The trip went great…with all the preparations we did beforehand (ordering furniture, buying accessories, etc), the whole job probably could have gotten done in a day and a half; but with the baby ending up being a bit more work than we expected, the whole thing took three long days. Still not bad, and the results were fantastic.

The deal was that my wife would have a $6000 budget to purchase all furniture and accessories for the unit, and that everything would remain with the unit indefinitely. Additionally, she would be paid a flat-fee of $3250 for her efforts (which also covered our travel expenses). Ultimately, the project came in about $400 under budget, so for under $9000, the apartment complex has a completely furnished model unit to show to prospective renters.

Here are some pictures of the unit after staging:

I’ll post pictures when she’s done…

The client is an investor who we have networked with in the past; he flips houses in Atlanta, but started off in real estate by purchasing a couple of relatively big apartment complexes in Florida that he still holds. He actually owns about 500 units down there. He has asked my wife to stage one of his apartment units to use as a “model” to show prospective tenants.

This won’t be a typical staging gig for her, as she’ll purchase the furniture, stage the apartment, and then the furniture and accessories will be left in the apartment indefinitely. The client will pay for all the materials, and my wife will get paid a flat fee for the work. The added challenge for this job is that the client wants to be able to offer the complete bedroom and/or living room sets to new tenants (a “move-in special”), so my wife needs to ensure that the furniture used in these rooms is both easily procurable (i.e., can’t use discount or discontinued sets) and inexpensive (the client will be giving away one of these to every new tenant).

Appropriately, my wife and I are very much the same in that we don’t like to do things small-scale. Now that she has her first client, she’s spent pretty much the entire past two days on the phone with furniture stores and suppliers, looking to build some long-term relationships — in return for great prices and service, of course. She’s already found one supplier who is really excited to work with her (especially knowing he’ll have the opportunity to get ongoing orders from her client for his tenants), so it looks like we’ll be getting some significant discounts on our staging furniture from here on out…

The other interesting twist is that the apartment is in Tallahassee, about 4 hours driving distance from here. So, my wife needs to coordinate all the furniture, props, accessories, etc, from up here, and make sure they’re all ready to go when we get down there. But, then again, I don’t think she would enjoy the job nearly as much if there wasn’t some challenges involved…

We’re planning to drive down there early next week to complete the staging, and also use this as an opportunity to take a little family vacation with the baby for a couple days.

I post some pictures of the final product next week when she’s done…