How Home Staging Works

Staging isn't decorating, according to real-estate professionals. It's more like depersonalizing a home so that prospective buyers can imagine themselves in it. This can mean removing personal photographs, piles of newspapers, and the cat's litter box. It can also mean adding neutral-colored paint, removing your own furniture, and buying new appliances.

So where do you start? Should you hire someone to get your home staged professionally, or can you do it yourself? If you want to hire someone, where do you look? If you do it yourself, what do you need to know? Do staged homes actually sell faster and for more money? We'll answer all of those questions as we explore how home staging works.

Home staging isn't a new idea. It started on the West Coast in the 1970s, but the concept has spread across the country. According to the Wall Street Journal Guide to Property, "There are three primary factors home shoppers consider when deciding whether to bite on a property: the location, the condition and the price."

Since a homeowner can't change the location and would want to stay firm on the price, that leaves condition as the most important variable. Most homeowners probably wouldn't show their house without at least tidying it up, but staging a home involves other, more subtle, improvements that can make a home more attractive to prospective buyers.

Professional home stagers are known as Accredited Staging Professionals (ASPs). Your real-estate agent could be able to help you stage the home (some agents are also ASPs) or recommend a stager.

One benefit of home stagers is that they often have their own supplies — like furniture, rugs and art — which reduces the time and money spent looking for "neutral" items. They also provide objective insight.

If you're already strapped for cash, adding another person to the mix may not be feasible. But when you consider that many sellers end up lowering their price about $10,000 from the initial offering, it could be worth it.

Most estimates put the average home-staging fee at around $500 per room, per month, which means you could wind up spending a few thousand dollars per month to stage your home. However, if extensive staging is necessary, like new paint and furniture or expensive landscaping, that price can quickly go up.

Of course, the idea is that the better your home looks, the quicker it'll sell, thereby reducing your home staging investment. You can typically find home-staging professionals through your real-estate agent or on the Internet. Just make sure they can supply credentials and multiple references. Next, we'll look at what you need to know to stage a home on your own.

If you decide to go it alone, you can still take some tips from the pros. The No. 1 piece of advice for do-it-yourselfers is to ask for honest opinions from family and friends about what needs to be changed. Most homeowners are too personally connected to be objective about their home's contents. But remember: Your home is no longer your home — it's a product on the market, and you want it to look move in ready!

Rearranging Furniture

Most professional stagers contend that most people will have to spend little to no money on extra furniture and accessories. There are three major exceptions:

Store Away Personal Items

Another good investment, according to most home stagers, is renting storage space. There might be enough room in the house for you to stash everything you need to hide, but you'll want to free up that space so potential buyers can see it.

A storage space can be a safer place for valuables and important documents, which you may not want to have easily accessible to buyers anyway! In the next section, we'll review how the home's exterior, or "curb appeal," can be enhanced.

Let's start with the home's exterior — or "curb appeal," in real-estate speak. Staging professionals say that the outside of the home makes the first impression, so cross the street and consider what you see. The pros offer this advice:

Next, we'll head inside to check out how to stage the interior of your home.

There are easy, affordable ways to spruce up the inside of your home. The general advice is this:

You'll Need Cleaning Supplies

This is the most important rule of staging a home. And cleaning doesn't just mean vacuuming the carpet and scrubbing the bathroom (although that's important, too). It includes cleaning under the countertops, replacing shower curtains, cleaning the grout between tiles, steam-cleaning the carpets, dusting the crown molding and ceiling fans, washing the windows (inside and out), polishing all fixtures and wiping down all appliances (inside and out).

There should be no sign of dirt anywhere, and sometimes homeowners miss spots because they forget that some places even exist — for instance, windowsills and closet interiors. Using a professional cleaning service might be a wise investment.

Sell the Space, Not the Stuff

You're going to have to clear out your things so buyers don't have to look past your family photos to see your home. To prevent potential buyers from getting distracted, you should remove all memorabilia. Some stagers even recommend removing mirrors so buyers don't get sidetracked by seeing themselves. However, others say that mirrors can make a room appear larger, so it can depend on the home.

Clearing the kitchen counters of appliances allows you to sell the counter space instead of the appliances. After all this purging, you could be left with empty walls, so many home stagers will find cheap art outside — it can be as simple as gathering leaves and enclosing them in simple frames. Most stagers also recommend depersonalizing bathrooms by replacing personal hygiene items with plants or pottery.

You should also arrange furniture so it's easy for potential buyers to navigate a room. Typically, this involves removing furniture (another good reason to rent storage space), but also pay attention to the room as a whole — if there's too much furniture or decor on one side, it can feel lopsided. And whatever you do use to decorate, group them in objects of three at varying heights to make them pleasing to the eye but not distracting or cluttering.

Let There Be Light

If a room is clean (and it should be), let the buyers see it. Most pros recommend maximizing natural light by opening curtains and shades — some even suggest removing all window dressings, as long as there aren't obvious holes and nails in the wall when they're taken down.

If weather permits, open windows let in fresh air, an added bonus because it removes your scent, which can further distract buyers. Also, turn on all the lights in the house to make rooms appear brighter and bigger. In the next section, we'll find out just how much you can gain from home staging.

According to some pros, a staged home can bring in 6 to 20 percent more than the same home without staging [source: Staged Homes]. In a slumping market, however, the goal may be to retain as much of the original price as possible. If you want (or need) to quickly unload your property, you might have to lower the asking price — but home staging could help you avoid that.

Real-estate agents usually recommend lowering the home price about 3 percent after a few months [source: National Association of Realtors]. On a $250,000 home, that's a reduction of $7,500. Most professional home stagers charge less than $5,000. According to StagedHomes.com, 91 percent of homes staged by accredited professionals sell in one month or less. So, if your staged home sells quickly, you could be saving yourself from a price reduction.

Most reputable stagers and real-estate agents agree that staging can only help so much, though. If no one is coming to look at the house, it's the fault of the price. But if a lot of people are looking but not making offers, staging can help.

The buyers just need an incentive — and if they see a more attractive house, they can imagine it being worth the price. Take a look at the links below for more information about home staging.