Professional home staging career may seem pretty tempting. You don’t need to spend years at the university, you can be your own boss with free time management, the market potential is huge (there have been almost 10,000 sold houses and condos in Toronto just in July) and your income doesn’t have to be limited at all. Everything sounds so wonderful, doesn’t it?

The administrative part of becoming a stager is not too difficult. All you have to do is to accomplish a staging course and obtain a certificate you can present to your clients. With options to rent furniture, you need just a small capital for the beginning. Then your real skills come into question. But first, you have to understand what home staging is.

Home staging is NOT home decoration, it’s quite the opposite! While decorating, you inject your client’s personality into his home to suit him the best. On the other hand, home staging means removing the client’s personality from the place. You don’t know who the potential buyer will be – young professional? Elderly couple? Philosophy student? You have to present the opportunities that the property offers, but you have to leave some space for buyer’s own imagination.

To become a good home staging professional, you need great visual imagination and creativity, but also the empathy with various kinds of people. You will arrange dozens pieces of furniture, art and decoration into one coherent composition. The proper eye for detail is necessary – you have to decide whether the candle, bowl of fruits or book along with a pair of glasses will underline or destroy the atmosphere. You have to catch the pros and cons of every property, which call for stressing or downplaying.

Practise a bit. Try it with your home, your parents’ house, your son’s condo and always ask for opinions. Once you are confident enough, start your own business! Leave a few business cards with the local real estate agents, buy some newspaper adverts and check for furniture rental stores around.

Hard days, weeks and months will began. But if you will be able to resist and will constantly deliver great quality with each home you stage, soon you will get some referrals, which will help you to breathe more freely. If you endure some time, home staging business will for sure reward your creativity and determination.