How Much Does It Cost To Stage A House And Is It Worth It?

Staging a home for sale will help you attract more offers and higher offers. It’s a swipe right, swipe left world we live in. Homebuyers are online making snap judgments about your homes. Nicely staged homes capture buyers’ attention and create a desire to see your home.

This post will introduce you to the theory of aesthetic sentiment and how important it is when selling a house. I will also give advice on how to stage a home for sale and how much does a house stager cost vs. DIY approaches to staging a home for sale.

Should I Stage My House For Selling?

People struggle to put into words how does home staging help sell a house. Welcome to the concept of aesthetic sentiment. You are probably asking yourself what in the world is aesthetic sentiment. Aesthetic sentiment is the feeling you get from viewing an image.

Home staging increases a home’s aesthetic sentiment. Remember, homebuyers are online swiping through photos of homes. You want to stop them in their tracks. This is done by displaying a home with high aesthetic sentiment.

Well matched colors, inviting rooms, and excellent décor choices all affect a home’s aesthetic sentiment. You can improve your home’s appearance with staging. Home staging done right has an effect on how much the market desires your home.

What Is Home Staging?

Home staging is the placement of furniture, décor, and home interior accents to increase the likeability or desirability of a home. Staging a home to sell requires an eye for placing the right elements in each room and space to make the home more liked by homebuyers.

Increasing a home’s likability with home staging can be done by focusing on the home in different ways. Essentially, the best strategy is to go with whatever best compliments the home without making major structural changes. Home staging is not remodeling a home. Instead, it’s about using what is already there as an anchor and accessorizing around those parts to create an inviting, desirable home with a lot of likability.

The Quadwalls Real Estate team covers home staging and aesthetic sentiment during the pre-listing consultation once we have been hired to sell a client’s home.

What Is A Home Staging Service?

A home staging service involves a professional with experience in interior design who comes to a home to correctly accessorize a home to increase its desirability and likability ahead of putting the home on the market. A professional home stager completes this work for a fee.

When selecting a home staging service look for an experienced professional with the skills, knowledge, and training to deliver a return on your investment. This person should have the ability to work with much of what is in place with only minimal accessory changes and minor décor changes to the home. Again, it is staging, not a remodel and a new interior decorating motif. Going that far is likely to not deliver a return on your investment when selling.

DIY vs. Professional Home Staging

The home staging process can be completed as a DIY project or completed with a professional. Both have their pros and cons.

Homeowners have more resources than ever to learn how to complete a DIY home staging. I encourage home sellers who want to go it alone, on their own to scour the internet for great pictures, blog posts, and online video tutorials about home staging. The cost of the research and doing the work yourself is only your time. The risk, though, is doing it right and getting a positive effect from your efforts vs. actually staging your home unattractively.

Pros of DIY Home Staging

• Lower cost
• No need to arrange meeting with a third party
• Significant, effective advice can be found online for free

Cons of DIY Home Staging

• Higher risk of getting it wrong
• Can be difficult to know where to start
• Knowing the just right amount of staging to do

On the other hand, a professional is more likely to get it right the first time. Professional home stagers have the experience to know how to decorate a dark kitchen vs. a brightly lit kitchen or how to add color to a neutral room or how to tone down a vibrantly painted room. Sometimes, paying the professional is the right way to go to get the right results.

Pros Of Hiring A Home Stager

• Experienced professional leading the project
• More likely to actually improve how well your home is received by homebuyers
• Likely will move through the project more quickly and efficient than a DIY would

Cons Of Hiring A Home Stager

• Added cost of professional advice

The Benefits Of Home Staging

When selling real estate home staging helps. High quality staging increases the activity on the home for sale. Quality staging leads to more online views. This begets more conversions to home showings. More showings begets more offers. It’s all more activity, and home staging helps get more activity. The more buyers you can get interested in a home the more likely you are to receive offers with higher prices and high quality terms beneficial to the seller.

The Do’s And Don’ts Of Home Staging

You should follow these home staging tips when selling your home. You can use my do’s and don’ts of home staging as a home staging checklist when getting your home ready for sale.

Do: Remove Personal Belongings

The number one issue with most home sellers is a house packed with stuff. Declutter your home and thin out the stuff. Photos, interior decor accents, kitchen gadgets, the things, the stuff, the distractions. All of this is a distraction which makes your home appear overly personalized and not inviting to a new person who is trying to picture themselves living there.

Don’t: Remodel

Staging is not remodeling. Staging incorporates all of the major components of the home already in place. No replacing countertops or repainting entire rooms. Instead, small accessory items and furniture are used to make what is already there look even better than it already does.

Do: Understand Your Target Market

Your home is for sale to everyone, but there is always some segment of the market which is most likely to buy your home. Maybe that is an older person due to a small yard and 100% main floor living. Or, perhaps your home is most likely to be sold to a family with children in the home because of its many bedrooms, multiple communal living spaces, and open layout.

Regardless, you need to know who the most probable buyer is for your home. Then, decorate in a way that is on trend with this segment of the homebuyer audience.

Don’t: Sell An Empty House

Empty, vacant homes do not sell as well as those that have been staged and are furnished. Empty homes have no voice. They are not warm or inviting. Desirability on an empty home falls due to the inability to see how each of the spaces can be used. It can be just too difficult to visualize the best use of each room or placement of furniture in a room with a specific use.

