Interested in the communities thoughts on paying for home staging for the sale of a house and experiences etc
Just seeing if the outlay is worth the ROI in peoples lived experience.
Home staging for sale
Comments
How sh1t is the house.
Generally houses are selling with or without furniture.
Even staging is best left to the artificial photoshop/CGIers, cheaper, quicker and no danger of dinging walls with furniture.
Sold a house during Covid, no staging. Sold within 1 week. Brand new house. Didn't even have the Garden done yet before the photos. Here is the listing
What you will never know is how much more you may have received if the garden was done, interior staged etc.
Garden was done and was a part of the sale, we always said it would be done for the sale. But the listing was put up before the Garden had been done. Whilst it wasn't great, it was still something for someone to move straight into.
We got the most out of it and wanted a quick sale, so we were happy with the final price.
I don't think staging would've gotten us much more.
It was that soap that got it accross the line.
Sold for $567,500
Ahhh those were the days…
Is that for the shed ?
Yeah, set is up for our next place, so couldn't complain!
depends on the 'area' if it is a bit more on the blue chip end of the spectrum im going to say yes becuz a 5-10% difference in price for a 5-10k stage is a massive upside
but in the more 'working class' or lower SES areas id just do it myself
Nah
Consider posting your home on the forums.
Even posting your home on local fb
And getting feedback.
But yes homestaging is important as it's hard for average people to see potential
Now you may just get lucky and have two high bidders
But a home is very much the narrative you can sell
I could put my desk here , my tv there, bbq in the lawn, coke in the bathroom
‘Staging’ is just a real estate agents tool to get extra coins for their mates. If they recommend someone it’ll be their partner or friend of a friend who just happens to be an ‘expert’ in interior design when reality is they’ve watched the block a few times.
Unless you’ve got broken furniture, covered in cat hair, smelling like the dog threw up or a chain smoker just died, just clean from top to bottom and remove all excess clutter.
If you gave more info on what your trying to sell it may help.
Sold dads joint, never staged, got lots of 20k's more than asking
Sold my place last yr, never staged got lots of 50k's more than asking
Ex sold her unit few mths ago, never staged , also cleaned upWho knows what would have happened if we paid thousands for dodgy furniture in the places, may have worked, may have made no difference
Every buyer is different… every place is different.If the place is good enough it should sell itself.
What if you baked cookies too?
Stove didnt work.. ;)
When we were looking we were mainly scoping the place out to see where we would put the furniture we already owned.
We looked straight past the flimsy white tubular metal double beds, nana sheets, and cheap-looking framed wall prints.
Completely empty rooms always felt more spacious, with more flexibility to customise to our tastes.
Pragmatically, it's much easier for a potential buyer to over estimate how big a room is when there's nothing in it to scale from, making the house feel larger. At one stage we actually put in a stupid high offer on one unfurnished place that I then had to withdraw in a panic once I'd processed how small it actually was.
At a rough guess, you could reliably say that a house 'staged' rather than thrown up for sale is going to get >$50k more - just because of how insane house prices are today. It could well be much more.
However, that doesn't mean you have to pay big bucks to do it - half the battle is getting rid of clutter, making sure it looks clean and tidy, and positioning furniture so it looks stylish and 'designed'. I helped a friend get a place ready to sell once, and just moving things around and losing 30% of the excess furniture made it look so much better.
So, its certainly worth YOUR time, but most of the value is just in putting in the effort - and others would need to be able to justify the delta over that.
Its an art, its about hiding flaws. and showing off strengths.
Lots of visual tricks.
I think it's worth it, though i don't actually know how much it costs to get done. You can probably save a bunch if you don't have terrible design tastes to begin with, because they can use all of your own furniture
I do believe that digital staging is worth the money, where they digitally add fancy furniture to your home photos.
Selling a house is often about lifestyle and aspirations. Its easy to see, you just have to goto an inspection with a nicely styled house, a big outdoor deck, alfresco area etc, and people go crazy because they can imagine themselves having that glamorous lifestyle. I've seen them go for $100ks over the asking price without breaking a sweat
Selling empty rooms are more spacious but it also makes it easier to see flaws which you might not otherwise see if it had furniture.
I always thought it would be a good idea to do it myself and bring in new furniture that i could take with me.
Then i realised the hassle of moving the furniture twice etc.What’s the average cost for staging a 3 bedroom house these days?
An agent once told me he was selling a property off market and it was cheaper because if he staged it he could get atleast $20K more.. wasn’t sure if I believed him or not but he seemed very sure
Go to IKEA and just copy the rooms
Assembling 5 rooms worth of IKEA furniture? Yeah, that's easily worth $10k for someone else to do.
The trick is to cut the long end off an Allen key and put in a drill chuck.
3 bed stage probably $4k+ depending on time frame.
I got mine done for $2200 about 3 months ago.
3 bed, one living, bathroom, laundry and powder. Also a table setting outdoors.
Just seeing if the outlay is worth the ROI in peoples lived experience.
Depends on a lot of factors, what your house is like/worth, what your own furniture is like etc.
