Krisztina Bell, No Vacancy’s Founder, got the opportunity to join Roger Blankenship with Flipping America on his podcast, Flipping America Network as the first ever professional home stager to come on the show! We were so excited for this opportunity to highlight home staging, especially given how what we do as a home staging company goes hand in hand with real estate sales and flipping houses.
Read on to learn a bit more about Roger Blankenship, his Flipping America Network, and some highlights of his and Krisztina’s conversation!
Who is Roger Blankenship?
Since 2002, Roger Blankenship and his team have been flipping houses across the southeast U.S. By transforming homes from rundown, outdated, or even unlivable to repaired, restored, and revitalized, the houses they flip breathe new life into neighborhoods. When one house on the block is in poor condition, it drags down the value and aesthetics of an entire neighborhood, so when the Flipping America team flip one house, they are, in a sense, flipping a neighborhood!
In 2006, Roger made real estate flipping his full-time business, and by 2010, he was teaching budding entrepreneurs and real estate investors how to start flipping houses on their own. In 2017, the same year he started the Flipping America radio show and podcast, he launched his official membership program and now offers Flip Starter – a one-day speed course to get people started on their own real estate flipping journey!
The Flipping America Podcast
After launching to just 13 radio stations nationwide in March 2017, it didn’t take long for Flipping America to pick up speed. Three months later, in June, the radio show was averaging 40,000 listeners per episode, and by the following August, when I Heart Radio approved it for syndication, they began averaging 200,000 listeners per episode.
Covering topics spanning from initial investments, latest real estate trends, residential, and commercial real estate, Flipping America offers valuable information and interesting interviews. Previous episodes are here, and new shows post each week:
- Monday, 11:00 AM EST
- Thursday, 10:00 AM EST
- Saturday, 10:00 AM EST
Highlights from the Flipping America Interview
The first question Krisztina is asked in most interviews is, “What is property staging?” because it’s still under the radar, even among real estate professionals. But as Krisztina explains, it’s more than just setting out furniture to define a bedroom. Staging is “really preparing a home to get it in its most marketable condition to sell…Appeal to the broadest range of potential buyers so they can see the value…and make that connection.”
On why staging is necessary during a seller’s market: “You may be able to sell it, but you want to sell it for top dollar and get multiple offers and really want to show off that home to its high end or highest price markup. It also depends on if you’re a new construction home in a neighborhood that’s up-and-coming… Staging comes in handy when it’s an older home that’s not newly updated or renovated, yet you are updating it, renovating it, making it look newer. Staging will help emphasize that.
On staging the whole house: “Typical home staging always is going to focus on your main living areas first. We focus on the master bedroom, living room, dining room, and do a little décor in the kitchen and bathrooms.
On how staging differs from design: “Home staging is…separate from design because that’s a more personalized approach. Home staging is more of a marketing tool, but it is bringing a little bit of design concept in. There are many different facets of home staging. It can go into a lot of different areas. Even the entertainment industry, too!
On virtual staging: “My husband joined my business and had this concept, and we called it virtual staging…Virtual staging was to focus on offering a more economical marketing tool to sell vacant properties…We basically upload photos of the vacant rooms, not any different than if somebody shot pictures of a furnished house and loaded them up. We’re working with vacant photos, and then digitally utilizing furnishings and décor into those photos and making it look as if it was staged. It’s really to…show the space and how it can be utilized and make an identifiable room…Agents upload photos to us and we find out their target market, price points, style of furnishings that they would want and require.
On a home buyer purchasing staged furniture: “We can sell it, but, to be honest, they could buy [the] majority of it themselves if they wanted to. We do offer that sometimes when we stage model homes if that’s something that might help with the sale…We try to work with agents a lot here in the traditional home staging side because we’re part of their marketing team.
Why we need to stage our homes: “Staging is going to bring out the value in that home. You want to emphasize the features of the home and get the most bang for the buck. At the same time, you want to drive buyer traffic. Staging is going to capture the best photos for you…Those home buyers are going online…Over 90 percent of those buyers say it’s the photos that really drive them to go view that home. These people that are out flipping houses, investors, they’re going to get that one house that is not going to move, and they need to have tagging and a vendor that they can use at their fingertips. If they’re going to sell it, they need to get the most money they can so they can move on to the next project.
Click here to listen to the whole interview along with Roger’s commentary!
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