This is one of the most asked questions I get at IIHS. This topic is covered in depth in our advanced home staging and business development course. It is without doubt one of the hardest decisions most home stagers face. From the work I have done with students at IIHS, I have noticed there are some common blocks that home stagers are facing when working out their pricing.
This is what I hear students and clients I mentor saying:
- I am not experienced enough to charge ‘decent’ money.
- What if no one pays it?
- If I charge too much I will never get work.
- I need to work for free until I get a name for myself.
So let’s get started on breaking down some of these barriers. Work through these two tasks below to take the first steps towards sorting out your pricing structure as a home stager.
- Research your competition. Know what people are charging in your local area, BUT don’t be governed by it. Just use this as market research.
- Consider yourself as having a talent and not as earning an hourly wage. You need to think of yourself as a business and that you have a skill that can help people. You need to value it.
- And most importantly you have to know your costs and when I say this I mean the exact hard costs of the work you are doing including your time! This is so essential, if you don’t know your hard costs you will never know your profit margin! So to start this process list your services eg. consultation, partial installation, vacant staging and start to list all the hard expenses. Then list the staff services and time that involved in completing each service. Be honest here are you are only cheating your business if you complete this task inaccurately.
Completing these first three steps will take some time! BUT it is a great start to working out how to charge as a home stager and have a thriving business. We will be bringing you much more on this topic so make sure you are on our mailing list to get updates.
Want to learn more about growing your property styling business, check out how here!