If its a KDR house, then don't bother.
If its a nice fancy house, but your furniture doesn't match it 100%, then go for it.
just sold and we did a diy ‘simple’ staging.
beds plus lounge and dining set to show sizing
If you’re not going to stage, at least remove all personal items from the place (eg photos)
Why?
The professional staging scammers say you can’t have personal photos becuase then dumb buyers can’t imagine themselves living there.
ugh …. people with little to no imagination are the worst
Need more information.
What type of house? Era? Etc.
Staged my own place, certainly helped. Obviously declutter, depersonalise first. Dont follow trends. Look at what you have and work with it. Can you borrow from family/friends?
Things to look at:
- Bedroom should have a bed, bedsides and only if a large room, a chair. Nothing else.
- wardrobes need to be virtually empty. People do look in them. Same with all cupboards etc.
- lounge should be just suite, coffee table. Dont buy rugs etc unless huge rooms with tiles or floating floors.
- remove rugs on carpets.
- plants are a cheap hack. Have nothing in bathroom or laundry except appropriate fresh towels and a nice plant.
- kitchen tops should be empty. No appliances out, nothing.
- fresh flowers. At least $50-80 per bunch per living space for photo session. They should last through first week of opens.
- if your bed linen is rubbish, buy cheap from Kmart. Stick to plain whites etc. No patterns.
- if you have an entertainment area, make sure it looks like people could entertain.
Happy to dm my place if need be.
fresh flowers. At least $50-80 per bunch per living space for photo session. They should last through first week of opens.
A better spend would be on potted plants that would last the entire selling period & beyond rather than cut flowers that you have to throw out after a week.
Oh no, those too. But let's face it - some people are better off with plastic plants rather than any living (recent or otherwise) option 😏
And really, if your place doesn't have offers in the first week in this market, something is wrong.
I half staged mine.
I got the staging person in to talk about what they would recommend for every room. Got them to do the big furniture stuff that my house didn’t already have, then went to Kmart to do the smaller things.
It’s definitely worth it, but it depends on the value and quality of the house to start with. This sort of thing is psychological. If you go to a home display village you will find you like the house that is dressed in a style that you like. Different companies have different stylists some a better than others. It’s all in your head. What they are selling is the dream lifestyle. When you arrive at the display village there is a big sign with a happy good looking family. The gardens are manicured and the furniture is beautiful and uncluttered. They are selling a dream, in reality you never get that house you get your clutter and mismatched furniture.
If you want it to be desirable to many different buyers and push the price up you should move out and get it staged.Yep, its like polishing a car, and fixing the small dents.
The product just looks nicer. And newer.
We had a quote to stage a 3 bdr 2 bathroom. Quote was $5000 using some of our furniture as well.
Consider also what happens if your place doesn’t sell during the 3-4 week campaign period
Will you continue to pay the staging costs for an unknown period?
It is negotiated in advance. Usual is 6-8 weeks. Less when busy, more when not.
Needs a 4th poll option - “WTF is staging?”
You never get a second chance to make a first impression.
(and that goes for houses as well). lolHad a Penthouse Apartment staged. Wasn't happy at all with any of it. Especially the gaudy looking artworks which added zero to the place. I didn't have a say in it happening but believe staging is just another rip off from real estate agents. It's just more crap they make you pay for.
The place was selling for over $2million & what they staged with looked like filler.
My son and his wife have been looking around Brisbane for a while now. They say that the styled homes are selling for about $100,000 more. I said this to a real estate agent this week and he said that currently that was about right.
My cousin and his wife are currently selling their house and it always looks great anyway, so no styling. However, her massive craft room where she holds workshops etc (which would normally be a family room) has been digitally manipulated to look like a family room in the photos. I can see why. Hard to see it as anything else as it is actually set up.
Definitely save your money and do it yourself as long as your furniture is decent and in good condition then all you need to do is declutter and clean everything.
No personal items should remain especially family photos.
Buying a house is the biggest emotional purchase people will ever make and often they make this decision from a 15 minute inspection so you need to make them feel like they could see themselves living in the place.
Make it comfortable, lots of cushions throw rugs etc Kmart is the way to go for this kind of thing.
I think I spent about $300 to decorate my 4 bed/2 bath house when I sold mine.And if you are smart, you can leave the tags on most things and then return them when the house is sold 😉
I've paid for staging and then recently staged self. Both had good outcomes. Certainly it was cheaper to do it myself particularly considering how cheap and readily items can be obtained either new from kmart/target/big w or used on marketplace. If you find someone good and reasonable price wise though and don't care about keeping any of what you purchase I'd pay someone. It also benefits from being less wasteful.
Edit - I would certainly say staging is absolutely worth it though.
A couple of other comments have mentioned its ability to hide flaws and I can attest to that. A neglected place can look disproportionately crappy when laid bare, yet not look too bad when filled even with outdated furniture, rugs, etc. How much it makes a difference to the sale price though is something I never found a reliable answer to.
It's going to depend very much on what you're selling. Unrenovated 3 bedroom shitbox? No. Brand new architectural place? Almost certainly.