How Much Does it Cost to Stage a Home?
A professional home stager can transform a claustrophobic room into a light and airy space with just a few tricks. Regardless of market conditions, a listed home competes with every other nearby home with similar features. Home staging dresses a home for selling, making the most of its features and showing it off in the best possible light. Homeowners should weigh the costs of staging against the benefits, just as buyers measure the appeal of one home against a similar home down the street.
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What Is Home Staging?
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A home stager assesses a home's appeal through the eye of a buyer. Based on her observations, she recommends concrete changes to make the home more inviting. Typically, staging involves removing items from the home to open the space, or rearranging furnishings to highlight the home's best features. The stager turns a home into the model home you see in magazines, enticing buyers to picture themselves living in the home. Staging entails de-cluttering and de-personalizing a home, toning down bright colors and adding finishing touches to broaden the home's market appeal to a wide range of potential buyers.
Benefits
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"USA Today" reported a study in 2004 that indicated a staged home sold in half the time compared to an unstaged home. Selling prices averaged 6.3 percent over the asking price. That was before the downturn in home prices, but staging could make even more sense in a depressed market. In 2009, after a downturn in the real estate market, realtor Tracy Truitt staged a home she had tried to sell for 18 months without success. According to her comments in RISMedia, eight days after the staging the home received an offer 25 percent higher than two previous offers. When weighing the cost to stage a home, sellers need to consider the cost of lost time and low offers against a shorter marketing time frame and higher offers.
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Types of Services
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Staging costs depend on the type of services you want or need. Home stagers will walk through your home and note specific items for improvement. The cost for the analysis and report can range from $100 to $400, depending on where you live. If stagers bring in professional cleaners, painters and movers to assist, prices reflect those services. Likewise, you may pay rental fees on furniture and accessories if needed. Stage to Sell prices the staging of a vacant home between $3,500 and $10,000, depending on the size of the home and the length of contract. The same firm offers a half-hour home preview and four hours of services by two stagers for $999. For that price, the stagers use only items already in your home. To determine a cost to stage your own home, contact a home stager for an estimate.
Do it Yourself
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Save money by following some basic staging principles. Clean your house from top to bottom. Wash and polish everything, making sure your windows sparkle to let in light. Box up books, magazines and photos. Hide laundry baskets, kitchen appliances and trash. Remove excess furniture and choose a focal point in each room. Accentuate your home's best features by arranging furniture on a room's focal point. Adhere to the "less-is-more" concept in every room. Consider using a stager for one or two key rooms. Stagers can point you in the right direction if you are willing to pay a basic consultation fee.
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- Photo Credit Beautiful and new kitchen furniture on modern kitchen image by terex from Fotolia.com
