Home Staging—Is it Worth the Cost?
There is a lot of advice for homeowners who are looking to sell their homes. It includes things like updating your curb appeal and pricing your house right. While these tips can be critical to helping your house sell, home staging can make a big difference in how fast your house sells and the amount that it sells for.
Two things that sellers are usually concerned about are the number of days on market and the price they will be able to sell for. With this in mind, there are studies showing that homes that have been staged typically sell for 20 percent over the price of unstaged homes and 88 percent faster.
You need to spend money to make money
It does cost money to hire a home stager. The amount that you pay will vary, depending on factors like what services your stager includes, the size of your house, and where your house is located. If you own a 2,000 square foot home, the industry averages say that you will probably cost you $2,000 to $2,400 to stage with a professional. However, the money that you invest into home staging can really payoff for you in the end.
What are the extra costs involved?
Many stagers will do their best to work with the items that are already in your house. However, if your house is already empty or you need some additional items to help set the stage in each room, then there will be additional cost involved.
Many stagers have access to furniture and décor that you can rent until your house is sold. The price will vary greatly based on if they are adding just a few pieces or staging an entire vacant home.
What you can do in order to help staging efforts
The first thing that is required in home staging is decluttering and cleaning. Think about what the images of rooms look like on the cover of home magazines. There are not piles of papers and lots of knick knacks all around. Instead, the rooms are usually simple with a few key pieces of décor.
Spend time packing up the items that are personal to you that do not help your house appeal to buyers. This will include your family photographs, collections, and other similar items.
Secondly, you want to clean your house from top to bottom. This isn’t a quick 10-minute pickup. This needs to be more of an extensive detailed cleaning.
When things are cleaner, they look nicer and newer. You don’t want anything to distract buyers from seeing how great your house is.
If you have it in the budget, put a fresh coat of pain on the walls. This will give it a fresh look, and using neutral colors will help it appeal to the largest number of potential buyers.
When you are looking for a stager, ask about the options that they offer. For several hundred dollars, some stagers will do a walk through of the house and provide you with a list of recommendations that you can do on your own to save money. Other stagers will stage only certain rooms of your house, the ones that stand out the most to buyers. Ask questions about your options and look at their portfolio to pick a style that you think buyers will appreciate in your house.