Home sellers are spending more to spruce up their place, figuring that even if they can find a buyer willing to take on a 7% mortgage rate, an ugly sofa might scare them off.
Requests to hire home-staging companies increased 10% in the first quarter compared with last year on Thumbtack, an online platform that connects homeowners with local service professionals. The average cost to stage a home rose 18% to $1,816, compared with the year before the pandemic, Thumbtack said.
Though there is no firm science on the return on investment sellers get for these makeovers, real-estate agents say staged homes usually sell quicker and for more money than unstaged ones. Good staging helps buyers visualize themselves in the home and look past quirks and other flaws, they say.
Still, staging can delay sale timing for a home, eats into a seller’s profits and can complicate the moving process. Given many buyers are staying out of the market thanks to higher mortgage rates and home prices, however, it may be worth the effort.
“More sellers are feeling pressure to be the belle of the ball,” said Dan Ennis, who owns a home-staging company in New York City.
Stage bill
There are a range of options and prices for staging a home. On the low end, sellers may declutter and hide family photographs and pay a stager a flat fee of a few hundred dollars for a one-time consultation. Sellers can also pay tens of thousands of dollars a month to hire a staging company to temporarily redecorate their entire house.
The median cost of staging was $400 when the sellers’ agent personally staged the home, according to a 2023 report by the National Association of Realtors.
Most staging contracts are for 60 days, said Shell Brodnax, chief executive of the Real Estate Staging Association, a nonprofit professional association for home stagers. Agreements typically include fees for staging, labor and delivery and inventory rental, she said.
The bill for staging varies depending on the home’s size and location, and the extent of the makeover.
Bliss Ong, a real-estate agent in Seattle, said the stagers she works with have raised prices 25% to 30% in the past year. These increases have often been steepest when sellers opt for high-end furniture.
Her clients recently received a quote for around $4,000 for 60 days of staging for their entire 1,900-square-foot four-bedroom home. Ong said that quote is in the low to medium price range.
Budget options
One way to cut the cost is to choose virtual staging, which uses software to show what the space could look like, but makes no actual changes in reality. This costs about $100 a room, Ong said. The risk is that buyers may feel disappointed when the pictured decor doesn’t match the reality.
Another option is to stage just the living room and primary bedroom, said Ong.
“For buyers, seeing a space that isn’t as well maintained can lead to questions around what else might be wrong under the covers—if your sofa has a big stain, what’s going on with the furnace?” said Nick Dietz, owner of a home styling and interior-design company in Sagaponack, N.Y.
Does staging pay?
Real-estate agents said staging is especially useful for homes that are vacant, have worn-out furniture or have a very specific look (bachelor pad, anyone?).
A fifth of buyers’ agents said that staging a home increased the offers between 1% and 5%, compared with other similar homes on the market that weren’t staged, according to NAR. Roughly the same share of sellers’ agents said staging helped the home sell faster.
Ben Dixon, a real-estate agent in New York City, recently recommended clients hire a stager for their vacant one-bedroom apartment. The unit had previously been listed for three months at $975,000 with another agent and received no offers.
The apartment’s ceilings appeared low and the unit appeared smaller and older in person than it seemed in the prior agent’s virtually staged pictures, Dixon said.
Dixon’s clients paid about $10,000 and signed a three-month contract with a stager. The staging company painted and decorated the space with furniture and objects such as mirrors that made it look bigger. Paintings and artificial plants created a homier feel.
The staging paid off. They listed for $995,000 and sold for $1.05 million in one week, Dixon said.
Less to move
Living in the house while it is staged can be a headache. But staging can give you a jump-start on decluttering and moving, especially if you plan to donate some pieces.
About two years ago, Teresa and Benjamin Stonestreet spent $5,000 to stage the first floor and primary bedroom of their Silver Spring, Md., home. The staging company recommended the couple put some of their couches and chairs in storage and added lamps, side tables and art to the family room and hand towels and accents to seven bathrooms.
Teresa said the staging made them start the moving process sooner and helped them decide that they’d rather give away certain items instead of paying for a storage unit.
“Staging makes the actual moving day way easier,” she said.
Her home sold for $1.5 million, about 11% over the asking price.