How Much More Money Will I Make if I Stage My House?
If you’re deciding to sell your home, you might be asking yourself, ‘should I stage my house’? I’m sure you’ve walked into open houses with beautifully staged homes, or seen online videos of houses with perfect furniture. First impressions matter when you sell a home, in fact, according to the National Association of Realtors, 83% of buyers agents state that it was easier for a buyer to picture their future home in a property that was staged. It’s more than just decluttering and rearranging furniture, it’s painting an image of a future family making memories in a home they’ve never been in.
While they definitely help a home sell and sell for more, there are so many questions to answer, how much does it cost, how do I find a good stager, what are the types of staging, and could I even DIY it myself. Let’s go over all the logistics of staging. It’s not as complicated as it seems, and it may not even be as expensive as others make it out to be. Ultimately the goal of staging is to make your home easier to sell and pocket more for you as the seller.
What is Home Staging?
Home staging is the process of decorating a home with furniture to make the home visually appealing, but there is so much more to unravel than just the base definition. Decluttering, cleaning, and rearranging furniture is all part of staging. The whole point of staging is to maximize the size & potential use of a home to help buyers picture themselves living in the house.
If you were to get really technical, home staging should make a house feel bigger than it actually is with careful placement of decor & furniture. Staging is to appeal to buyers of a home, so any personalization of the previous owner is typically removed. A professional stager would bring in their own furniture for the homeowner to ‘rent’ as part of their staging services. Their services will come with their advice on furniture placement to maximize space.
Types of Home Staging
Staging doesn’t always mean the full top to bottom decor you may be used to seeing. Actually that style of staging is only 1/4 of the services that professional stagers provide.
Full Staging
This may be the style of staging that you are most familiar seeing. Fully decked out living rooms, paintings, fake food in the kitchen and a home that looks straight out of a TV set. Full staging is typically done with vacant homes that are relatively new. Most commonly this style of staging will include furniture for every room in the house, and each room will get the maximum amount of decor needed to be flawless.
This is the most expensive option and for good reason. You’re able to paint a picture in the minds of buyers for each and every room imaginable in the home. It’s important to note however that this doesn’t mean full staging will always sell your home for more or faster, as other factors such uncontrollable such as smell, paint, etc can effect this.
If you wanted the highest chances of selling for more, Full staging is definitely the way to go, even if you have to empty out your own furniture to do so.
Partial/Occupied Staging
This style of staging implies bringing in staged furniture for some of the rooms in the home, but not all. You can get pretty creative with this as you select which rooms you’d like to stage. The stager will also likely give consultation as to what they’d recommend you’d get. Most commonly used for homes that are owner-occupied, or for vacant homes that want a cheaper alternative.
This is great for vacant homes because rooms such as the guest bedroom, bathrooms, and hallways won’t have much of an effect on homebuyers anyway. The major rooms that are looked through and have the best effect with staging include the primary bedroom, kitchen, and living room.
Virtual Staging
For vacant homeowners looking to budget on staging, virtual home staging does 75% of the job when it comes to bringing in buyers. This process involves taking pictures with a high quality camera, photographer often provided by the stager, and digitally adding in decorations and furniture. With advanced digital technology, this can make a vacant home appear fully furnished with virtually seamless staging. Making your first impression almost as good as any other home on the market.
The only issue with virtual staging is when the buyer actual steps into the home, they may be surprised to realize that the home is empty and might not look as good as it does in the pictures. This service is a one-time pay instead of the traditional monthly payments of staging, making it an extremely cheap option for homeowners.
If full or even partial staging is out of the question when selling a vacant home, 99% of the time it is better to opt for virtual staging. The more buyers tour the home, the better your chances are to receive an offer.
DIY Staging
It’s in the name… This involves either researching staging/interior design tips in order to re-maneuver personal furniture in the most appealing way to home buyers. The end goal is always the same however, make the first impression of the home as good as you can for home buyers viewing. You may even opt for bringing in a professional stager or interior designer for a consultation on what would look best.
