Staging Your Home Will Increase the Price

Home staging has become a "must do" for sellers. Some 77% of buyer's agents said home staging makes it easier for prospective buyers to visualize the property as a future home. Staged homes sell faster and for more money than those that are unstaged, according to industry analysis. Getting Folsom Home Staging is likely to increase your selling price.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Home staging is the curated furnishing and prepping an uninhabited home that is for sale on the real estate market.

Proponents say that staging a home can increase a home's selling price and the likelihood that it will sell quickly as it helps prospective buyers better imagine how they can use the livable space.

Staging, however, comes with a cost: you will have to pay the stager as well as pay for the rental for furnishings and home accents while the house remains unsold.

Here, we weigh these costs and benefits to see if home staging really pays.

What is Staging?

Good staging is “a form of visual merchandising that draws on some of the fundamentals of interior design,” according to Gordon Roberts, a broker with Sotheby’s International Realty. “The object of staging is to flatter the property but not be too obvious about it, like being dressed without drawing particular attention to what you’re wearing.”

Benefits of Staging

Staging has only recently come into prominence—20 years ago nobody worried about staging. Just a few years ago, giving your home a good scrubbing was considered enough before putting out the ‘for sale’ sign. Today more and more home sellers in many parts of the U.S. enlist the services of home stagers. That makes it very likely your property will be competing with homes that have been professionally staged. In addition, the huge popularity of HGTV shows has heightened buyer expectations.

A stager can help with your online listing, too. A staggering number of people—95% according to a National Association of Realtors (NAR) report—use the Internet during their home search. That means that your home had better show really well online. Staging and photos by a professional can help you do that—and keep your home off Terrible Real Estate Agent Photographs.

Consider the return on investment. As Sid Pinkerton, a New York City-based stager, points out, if you found a financial planner who could give you a return on investment (ROI) of 5%, 10%, or sometimes as much as 20%, “wouldn’t you think they were a genius? Well, that’s what a good stager can do.”

How Staging Affects Time on Market

The Real Estate Staging Association (RESA) has a staging savings calculator that lets you figure out how much time and money (mortgage payments, carrying costs, etc.) to save if you stage your home before listing it. Its “Consumers Guide to Real Estate Staging” reports that homes that had not been staged before listing sat on the market an average 143 days.

Once these homes were staged, they sold in 40 days. Homes that were staged pre-listing averaged 23 days on the market. You can expect differences from state to state—in California homes sold five times faster, in Oregon seven times faster—but ”faster” is the key word here.

How Staging Affects Sale Price

According to the NAR report, 58% of sellers’ realtors believe that buyers offer more money for staged homes (29% think they offer 1% to 5% more; 21% put the increase at 6% to 10%; 3% put it as high as 20%). Only 14% of the realtors didn't feel staging had any impact on a home's selling price. Home Staging Resource, an organization that offers training and resources to stagers, is even more bullish on staging (as you’d expect): Its website states that in a survey of 3,500 staged homes, 46% sold for 10% more than they would have unstaged.