Home Sellers: Is Home Staging Worth the Cost?
If you are interested in selling your house you may have heard the advice that you should consider home staging. When you are trying to sell your house and make money the last thing you probably want to do is spend more money on it.
So, is it really worth paying for home staging?
What is Home Staging?
Home staging is arranging and decorating your rooms in a way that makes them appeal the most to potential buyers. It can be as simple as moving around your furniture to create better traffic flow, to bringing in extra decorations and extras to help show the buyer what type of lifestyle they could enjoy at the house.
What’s it Going to Cost You?
There is a wide range of pricing that you can spend on home staging. Professional home stagers can charge anywhere from $150 to $500 to complete a consultation walk through of your house. The price to stage a house varies greatly on the size of the house and whether or not it is occupied. Houses that are occupied during the selling process on average cost $3,000 – $6,500 to stage. If your house is unoccupied, it will be more like $4,500 to $8,000.
If your stager is willing to work with the items that are already in your house you will be able to save money. However, it is not uncommon for stagers to feel the need to purchase or rent items that will help your house entice buyers to make an offer. The more they have to buy or rent, the higher your price will be.
So, Is Home Staging Worth It?
Those can seem like big numbers when you trying to sell, but time and time again it has been proven that houses that are staged sell faster and for more money than un-staged homes. Studies have found that staged houses sell for 20% more money and 88% faster than other homes. This means the money you spend on home staging can payoff in the speed and sales price of your real estate transaction.
How Can You Spend Less on Home Staging?
The price starts to add up if you are staging your entire house, but often times this isn’t necessary to entice a buyer to place an offer. You can try cutting your staging budget in half by focusing on the key rooms in the house. These are the rooms where homeowners spend the majority of their time: kitchen, living room and master bedroom. You want to use these rooms to paint a picture for the buyer of the life they could be living.
If you are unable to afford the full services of a home stager, you could also find a stager that has a reasonable price on consultations. Many home stagers will perform a consultation where they will walk through your house with you and make recommendations about what changes you can make to help your house show better. Once they leave, it will be up to you to make the changes.
Home staging has proven over and over again that it provides a great return on investment. The money you spend on staging can be recouped in the sales price of your house or the speed of which it sells, therefore reducing your carrying costs. Of course, it comes down to your financial situation and what you are comfortable spending.