From Ordinary to Extraordinary: Home Staging That Sells Fast
Show summary
In this conversation, John Harcar interviews Larisa Kocsis about her journey from architecture to home staging, emphasizing the importance of staging as a marketing tool in real estate. Larisa shares her background, the challenges she faced in starting her business, and how she built her client base through networking. She discusses the influence of her architectural training on her staging work, the impact of virtual staging on the industry, and her approach to designing spaces for different demographics. The conversation concludes with insights on selling staged furniture and the importance of creativity in her work.
Key takeaways
- Larisa started her staging company, Living Edge, in 2022 as her sole full-time business, not a side gig, after earlier careers in architecture and software engineering.
- Her first staging job was an unpaid 'toy project' on a vacant house that took two weeks to complete with minimal inventory, done just to build a portfolio.
- A referral chain mattered more than cold outreach: a photographer friend who shot her practice project later referred her to his real estate agent client, which became her first paid job.
- Her furniture inventory grew from one house of furniture to two within a month, four within six months, eight within a year, and roughly 30-40 houses worth of inventory as of the interview; she still buys retail rather than wholesale.
- She recommends matching staging style to the home's age and finishes and to the likely buyer demographic (e.g., families with kids vs. a single tech professional buying a condo), and cautions against over-modernizing a dated home because mismatched new pieces highlight how dated the rest of the space looks.
- For clients with limited budgets, she suggests prioritizing traditional staging for the highest-traffic, highest-exposure areas of the floor plan and using cheaper virtual staging for lower-priority spaces.
- She grew her business through networking: a Facebook launch post, a cold call to a coworker's real estate agent spouse, networking events, a website, and Yelp/Google Business profiles with client reviews; she notes she still gets more engagement from her personal Facebook than her business page.
- She sometimes sells staged furniture, generally at the end of a season, to clear space for new inventory rather than let it sit in a warehouse.
In this episode
- 00:01Intro: staging as marketing
- 01:08Larisa's background: architecture to tech to staging
- 03:04Architecture training in Romania vs. the US
- 05:14How architecture skills carry into staging design
- 07:20Learning resources and the stager community (RESA)
- 08:44Mindset shift to going all-in on the business
- 10:13Early challenges and landing the first client
- 14:31Growing the client base through networking and reviews
- 16:11Building a furniture inventory from one house to 30-40
- 17:07Choosing design themes by house age and buyer demographics
- 18:49Virtual staging vs. traditional staging
About the guest
Larisa Kocsis is the founder of Living Edge, a home staging company based in the Seattle area that she started in 2022. She has an architecture degree from Romania, relocated to the US in 2012, later earned a master's in computer science and worked in software engineering (including on real estate valuation/comps tools) before leaving tech to start her staging business full-time.
Listen to the audio
“Staging is truly marketing.”
John Harcar
“You don't need the degree to get started [in staging]. Anyone can be, you just decide tomorrow and becoming a stager and that's just fine. And you might have great taste... but great taste isn't enough to solve design problems.”
Larisa
“I think you just need to get to a point where you feel like you have nothing to lose.”
Larisa
Questions answered in this episode
Is virtual staging replacing traditional home staging?
Larisa says the two can't fully replace each other. Many stagers see virtual staging as a threat to their business, but she takes a different approach: for clients with budget constraints, she recommends traditional staging for the highest-exposure areas (based on floor plan and traffic flow) and supplementing lower-priority areas with cheaper virtual staging.
How do you decide what furniture and design style to use for a flip?
Larisa bases it on the age and finishes of the house and the likely buyer demographic, for example families with kids versus a single tech worker buying a condo. If a house is dated, she modernizes it through staging but avoids overdoing it, since pieces that clash too much with the surroundings just highlight how dated everything else is.
How did Larisa land her first staging client?
She staged a vacant house for free as a practice project for a friend of a friend, which took about two weeks. She then had a photographer friend shoot the space, and a few weeks later that photographer referred one of his real estate agent clients who needed a stager.
What marketing and networking tactics helped grow a staging business from scratch?
Larisa started with a Facebook announcement post and a cold call to a coworker's real estate agent wife, then attended networking events, set up a website, and created Yelp and Google Business profiles. She says she posts more on her personal Facebook than her business page because it gets more traction, and she recommends actively soliciting client reviews after jobs.
Does a stager need a design or architecture degree to succeed?
