From the boardwalks of Myrtle Beach to the historic streets of Charleston, South Carolina has something for everyone. With so much to offer, it’s no surprise that a great many people want to make South Carolina their home. With new people moving to the state, and residents looking to move up the property ladder, the property market in South Carolina is constantly busy!
With so many properties on the market, vendors can struggle to make their property stand out from the crowd. When there are several other similar properties for sale in the neighbourhood, what can be done to make potential buyers choose one property above all the others? One option is to lower the price, but that’s certainly far from ideal. Instead, realtors and homeowners are hiring the skills of professionals with home staging certification in South Carolina. Home stagers set the scene in each room of a property, and the exterior areas too, to make the home as appealing as possible to a wide range of buyers.
Home staging is a booming industry, and with so many properties on the market, there’s certainly plenty of work for those with the right skills.
Are you looking for a new career? Do you have a creative streak you’d love to incorporate into a job that makes good money? Then read on…
So, how do you become a home stager in South Carolina?
We’ll look at this from the point of view of starting your own home staging business. If you want to start with getting a home staging job, read our articles on resume tips, how to get a home staging job, and our overview of home staging careers.
We’ve been running courses in home staging since 2007, and what we’ve learnt over those years is that realtors are looking for professional, fully-trained home stagers. It’s their reputation that’s at stake, and so they look for proof of ability in the home stagers that they hire for their clients’ projects. So how do you prove your credentials when you approach realtors, particularly when you’re first starting out in the home staging business? The key is to gain home staging certification in South Carolina. As a reputable, long-standing training provider, realtors across the US and Canada trust the certification from the Home Staging Institute.
Discover more about becoming a home stager, and our comprehensive training courses with a money-back satisfaction guarantee…
Steps to becoming a home stager in South Carolina
If you’re just beginning to consider home staging as a career, then you should find the following information useful. It will help you decide if this truly is a profession you could excel at and offer you some guidance for setting up your own business.
Step 1: Take a home staging certification course in South Carolina
While we can only cover a few key points in this article, you’ll learn a great deal more when you take a home staging course, as long as you choose the right one. You’ll find several home staging courses in South Carolina, both at local colleges and online, but they are not all the same, so be sure to look at the details of each one before you commit. We recommend taking a course that results in certification. As we’ve already mentioned, South Carolina realtors trust our certified graduates, so having that certificate as proof of your skills can put you head and shoulders above the competition.
You should also look for home staging training that covers all the topics you need, not only to learn the tricks of the trade but also to give you all the skills and information you need to run your small business. A course that includes subjects such as marketing, setting up a business, and how to manage your accounts will have untold practical benefits and give you confidence when you come to start up your home staging business for real.
Step 2: Understand the local South Carolina market
Offering a local service within South Carolina means you need to know the local market inside out. You’ll need to understand the different requirements of people selling property in Greenville, as compared to those in Aiken or Sumter. You’ll need to get familiar with current trends, both in building styles and décor. Is everyone going crazy for a cinema room, or are home gyms the next big thing? Are people embracing the hygge lifestyle, or is outdoor living more popular in your area? You need to know what is going to most appeal to the current market, and these are factors that change all the time, so you need to be constantly on top of the latest trends.
Step 3: Learn from other home stagers in South Carolina
When you’re setting up in business, it’s a wise idea to check out the competition. You can easily do this online. Those that come up top of the search engines, are in the place you hope to be, so scrutinize them and see what they’re doing to get this coveted spot. You’ll soon determine which businesses are the stand-out ones, and which come across as rather average. No one wants to hire a mediocre home stager, so you need to ensure your home staging business comes across as top-notch. When you search for ‘home stagers in South Carolina’ think about what makes those top players stand out from the crowd. Are there any takeaways from this that you can implement yourself?
Step 4: Start a home staging business in South Carolina
So you’re trained, you’re certified, you’re all ready to go!
Getting down to business – some pointers to consider…
- Register your business
- Cater for your tax liabilities
- Get the software you need to manage your accounts
- Define your pricing structure
- Decide how you will take payments
- Get the relevant insurance policies in place
- Build a website (we suggest Squarespace)
- Set up social media accounts
Step 5: Begin marketing
Once you’re set up as a new business, you need to spread the word and draw in the business. Get in touch with all the real estate agents in the area and ask them to add you to their list of home stagers to recommend. Your certification is excellent proof of your abilities, so don’t forget to mention this to them. Be sure your website is easy to navigate, great looking, with lots of images of your work, and error-free. Your website should also be optimized for the search engines, so you’re more likely to feature highly in the search results but don’t dismiss the idea of using a paid ad system such as that offered by Google. It can bring you a lot of business in a short time and it’s ideal for getting a boost of site visitors when you’re starting out and your calendar is quite empty.
Other facts about becoming a home stager in South Carolina
How much do home stagers make in South Carolina?
According to our research, home stagers in South Carolina typically earn between $35,000 and $55,000 annually, with hourly rates ranging from $18 to $28. Experienced professionals or those in high-demand areas may earn over $65,000 per year. Earnings can vary depending on factors such as location, clientele, and the number of projects completed.
Do I need a license to become a home stager in South Carolina?
There is no such thing as a home staging license in South Carolina. In order to prove your credentials, you should take a home staging course that results in certification.
Do you need a degree to become a home stager in South Carolina?
While some professions require you to have a college degree, home staging has no such requirements. You can become an expert home stager with no qualifications at all, and while this works for some people, it’s not the easiest path to success. However, a home staging course, such as those we offer here at the Home Staging Institute, is certainly a great start to a new career.
