Hello, I am Sensei Adam Rostocki, home staging consultant, author of this website and your guide to practical property staging. I have been involved in the residential and commercial design arts for many years, in one aspect or another, and hope that my skills, experience and expertise will help you to achieve your goals for increasing the value of your home, while decreasing the time it spends on the housing market. After all, every buyer wants to have a fast sale at a high price and home staging is the best way to ensure both of these lofty objectives are achieved.
I was one of the very first (if not THE first) professional stager to utilize the consultant model. It is my goal to explain the difference between staging consultants and full serve stagers in this interesting dialog. I will also detail my own business model for property stagers who are interested in duplicating my successful approach to dominance in this competitive industry.
Why Are Home Staging Consultants Different?
While most home staging companies are excellent, they do have a tendency to upsell their clients, sometimes above their comfortable budget. Additionally, many stagers are hard pressed to accept the lifestyle limitations of families with kids, pets or other restrictive circumstances which might limit traditional staging techniques.
It is my mission to provide real world staging strategies which work well for everyone, at a price that is affordable.This is why I developed the consultant model for property staging. This is the exact marketing proposal I used to secure countless clients in my own business and it has become the winning formula for hundreds of the best stagers in the world:
I will come to your home, photograph it and view your present décor.
I will come up with a multi-tiered plan to help you to optimize the aesthetics of your home. This plan will detail the interior and exterior of your home and will be very specific. You can choose which projects to tackle and I will make sure that you know which are the most crucial to your sales success.
I will tell you exactly how you can do these improvements on your own or will explain what you need to do to have these improvements accomplished professionally for you.
I will work with your existing décor to save you as much money as possible, while staging your home to include an improved flow, feel, atmosphere, ambiance and most of all saleability.
I will recommend techniques which work for you and your family (and yes, your kids and dogs also) even while you continue to live in the home.
I will prepare a comprehensive report for you detailing my plan for your home and will be available to you for any follow-up you may require, including advice, coming back to check on your progress or coaching you for an open house or other significant event.
This service is perfect for home sellers who want to benefit from home staging and are willing to put in some time and effort to make more money from their home sale. This service is not ideal for someone that wants a costly company to take care of everything and basically move them out of their own home for months, until the sale goes through.
Home Staging Background
I began my home staging consultant career in the related fields of interior decorating and upholstery. I earned my first job working for an exclusive Long Island decorator with ties to the rich and famous families of the Hamptons. I spent several years in this position, learning all the tools of the trade, from draperies to floor coverings, from fabric to placement, from scale and proportion to texture and flow. I received a real on-the-job education from some of the best in the business.
I also studied the harder side of decorating, such as the mechanics of window treatments, carpentry, re-upholstering and refinishing. As a young man with a limited budget, I was proud to use my skills to design and build the apartment of my dreams very early in life. It was an exciting start to be sure.
As the business changed and some of the old clients moved, died or simply disappeared, the decorating business got lean. I moved on, as well, to the floral decorating arena, where I worked for over 15 years. I learned every facet of interior and exterior horticulture, including decorating with flowers & plants, greenhouse construction, event planning & design and eventually found my niche in wedding flower design and party decorating. I became an in-demand floral designer and developed a portfolio to die for.
The floral industry is very difficult work, which is a fact mostly unknown to the average person. The hours are long, the job is brutally physical and the clientele are extremely demanding; especially when they are paying $70,000 for wedding flowers.
I grew tired, literally, from this fast paced and hectic job and eventually found my way back to my beloved design work.
Home Staging Consultant Career
In the course of my mid adult years, I had the pleasure of developing several other businesses which did quite well for me. However, I still wanted to stay involved in decorating, since it was a love of mine and a wonderful creative outlet. I decided to venture back out as a home staging consultant, offering specialty services to the people who needed it most in this tough economic climate: The average American family.
Most people do not require a company to come in and do everything for them (including charging them an arm and a leg for the privilege). No, most people simply needed someone to guide them towards fulfilling their home staging needs with simple advice, a concrete plan of action and helpful tips to ensure success. It is on this premise that I founded my business and it is my pleasure to help you to get your home in top shape, prior to sale.
I want you to make more money when selling your home. I want you to sell it faster and with less stress. Most of all, I want you to be able to realize these goals without breaking your bank account. I believe that my services have been very useful to my many clients and I am proud to offer my unique skills to you to optimize the appeal of your home.
What is a Real Estate Staging Consultant?
So, to summarize, a consultant only handles certain aspects of the staging process, while allowing the property owner to invest some sweat equity and save the majority of the cost, compared to full service staging.
If you are a home stager and want to emulate this business model, I would be honored. You can make the ideas your own and contact me anytime for advice. Best of luck!
