Home staging is essentially hiring someone to prepare your home to sell. It has almost become an art and has proven to play a vital role in home sales. Why bother to do this? The answer is easy – do you want your home to sell? A professional home stager knows how to make your home appear desirable to as many people as possible; thereby ensuring it will be sold. Forget what you have seen on TV shows, they do not accurately portray the art of home staging. In this article we shall examine the investment you put into your home stager versus the actual dollar amount cost you will spend.
We will actually do this in reverse order and take a look at the costs involved with home staging first. What you need to do before you attempt to hire a home stager is (as objectively as possible) assess your home. Are the furnishings modern or do they appear dated? Are there too much furnishings and/or accessories, resulting in a cluttered appearance? Is your home clean (even the windows?) Each of these points will factor into how much you will spend on your home staging. Keep in mind that the majority of professionals in this field will spend as much or as little time and effort on your home as you want. So it is a good idea to have a predetermined budget in mind when you search for your property stager and let them know what that budget is.
Another good thing to keep in mind is that professional home staging is not cheap. An average total cost for an occupied home can be between $3000 and $5000 by the time you are finished. If it is unoccupied the total fee can be as high as $7000. This fee includes any purchases the home stager deems appropriate in order for your property to sell; both for the inside and outside of your home. In an unoccupied home the cost is more because typically the stager has to bring in furniture and accessories with the idea of gaining mass appeal for the home.
Is property staging really worth all of this extra cost? Do I need a professional home stager? This is where our discussion of your investment comes in. Yes, there is a substantial cost involved with doing it. But consider how much less money you will get for the overall price of the home if you do not do it. If you choose to save the few thousand dollars by not hiring a property stager; while the house for sale two blocks away from you did use one, guess which home will get the most traffic? Guess which home owner will actually get the price they are asking for? Can you really afford to lose all of this money and/or take so much longer to sell your home? These are the decisions YOU must make when it comes to hiring a property stager. Make sure you decide wisely.