No. Larisa notes anyone can decide to become a stager without a degree, and good taste alone can be enough to get started. But she believes her architecture background differentiates her because it teaches her to solve design problems, manipulate space, and create logical flow, which matters especially with older homes (1950s and earlier) that don't fit today's lifestyle.
What happens to the furniture after a staged house sells?
The inventory gets reused on future listings, and Larisa sometimes sells furniture outright, mostly at the end of a season to clear room for new pieces so the warehouse doesn't get overloaded.
Resources and links
Full transcript
John Harcar (00:01.125)
All right, hey guys, welcome back to our show. I’m your host, John Harcar, and we’re here today with Larisa Kocsis. Hope I said that right. And we’re gonna talk about how staging is truly marketing, right? Guys, remember at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, really all real estate entrepreneurs, two to five X their business by providing tools and resources that’ll help you grow the business you wanna grow to in turn live the life that you wanna live.
Larissa, welcome to our show.
Larisa (00:31.842)
Thank you, John, for the introduction. I’m very passionate about what I do, so this is a great opportunity to talk to the world about it.
John Harcar (00:40.941)
Awesome. I’ll be, you a hundred percent honest. I haven’t had many people talk about staging stuff on here, which I think it’s a very important topic, especially for, for, know, like we said on, our talk before the show about how important it is and then how it truly is marketing. but before we get into all that, why don’t you tell our audience a little bit about you kind of, you know, your background, how you got into real estate. I mean, what really got you here?
Larisa (01:08.078)
Okay, so my original background was in architecture. I graduated with an architecture degree in Romania and I relocated to the US in 2012. Kind of lost, not lost focus, but I’ve been a geek my whole life in school, so I thought why not, I can just do anything I set my mind on. So I’m in the Seattle area.
Tech is really big here and it’s also kind of the low hanging fruit. It’s easy to get a really well paying job with one of the top tech companies. So I went back to school. I got a master’s in computer science. Then I did software engineering for a few years. Ironically, the last company, one of the last companies that I worked with was
John Harcar (01:46.951)
Mm-hmm.
Larisa (02:03.918)
actually real estate focused. And I worked on some web products like valuation, comps, some interesting tools that now I obviously see a lot more in my life as a stager. And so that era ended for me in 2022 when I decided that I miss the creativity of doing design work. And I started Living Edge.
John Harcar (02:19.525)
Mm-hmm.
Larisa (02:33.038)
It’s my home staging company that from day one, it was meant to be my one thing. I did not start it as a side gig. was something that I don’t know. It’s just once I came up with the idea that this is what I want to do, I was all in. Here we are. Now, I feel like I’m pretty well established locally in the Seattle area.
John Harcar (02:53.424)
Right?
John Harcar (03:04.539)
Very cool. You sound like you had a very, a lot of education. Now real fast, let’s go back to the architecture part. Did you always have, or were there any influences in your past for, you know, real estate, architecture, building, construction, whatever it might be. Was there something that kind of led you to architecture?
Larisa (03:24.75)
Initially, I think it was purely a passion to draw and create. It was more on an academic level. Now I see more interesting challenges in the practical things and the money aspect of it.
but initially it was just that creativity and yeah making things look pretty which is still what I do but I do it in a way that it’s actually helping people not just for the sake of art.
John Harcar (03:59.534)
Sure. Did you have a passion or want to design buildings? Did you have any specific architecture that you were kind of gearing your skillset for?
Larisa (04:09.4)
So in Romania, a lot of what you do early on is residential and most of all, like either single family homes or anyway, small number of units, multi-unit, but still small. I feel like that was significantly different from what fresh grads do in the U.S. And that’s part of the reason why I decided that it’s not necessarily what I want to pursue because I
John Harcar (04:21.733)
Mm-hmm.
Larisa (04:39.426)
found as much work that I needed to put in to be able to work on high rises and commercial buildings, just like starting a whole new career from scratch. I think it contributed to that.
John Harcar (04:47.911)
Hmm
So it kind of killed your passion a little bit for it.
Larisa (04:55.278)
Yeah, a little bit, but also what I mentioned about the low hanging fruit, you know, in tech it was just easier. It was just easier. I don’t know if there’s a multiple number I could give you of how much easier it is to get a tech job than an architect job.
John Harcar (05:00.529)
Mm-hmm.
