From Homescape

I often receive inquires about home staging from sellers all over the country, asking: “Can you give me the scoop on how staging works and the costs behind it?” I thought it would be helpful to provide inquiring minds with the basic A-B-C’s of home staging.

A is for ABOUT home staging in general. Actually, if you are going to stage your property, you need to know that it’s ABOUT a two-step process. The first step is prepping the home, which involves cleaning and updating. The second step is ABOUT the “pretty visuals” that people think of when they think of home staging. This step has to do with the physical setting and arranging of the furnishings and accessories within a house. The combined goal of the two steps is to create a house that shows off its best assets and ultimately will draw the interest of the widest buying demographic possible.

B is for BASIC types of staging services. While there are six basic types of staging services, it’s important to note that not all stagers offer all of them. The more services a stager offers the better it is for you. Since you actually won’t know what you will need until the stager visits for the first time, a stager with multiple expertise is better equipped to guide you based on your needs and won’t be limited by the home’s staging possibilities.

The six basic staging services:

1. Consult staging: This type of staging solely taps into a stager’s knowledge. First focusing on the condition of a home, a stager visits a property to meticulously instruct on all that must be done to best prep and then set the property for the market.

2. Rearrange staging: This type of services relies on both the stager’s knowledge and their physical labor. Once a home’s conditional needs are met, a stager arranges the property by physically setting it using only the seller’s existing furniture and decorative accessories.

3. Enhance staging: Again, once conditional issues are addressed, the stager will then set the interior space. But not only are the existing furniture and accessories used, but the stager will bring and blend in decorative accessories and or furniture from their own inventory. These props can either be loaned or rented to the seller while the home is for sale.

4. Reseller vacant staging: When a preowned home is vacant, the property can be pretty bare bones. So while it is important that basic repairs need to be addressed, a stager should be hired to maximize the home’s visual appeal by fully setting it with the appropriate furnishings and accessories.

5. Rehab Vacant staging: Similar to a reseller vacant home, after the problem spots of an older property are repaired and updated, a stager should be hired to maximize the home’s visual appeal by fully setting it with the appropriate furnishings and accessories.

6. Model vacant staging: While conditional problems in a new construction building typically are not an issue, “life-styling” is. Models typically rely more on projecting a life-styled visual appeal. A good stager understands and designs within a specific lifestyle marketing concept when furnishing, accessorizing and setting a vacant model property.

C is for COST to hire a home stager. What hiring costs actually are depends on how much talent (knowledge), time (physical labor) and props a stager provides. If a seller has a limited amount to spend, then the best value a stager can provide is by consulting. For as little as $100 (in some markets), a stager can be hired to review a property and provide professional staging advice and guidance. From there, it’s realistic to expect to pay anywhere from $35 to $75 per hour for a stager’s services. As for props, the fees for renting these items will vary based on just what is being rented and the length of time the items are being rented for.

Sellers are not only realizing the cost of staging will pay off, but they actually ARE benefiting from making the investment. Let’s face it, if “time is money” then reduced market time is a great return on investment. So regardless of staging solution proposed, a good stager will do all they can to maximize the return on a seller’s staging budget so that the house sells as easy as 1, 2, 3.

Staging It Forward... Craig Schiller, founder of Real Estaging