Mary:

We use staging for all of our listings – in fact, we believe staging is so important we started our own staging company. In addition to our listings, our company is now used by other area Realtors as well. As you can imagine, there has not been as much demand for staging in the past year because the majority of sales in our area have been REOs. This is now changing and, as normal sales are entering the market in larger numbers, staging volume is increasing as well. There are a number of staging companies that have gone out of business over the past couple of years, but we anticipate a resurgence as the market begins to stabilize.

Our stager was trained and certified by Barb Schwarz http://(www.stagedhomes.com) and has the ASP and IAHSP credentials. http://www.thenextstages.com

Here are a couple of posts that may be helpful:

No Stage, No Play
http://blog.homegain.com/home-improvement/no-stage-no-play/

How To “Play” Against REOs With Your “Normal” Sale – A Critical Factor Required To Win
http://www.trulia.com/blog/carl_medford/2009/04/why_you_need…