John Harcar (05:14.311)
Was the design function of architect design piece, does that kind of lead you into the design part of staging or doing stuff like that?
Larisa (05:24.148)
Definitely. Yes, definitely. And I feel like it’s become such a factor in differentiating me from the competition because in staging, you don’t need the degree to get started. Anyone can be, you just decide tomorrow and becoming a stager and that’s just fine. And you might have great taste.
John Harcar (05:47.943)
Bye.
Larisa (05:52.974)
but know, great taste isn’t enough to solve design problems. And since I work a lot with flips, I also work with resales of homes that were built in the 50s, even older in some cases. Those are very far from your ideal house. What we want to show buyers is that you can…
John Harcar (05:57.906)
Mm-hmm.
John Harcar (06:07.175)
Mm-hmm.
Larisa (06:20.27)
you know, not everyone can afford their ideal house. So what we’re trying to do is show you that there’s potential here, but I’m not just going to tell you vaguely that there’s potential. I’m going to show you what exactly you can do with this, how exactly you can live with it. And architecture is a really great tool for that. That’s what teaches me how I can manipulate the space, how I can…
John Harcar (06:41.191)
Got it.
Larisa (06:47.054)
you know, create a better flow, make everything flow logically in a house that maybe wasn’t even built with that much purpose. Or it doesn’t fit, maybe it was at the time, but it was decades ago and it doesn’t fit today’s lifestyle.
John Harcar (06:57.762)
Right. Yeah. So it’s making it.
John Harcar (07:05.243)
Maybe it looked great in the 70s when all that kind of shag carpet and stuff was in but now you got to kind of make it a little bit more appealing to today Today’s buyer
Larisa (07:11.646)
Exactly, or we have all these houses with a lot of buildings where the spot for a TV is this tiny, right? That doesn’t work. Yes, exactly.
John Harcar (07:20.711)
and this deep. Was there any, I don’t want to say training or was there any like information or stuff that you kind of dove into when you before you started this staging business? mean, any type of like, you know, resources you found online or anything like that that helped you?
Larisa (07:42.4)
yes, absolutely. And the Stagers community is very welcoming to newcomers, especially since this is a thing that a lot of people just try very often. So there are a lot of Stager communities. There’s also an organization that’s membership based called RISA. I’m not a member of it just yet.
John Harcar (07:56.487)
Mm.
Larisa (08:12.224)
I promise I’m going to become one this year. But they also have a lot of free resources that are available to just anyone with or without the membership. So I follow a lot of that. also follow, I try to hone in on needs that I can assess from real estate agents and other real estate professionals on all sorts of other communities.
John Harcar (08:24.935)
it.
John Harcar (08:41.415)
Okay, now what?
Larisa (08:41.514)
what they need.
John Harcar (08:44.711)
Let’s talk a little bit about, a topic I like to touch on a lot is mindset, right? So let’s talk about the mindset that you had to have or maybe some resource that helped you with your mindset to when you, you said you went in this full bore. This wasn’t a side gig. This wasn’t something that you, this is your income, your life. What type of mindset or tools helped you kind of make that transition and make it successfully?
Larisa (09:05.016)
Yes.
Larisa (09:10.946)
I think you just need to get to a point where you feel like you have nothing to lose. In my case, I missed the creative aspect of designing. And for anyone who’s done design as a career, I believe they understand that.
you consider, once you consider yourself a designer and you think like a designer, that you could even easily switch from one type of design to another. So the fact that I did architectural design and now I do staging, it’s still so very similar. The principles and everything I do is still the same. Well, while I was in the software career,
that part was missing completely. There’s still some creative thinking because you’re still designing maybe a web product, but it’s very, very different.
John Harcar (10:08.519)
Hmm.
John Harcar (10:13.765)
Yeah, that makes sense. What were some of the challenges that you came across or ran into when you were starting your business? Obviously you started it from scratch. I mean, I don’t if you had a client base. What kind of challenges did you run into in the beginning or infancy stages of your business?
Larisa (10:23.842)
Thank
Thank
Larisa (10:31.586)
That was probably the hardest because I literally didn’t know anyone in real estate. When you’re in this tech world, it so happens that everybody around you is in tech. I was also fairly new to the US when I got in tech, so I was in my own bubble. And once I decided this, yeah, from the very beginning, it was obvious that I need to start.
networking, need to start meeting people. So I think I made the first phone call to a co-worker’s wife who was a real estate agent. It felt so awkward. Then I made a community post on Facebook about me launching this business, but I was already, my mind was already set on it. So to some point I hesitate, you know,
John Harcar (11:09.863)
Okay.
