Home Staging For Dummies [Paperback]

As an interior designer and stager, I read all the books on staging and design, always looking for a new nugget or two of good information.

If you need to learn the basics to staging your home, Home Staging for Dummies will help. The book will walk you through the basics of staging--cleaning, removing clutter, organizing and showing off your home's good features tot he fullest advantage. That said, the book is slanted to convince you to pay for the services of a stager.

This book can also help you determine if you want to stage your home yourself or hire a pro. Make no mistake--most of us have tons of clutter and getting a home ready for sale is no small chore.

In a buyer's market, learning how to make your home stand above the competition is crucial to sell it--and for a good price.

While I recommend Home Staging for Dummies, there is nothing really new here and DIY isn't really encouraged. I would recommend SELL YOUR HOME FAST IN A BUYER'S MARKET along with this book for DIY's and for some cutting edge approaches to selling your home--like adding green features and other great tips.

OK, I got some good ideas from this book, which I bought because we're getting ready to put our house on the market. There are several things I hadn't thought of, even given the fact that I'm an HGTV junkie.

However, the book is really aimed at people who are going to HIRE a professional stager, which isn't really what the title implies (yes, I know, . . . For Dummies is a huge series of books). There is way too much self-promotion, promotion of whatever the professional organization is, promotion of the authors' friends or associates, selection of a professional, meeting with the professional, recommending products sold on their websites, and on and on and on. I got the feeling that there is a secret club, one to which I'm not welcome, unless, of course, I hired one of them.

I wish all of the before-and-after pairs of photos had been shot from the exact spot at exactly the same angle. In many of them, it was hard to see what changes were made. The photos nearly all being B & W is a problem, too, but probably not one within the authors' control. They probably could have left out the small color section in the middle of the book, since the first photo (the BLUE one) is garish enough to make you think it's a "before" example (so much for neutrals).

Because the authors are clearly out to sell their services, they seem to have a sort of "take no prisoners" approach. So many of their dictates seem to be those that would get done in the best of all possible worlds, but not this one. I doubt that, after rightly reducing their number by half, arranging all of the food items in my pantry with their labels facing forward would make much difference to a buyer. Actually, since we're trying desperately not to distract the buyer, I'd worry about the distraction created by them wondering just what kind of person would do such a thing, reading the labels on the boxes and cans, discussing my brand selections, wondering if I'm a good cook, etc. I'm in no way discounting the value of staging, which I totally "get," but some of these things really seem like overkill and seem almost to have been put into the book to make sellers think that, "no, I can't really do it myself; I'd better hire a professional."

I'd recommend The Complete Idiot's Guide to Staging Your Home to Sell over this one.

"Home Staging for Dummies" is a brilliantly written guide which explains the benefits of home staging in addition to giving real solutions to homeowners who are embarking on the process of selling property.
This practical guide is so easy to read and understand that you will be able to apply the principals on your own; or if you don't have the time or the creativity to do it the book provides you with every resource needed, in order to get the professional assistance to get the job done.
The Real Estate Staging Association (RESA) is proud to FULLY endorse Home Staging for Dummies.