honest and tell them to do that. Let’s say they only need pillows and bedding and a couple pieces of art and the lamp and it’s cheaper for them to do that, then I’ll make a list for them and say you know, put a lamp there, get pillows there, put a bedspread here, it’s going to cheaper for you to do it. So, I am very honest about it because my goal is to help them sell their home and the realtor help them sell their home.

Jonathan: Do you charge a consulting fee just for that?

Victoria: No.

Jonathan: That’s nice.

Victoria: No. I mean, I work with these agents all the time. So, my goal is to help agent sell the home. So, if I do this every once in a while, I do it every once while, it’s just part of business.

Jonathan: So, win-win for everyone, well, you know, Scott and I have more questions, but we also try and keep these podcasts about 10 minutes. So, we’re going to call this episode 1 of what you do and then we’re going to interrogate you a little bit more in the next episode.

Victoria: That’s so to. All right.

Jonathan: Very interesting and we’ll see you back for the next episode of Sweet Home Santa Barbara where we asked Victoria some more questions about how to stage a home successfully, see you soon.

Victoria: Thank you.

Jonathan: So, we’re going to have a second episode, but for those people who want to contact either Scott or Victoria, Scott why don’t you tell them how they can contact you and then also how they can contact Victoria.

Scott: Well, the best way to get ahold of me is to use my email, Scott@scottwilliams.com and the best way to get Victoria is to hire me so that you get Victoria to do your house because she’s wonderful. But if you decide you have to use another Realtor, you can still hire Victoria Lindstrom of Dramatic Choices. That’s her company here in Santa Barbara.

Jonathan: Sounds good and we look forward to talking to you some more Victoria on our next episode.

Scott: Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to our podcast on your favorite app. If you know someone preparing to sell their home, please tell them about the podcast. Visit ScottWilliams.com to contact me and download the two free E-Booklets. “Is My House Saleable Now?” and “How Not To Buy A Money Pit?”. Thank you for listening.