John Harcar (11:17.479)
Okay?
Larisa (11:28.14)
getting out of that incognito mode when everything is just an idea. But once you’re past that, it could be a post, it could be a phone call, it just all becomes so much easier. And I think after that first awkward call and first awkward post, nothing was awkward anymore.
John Harcar (11:31.943)
Mm.
John Harcar (11:49.113)
Hmm
Larisa (11:50.758)
And people are so eager to help small businesses in their local communities. When you reach out with something, hey, I’m just launching a business. I’m not actually asking for anything because I don’t even know what I’m asking for. I just want you to know that I exist. And if you, with your experience, have an idea of how you could be helpful to me, you’ll probably come forward. And that’s what happened. So I got a few.
names that I later reached out to and one thing led to another and I think networking is probably one of my strengths now. I hear that from a lot of my clients who follow me on social media that you’re so good at networking, you’re so good at social media and to me it feels like I don’t do much, I almost don’t do any of anything.
John Harcar (12:31.719)
Mm-hmm.
John Harcar (12:45.049)
Right. And that was going to be a question. Like, how did you find your first client? I think you mentioned, was it that coworker with a real estate agent wife?
Larisa (12:49.592)
Yeah.
Larisa (12:55.31)
No, no, that led to nothing, but it was a good icebreaker, especially to myself. Well, people expect to see some of your work when you’re a creative of any kind, right? I had a friend whose friend was vacating a house. He did not need staging for it, but he was…
John Harcar (12:57.445)
No, okay.
John Harcar (13:01.393)
Mm-hmm.
John Harcar (13:11.909)
Right.
Larisa (13:23.776)
It was available, it was vacant, and that was my toy project. That was my very first staging. I think it took me two weeks to complete it.
John Harcar (13:28.954)
Okay.
John Harcar (13:35.207)
I don’t know if that’s long or that’s short. Okay. How was it?
Larisa (13:37.366)
That is extremely long, kind of unbelievable. But there was no process to that. There was nothing. was just somebody with a creative mind and some minimal, very minimal staging inventory playing around. So then I reached out to one of my photographer friends who specializes in realistic photography. He took some really beautiful pictures of my work and then
John Harcar (13:52.078)
huh.
John Harcar (14:03.847)
Mm-hmm.
Larisa (14:06.978)
couple of weeks later, he reached out to me that one of his agent clients was looking for a stager. And so I already had some photos to show from that toy project. So I’m forever grateful. His name is Alex. Thank you, Alex.
John Harcar (14:23.953)
Thank you, Alex. So how did you continue? How did you continue to grow your business and bring on more clients?
Larisa (14:31.246)
Initially it was through networking. And I think I did that in the most traditional way at the time because I didn’t really know what to do. So I went, I set up a website. don’t think from, don’t think I did that from the very beginning, but I attended networking events and I think I started posting everything on my personal.
John Harcar (14:43.995)
Right. Did you set up like a website or something like that?
Larisa (15:00.706)
Facebook page and personal Facebook profile and also a Facebook page. To be honest, do more, I’m more active on my personal Facebook than on my page just because it gets more traction so much more easily. So that is, I still use it mostly for business. My circle knows that. So networking was…
John Harcar (15:14.896)
Mm.
John Harcar (15:26.982)
Right.
Larisa (15:30.144)
Definitely one of the first ways. And then, what else? I set up a Yelp profile, Google business profile, and I tried to get as many reviews as possible after completing jobs. I’m not the best at following up with clients to solicit reviews, but I definitely recommend anyone to do that without hesitation.
John Harcar (15:46.481)
Mm-hmm.
John Harcar (15:58.354)
Do you have anybody that works with you that can do that? Like do you have a VA, maybe an assistant or someone that could do that follow-up or maybe an automated process? Okay.
Larisa (16:08.022)
I don’t currently. I don’t currently, yeah.
John Harcar (16:11.751)
I’ve always been curious, obviously you watch these HGTV shows and other flip in the houses and say, where do you get all that furniture?
Larisa (16:16.782)
Thank you.
