Staging a house for sale

When you're looking to sell your house, the question is to stage or not to stage your home for sale. I'm Mac. This is my opinion on staging a home for sale.

Do you need to stage your home for sale? I mean, there's no law that says that you do, but it might not be the worst idea for you. So basically, today, we're going to talk about the pros and cons of staging your home for sale. So, what is staging? And why do it? Basically, staging your home is hiring a professional to come in, declutter, help clean, help give your home a new vision so that when buyers walk through, they get a good feel for what the house really, truly could be used for. And also staging helps them create a little imagination for the buyer because a lot of times they lack that imagination. So, they don't know if their furniture will fit or how they should set up the room. And if they just walk into four empty walls, it's hard for a lot of people to imagine living in that space.

So, if you hire one of these stagers, what do they do? Well, basically they bring in furniture, they rearrange things, they help you declutter, which is a big thing. They'll add some decor and some unique touches throughout your property. They may do things like get a cleaning crew in there to deep clean your property. They might do some touch up paint jobs when and where needed. Their whole job is to make your house feel nice, warm, and inviting for the next buyer. So, what are the pros? Well, pros to staging, it creates a positive experience for those buyers. Staging usually helps you sell your home faster and for more money. The International Association of Staging Professionals says that if you stage your house, you are on average going to receive a 17% above asking price offer on your property. That ain't bad. Staging helps make your home more attractive to those buyers in both in person visits and also your photos online. Because let's be real, most people nowadays, they start their home search online.

So, if it is staged, and it looks well maintained and it looks like it's been lived in, and they can imagine themselves being there just based on the pictures alone, they're more inclined to take a trip, call their agent up, and actually go and tour the place in person. It's still real estate. So, it's still a person to person industry. So, most people start online, then they move to in person. So getting them to move from online to in person is huge when it comes to price and also timeline in which your house sells. So, now that we talked about some of the pros, what are some of the cons of staging your home? One of the major cons to staging your house is it's not cheap. Usually it's going to start in that $3000 range, and that's to have a stager to come in and put furniture and all the other accents in your house.

And typically, what you do is you sign a term limit with them, whether it's 60 days, 90 days, whatever the case may be. But as I said, on average, it's going to run you about $3,000 to do so. Another con to staging your house is sometimes there is a consultation fee. Some of these stagers will charge a $400 or $500 consultation fee. That's just to sit down, talk about what you're doing, what you would like to do, what your vision is, and then see if your vision and their vision mesh. Some do it a combo deal. If your house is vacant, they'll charge you the consultation fee. Some people, if you already have your stuff in there, they won't charge that consultation fee. They may look at your furniture to see if it fits what their vision is and what the combined vision of you and that stager are.

And if so, they may just utilize your furniture. So, that saves you a little bit of money. But they're still going to want to bring their accessories and accents and all that stuff, as well, to make your house look well maintained, lived in, and professionally staged. I alluded to it before, but there is a contract term. So basically, how long are you going to be borrowing all their stuff? So, sometimes right up front you might say you have a 60 day or a 90 day term with a staging company. And if they do a great job and you have a great property and a hot market and all that other stuff, you would end up paying for the three months, or whatever that term may be. But if your house sells in one week, you still paid all that money. Another con is if you're looking to get out of there as soon as possible, you're looking to, hey, put that thing on the market like tomorrow and try to get whatever money you can for it or get top dollar for it. And then, you're going to disappear after that and go to wherever your next destination is.

Staging takes a little bit of time, right? There's a whole process to it, as I said before, whether it's cleaning, touchup paint, getting your furniture out, getting new furniture in, all of the accents and the decor. That takes time. So, sometimes it takes a little bit of time to get the house prepared and ready to hit the market. And if your timeframe is tomorrow, that might not work for you. And also, if you have a lot of stuff, it takes time to get stuff out of a house. And then, you've got to figure out what are you going to do with the stuff. Sometimes people just throw it all in the garage, right? That's the catchall, or the basement. But if you don't have a garage, you don't have a basement, and you got a lot of stuff, storage. Storage ain't free. So, there's that added cost of throwing your things in storage.

So, what's included in a staging package? Well, that all depends on the company you go with. Usually, the stager will come in and they will declutter. Sometimes, they will have their cleaning service come through and do a deep clean. Sometimes, they may have a painter come in and do any touch up work, if need be. Sometimes, what they do is they take out all of your furniture, and they bring in some new updated furniture and fixtures and things like that. Some staging companies go as far as improving your curb appeal, as well. So, they'll do some things in the front yard, around the porch, if you have plants and stuff like that, based on who your stager is, they may come and address those things, as well. So, if you've thought about selling your house, make sure that you watch this video that talks all about the dos and don'ts, the ins and outs of selling your home.