If doing everything by yourself with no professional help, it’s typically best to leave out any personalization of the home. Personalized home add-ons bring no value to a home buyer and can actually hurt your chances of receiving offers. Personalized Add-Ons could include pictures of your family, trophies/awards of achievements, children paintings on the fridge, etc.
Unless you’re really serious about DIY staging, most of the time this just turns out to be de-cluttering for a lot of homeowners.
How Much Does Staging My House Cost?
First you have to understand what you’re paying for and how often you’ll be paying. For partial and full staging, you pay for every month you keep the furniture in your home, the first month will also be significantly higher than every other month to cover the cost of moving the furniture in the home. This amount you pay depends heavily on the number of rooms you decide to stage, and how much furniture will be moved into your property. All consultations will most likely cost money to speak to a professional stager.
This means that the most expensive homes to stage are vacant properties that require full staging of all rooms. In California and especially in the LA county, staging consultations could cost anywhere between $100-$500.
To make calculations easier, I will be estimating staging costs by the number of rooms being staged. You can expect to pay anywhere between $300-$800 per room staged for every month. The first month of staging you can expect to pay $650-$1000 per room to cover the cost of moving in the furniture.
Virtual staging may cost you anywhere between $150-$500 based on how many pictures you’ll need edited. And for those who are considering DIY staging, just the consultation fee may be all you end up paying.
Let’s give a specific scenario to help paint the picture a bit better on costs.
– Your home has 3 beds, 2 baths, 1 kitchen & living room. 1600 sqft total
– You decide to fully stage the whole home
– The first month of staging will cost an estimated $5500 on the high end (5 rooms x $800 each | 2 baths x $350 each)
– For every month after the initial, staging will cost an estimated $2200 per month (5 rooms x $400 each | 2 baths x $100 each)
Of course however, the ideal situation is that your home sells on the 1st or 2nd month of staging. After that it may be in your best interest to discontinue staging as price and other factors are most likely the reason the home isn’t selling
Is Home Staging Worth the Cost?
The short answer is… Yes! Here are the facts we know about staging. The ROI from staging a home, Return on Investment, is stated to be anywhere between 158%-1196%! Talk about bang for your buck. But that’s not the only benefit. According to TheZebra.com, staged homes spend 73% less time on the market than similar homes that were not staged. Just based on the numbers and statistics, it’s a no brainer that staging your home will not only make you sell faster on average, but for far more than the money spent.
To give an example of the ROI, if your home is worth around $1M market value, spending $8000 in staging may result in your home selling for an extra $12,000-$95,350 above market! And if the average home in your area sells for 60 days, you can expect to sell within just 16 days!
The costs can be very intimidating, especially because they are paid upfront and doesn’t guarantee that the home will sell. However, if you’re goal is to get the most amount of money for your property without having to make major updates/renovations that could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, staging is the way to go.
FAQs
What is the cost to Stage a 2000+ sqft house?
While calculating by rooms is usually a better way to get an estimate, you can assume around $3-$5 per square foot to stage. That would mean it’d cost around $6000-$10,000 for a 2000 sqft home.
What should I not do when Staging a Home?
Staging doesn’t fix all your problems, you should still declutter the home and clean property before spending the big bucks. Do not leave personalized decor or items around the house, as that will take away from the staging decor.
Who Pays for home staging?
Typically the homeowner will pay for home staging, it is very rare for the agent to contribute unless you have a very good relationship with your realtor.
How to stage a house inexpensively?
Virtual staging or even DIY staging are the best ways to stage your home inexpensively. Both can cost up to $500, but yield great results for your home sale!
📍 To Stage or not to Stage
Ultimately staging is a personal question and you have to be brutally honest with yourself. If your home needs major upgrades/renovations that just can’t be ignored by the buyer, then you should consider fixing that instead of staging your home.
If your home is in relatively good condition on the inside and could just do with some touchup. Then yes, staging is highly recommended for you as you’re way more likely to sell for more and faster than if you did not stage. The return on your investment is just too good to pass up. And that’s the goal for all sellers, at least I think it is haha
Have questions about specific neighborhoods, I’d love to help.