Well, it builds over time and once or more established, you purchase it through wholesale. I’m not there yet, so I still shop retail for my inventory, but definitely it builds quickly. And for context, I can tell you that I started out with just that one tiny house of furniture on my toy project. That was number one. And I believe…
John Harcar (16:31.258)
Mm-hmm.
Larisa (16:50.158)
Soon after that, maybe within a month, it got to two houses. And then in six months, it got to four houses. And then in one year, it got to eight. And now it’s, I don’t know, 30, 40 houses, something like that.
John Harcar (16:59.303)
Mm-hmm.
John Harcar (17:07.527)
How do you choose a theme or a look or a design for each house?
Larisa (17:17.394)
It’s very much based on the age of the house, the finishes, the look of it, and also the demographics. If I have that kind of information, if I’m able to tell that this area is more likely to be, you know, shopped by families with kids, maybe even certain ethnic groups.
Sometimes I do get that information from my clients who hire me, real estate agents in most cases. Or sometimes I know that it’s probably, you know, a single guy working in tech who’s going to buy this condo. And that’s what we target. And for the looks, the only main guideline I use is that if it’s very dated,
John Harcar (17:49.275)
Okay.
Larisa (18:13.58)
We try to modernize it, obviously, through staging, but you don’t want to cross a certain line. You don’t want to overdo it because when you bring things that are glitching with your surroundings, it’s only going to highlight how dated everything around it is.
John Harcar (18:34.407)
Right, right, okay, that makes sense. With the, ever since the invention of the internet, right, we know it’s made things easier, right? You don’t have to go look up an address for somebody, you can pull it up online. You don’t have to go look at the county records for pre-foreclosures, you can find them online. Now people are virtually staging properties. So how do you think that is going to affect, not necessarily maybe your business, but just the overall…
Larisa (18:49.752)
for it.
John Harcar (19:02.244)
Industry of staging or the know the practice staging if people could easily do it online probably cheaper faster, etc
Larisa (19:09.57)
Definitely, there’s a very big difference in the cost of virtual staging versus traditional staging. In either case, they can’t replace each other. You can’t replace traditional staging with virtual staging. in the stager community, a lot of us, I wouldn’t include myself actually.
A lot of stagers are very much against virtual staging. It’s, if you take it that way, it’s a threat to your, your own business, right? It could be your competition. but also when you love what you do and when you believe what to do, you kind of, you’re not so open to accepting that something completely different that can act, can even make you useless at some point, can, can take that space.
To my clients who have budget constraints that they talk to me about, I sometimes even recommend doing traditional staging for certain areas and supplementing that with virtual staging. We’ll help them prioritize that way because not everyone can afford it. It’s great to do traditional staging even if you have a certain budget. Do it for the
John Harcar (20:22.695)
Got it.
Larisa (20:36.846)
parts that get the most exposure that are the most important. That could be based on the floor plan. I can recommend considering the flow of traffic, which areas to prioritize and then which ones can be like second place if stage them traditionally, if you have any money left. If not, go with virtual staging. I often do that.
John Harcar (21:05.927)
you ever because I mean I look at you know and once again I refer to these TV shows right and their stage and you look like man that house looks perfect with all that furniture I don’t I wouldn’t change it do you ever have someone that says like hey man can I buy it with all the furniture in it too
Larisa (21:18.454)
Yes, we do. And we also sell the furniture sometimes, mostly when it’s end of season to make room for new furniture because otherwise it would all get in a warehouse thing.
John Harcar (21:23.535)
Okay.
John Harcar (21:29.211)
Got it.
John Harcar (21:32.999)
Got it, got it. Well, very cool. Thank you for coming on here and sharing all this stuff. This is a lot I didn’t know. If there’s folks that are listening, maybe some agents that are listening, maybe some people in Seattle that are listening, some area that are listening, how would they be able to get in touch with you or maybe get online to see your work?
Larisa (21:52.8)
Yeah, so my website is livingedgestyle.com and I’m also present on Facebook and Instagram at Living Edge Style.
John Harcar (22:04.057)
Okay, perfect. And I think you sent me all that stuff, so we’ll put all that in the show notes. Larissa, thank you again for coming on and spending some time with us. know, guys, I hope you enjoyed the show as much as I did. And, you know, we look forward to seeing you guys in the next one. Cheers.
Larisa (22:09.389)
Yeah.
Larisa (22:19.342)
Thank you so much, Don. It was a pleasure tapping. Thank you.
John Harcar (22:21.896)
Try it on, thank you.
