Is the Cost of a Professional Staging Worth It?

Whether you are a military family planning your next PCS or a civilian prepping to list your home for sale, it can feel like the expenses are endless. In fact, it might even feel like the drain plug has been removed from your checking account and you are watching every extra dollar circle the drain and wash away. How do you help prioritize necessary spending when nearly everything feels important and urgent?

When it comes to non-essential spending, it might feel like a luxury you cannot afford. If you have ever considered whether or not paying a professional to stage your home is worth the investment, consider these five reasons as proof of how spending a little now could maximize your profit later.

Staging your home is the first step in your own decluttering, downsizing, and deep cleaning process.

Before many professional stagers get started on styling your home it is important for you to begin the legwork of getting your home ready. Since you are moving anyway, this is a good opportunity to tidy your home, rid it of any unwanted items, and deep clean your space. Some stagers will either have you store some of your existing furniture items or use them to arrange the space in a more universally appealing way. Staging allows for you to take the first step in preparing for your exit from the home.

Staging your home helps to depersonalize your home and allows potential buyers to envision themselves living there.

When you list your home for sale, one of the primary aims in marketing the home is to ensure that potential buyers connect with the home on a personal and emotional level. Staging your home essentially tells a story of the home with the potential buyer as the new protagonist. By removing sentimental items, photographs, pet-related paraphernalia, and clutter a stager is inviting these prospective homeowners to envision themselves in the space. This is a key step in leading the buyer to consider and then make an offer on your home. Even in starter homes, small homes, and older homes the idea is to make living there seem aspirational.

Staging your home can showcase your home’s greatest features and mask or disguise your home’s flaws.

Staging can help to draw the eye to just the right places you want the potential home buyer to see. With the use of paint, lighting, furniture, and accessory placement a stager can showcase your home’s most beloved features while drawing the eye away from those flaws you’d like to disguise. Professional stagers have interior design training and expertise that can help to illustrate the beauty of your home. Additionally, stagers often work closely with photographers who will make sure the photos used in your MLS listing that will ensure a wonderful online first impression of your home.

Staging your home can often add monetary value to your home’s sales price.

Staging your home could mean the difference between having to lower your listing price or earning up to 6% more on the sale price than a non-staged home, according to the National Association of Realtors. While professional staging rates vary widely depending on the level of service you require, it could be a fraction of the cost that an increased sales price would yield.

Whether you decide to pay a professional stager for services like painting, removing, or adding furnishings and home decor items, or if you decide to implement those same strategies yourself, remember that in most cases it pays to stage!