To Stage or Not to Stage? That is the Question!

By Victoria Guillot • The Cardinal Contributing Writer

A Tale of Two Listings

The Spring real estate market frenzy is just around the corner. With a smoking hot real estate market, many people are tempted to skip staging their house because they know they can sell it quickly without going to the effort or cost of staging. As a professional stager, I ask a different question. How much money are you willing to leave on the table by not staging?

If you’re getting ready to sell your home, one of the single best moves you can make in any market is to stage it. Why? Because it pays! I’ve seen it work over and over, through great markets and crashed markets, from both sides of the country. It’s like selling a car. Have you ever detailed your car before selling it? You didn’t just detail so you can sell it. You also did it to squeeze the most money from the sale. Staging is nothing more than a fancy term for detailing your house.  There’s just a lot more to do on a house, but it works the same way. You want to identify your home’s assets and highlight them for the buyer.

And so our tale begins… 

Once upon a time, there was a hopeful couple who wished to sell their home for as much money as possible. They had been watching HGTV and therefore knew the value of boosting appeal. They did some DIY staging themselves, but their agent told them they needed to do even more to get the big results they wanted. They went to the magic wishing well and wished for Chip and Joanna Gaines from TV to ride in on a white horse and wave their magic wands. This being a fairy tale set far, far away from the Gaines’ in Texas, so they got me from a radio show riding up in a silver SUV instead with an overloaded van and truck following. (My magic wand was in for repairs.)

Now ask yourself, which listing photo is more likely to get you in your car to come see it? Do you think one will get more traffic than the other? Which listing do you think looks more expensive? Which home feels “happier”? Which is more likely to spark bidding wars?

Folks, both listings were the same house, but they didn’t FEEL the same. The second photo was taken after it was professionally staged. The living room was the main selling feature with those amazing beams, old hardwood floors with great patina and a massive stone fireplace, so we wanted to make the most of it. If this were an interior design project, I could drool over making this room look like it belonged in a Restoration Hardware catalog, but I digress… We moved the furniture from the first photo to stage a different room and re-staged the living room for additional wow factor. This example illustrates the power of your listing photos to increase interest in your house and to highlight its architectural features. 

Moral of the story? Professional staging makes homes more appealing, and the homes that are the most appealing are the ones with the most vigorous bidding wars. Therefore, staged homes can get higher offers. Having more bidders also means you can select the strongest buyers to reduce the chances of your deal falling through. 

If the market slows down, staging helps homes sell faster because they feel like a better value than the competition. That eliminates the need to offer price reductions, resulting in a higher retained selling price than unstaged would yield in addition to the quicker sale.

And so our fairy tale homeowners sell quickly and profitably, and live happily ever after in their new home with an extra pile of gold to feather their new nest just the way they want.  The End.

Victoria Guillot is a home stager/interior designer of 15 years based in Buckingham/Doylestown. A 6-time Best of Houzz winner, she has been featured on a 26-episode radio series and is author of a book of tips on home staging. If you would like her decorating or staging assistance, you can find her at stagecoachservices.com.

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