Do: Create An Inviting Home

If I had to boil it all down to one adjective to describe the target for staging a home it would be inviting. A fun, warm place with the appearance that makes homebuyers say, “I want to be there” is the target. Open, clean, well furnished, and tastefully decorated with a real feeling is the perfect place to be with the home.

How Much Does Home Staging Cost?

I believe thoughtful home staging can be done cost effectively. The average cost to stage a house varies depending on whether it is a DIY home staging or a professional home staging. When completing DIY home staging I would budget $0.50 to $2.00 per finished square foot. So, a home seller with a 2,000 square foot home should budget $1,000 to $4,000 for home staging. The upper end of that range is more likely to occur if you need a lot of larger furniture pieces to make the home inviting.

DIY Home Staging For On A Budget

I encourage home sellers to complete budget friendly soft-staging in areas with the highest impact. There are specific points in a home which are of the greatest interest to homebuyers. By focusing on these isolated areas you can cover more space with less expense and stage your home yourself. Here is a list of soft-staging ideas to increase your home’s appearance.

Professional House Staging Cost

The cost to stage your house with professional home staging costs vary greatly. Answering what is the cost to stage a house depends on scope of staging, the size of the home, and your location. Let’s take a look at the different segments of professional home staging and how much to expect to spend at each step.

Initial Home Consultation

Many professional stagers will offer a consultation. This gives the stager an opportunity to get familiar with your home and better understand your goals from the home staging. With this information, the stager can understand the scope and depth of the project. An initial home consultation with a professional home stager can cost as much as $400. However, some stagers may offer a free consultation.

Price Per Hour

Many professional stagers work off of an hourly fee model. This helps the stager be compensated for all of the time he or she spends on the project including phone calls and correspondence with the client. Home sellers should expect to be charged anywhere from $40 to $125 per hour for a professional home stager working on an hourly fee basis. There may well be a fee for the rental use of the staging items.

Price Per Project

On the other hand, some home stages offer a project based fee. Some home sellers will like this more because it draws a clear line for the cost of the service. With a price per project fee home sellers should expect a professional home stager to charge $200 to $500 per staged room. It is more likely with a fee per project model the fee includes the cost of the items placed in the home.

Decluttering And Rearranging Only

Home sellers who are seeking a professional stager to assist with clearing out, packing up, and utilizing what is in place should expect to pay on an hourly basis. The fee range for a reputable home stager in your area will likely be $40 to $125 for a service like this.

What Factors Affect Home Staging Costs?

Several factors affect the cost to stage a house for selling it. First, is making the decision to stage the home yourself or whether you will hire a professional. Professional home stagers charge a fee for their work.

Secondly, the scope of the project affects the cost to stage a home. There are two ways to think about the scope of the project, too. First, is the overall area. Will you be staging the entire home or just certain areas? The more you do the more it is going to cost. The other factor related to scope is the depth of the staging. Moving in larger furniture pieces will be more costly than merely adding some accessories to the home. Furniture moving and rental costs can get expensive.

Who Pays For The Staging Of A House?

Some real estate agents will pay for the cost to stage your home for sale. However, this is becoming less common. This is due to the fact more and more home sellers are searching for a low commission fee real estate agent. If the real estate agent’s service does not include home staging the seller can seek out some home staging services and pay for it themself.

How Can I Save Money On Home Staging?

There are several strategies you can use to affordably stage a home for sale.

Make The Most Of Consultations

Sometimes, we just need to be told what to do. Consulting with an interior designer or a home stager can help you better understand what needs to be done in the home. Be straightforward with a stager and tell him or her that you are seeking only a consultation and intend to do the work yourself. The stager will give you ideas to improve your home’s appearance. Then, take their advice and put it into place.

Stage Key Areas

You can save money on the cost of home staging by focusing on areas of the home where staging has the greatest impact. Homebuyers are most interested in having a great kitchen, bathrooms, and main bedroom. Focus your efforts on these areas instead of the entire home.

Soft Staging

Soft staging of a home is simply adding a minimal amount of objects to a space to make it more attractive. There are specific things you can do to soft stage a home and get an effect. Plus it is a cheap way to stage your home.

Soft stage a kitchen by adding fruit bowls filled with colorful fruits or glass containers with bright foods inside. You can soft stage a bathroom by simply adding matching towels, a bath mat, and a matching hand soap pump and trash can. Soft staging in a bedroom can simply be getting a new curtain that goes well with a contemporary bedding set. The right art pieces hung on the walls can help a lot, too.

Conclusion

Yes, you should stage your home when preparing to sell it. Home staging is not remodeling. Instead, home staging is the placement of accessories and objects to make a space more attractive and inviting. Well decorated homes have a high aesthetic sentiment which in turn produces higher activity from homebuyers.

Home staging comes at a cost but can be completed cost effectively with a DIY approach. Research online different ways to stage your home. Soft staging your home is always a budget friendly way to improve your home’s appearance, too.

The Quadwalls Real Estate Team offers soft staging tips during our pre-listing consultation. Feel free to contact us to learn more about our full-feature home selling service and low real estate commission fees.