Pros and Cons of Hiring a Home Stager When Selling Your Home

Want to know the secret to selling your home more quickly and for a higher price than many other homeowners? It's called "staging" and every homeowner has the possibility of upping their home selling process by choosing to stage their home.

You might have felt how clean, crisp, and modern department or furniture stores feel. They often leave the average buyer wanting to transplant the entire showroom into their own home. A home stager can help you accomplish this same effect for a reasonable cost. Their expertise lies in working with your layout to emphasize the strengths of your home’s interior and increase your home’s value to the buyer’s eye.

This makes your home a clearer and far easier choice for any potential buyer by helping them envision what life could be like in their new home (your home). Think about it; a home stager may cost a little bit of extra money, but the return is thousands of dollars more in your pocket when you sell your home.

Costs of a Home Stager

The first step after hiring a home stager is an initial design consultation.

The first step of hiring a home stager is to go through an initial design consultation. Generally, the bigger your home is the more you’ll pay to stage. This is where your stager will propose some designs based on observations of your home’s layout and what they think should be addressed. This typically costs between $300 and $600. Once your home stager starts working on your home, the typical rate is $500 to $600 per month, per room. 

Benefits of Home Staging

Effective home staging invites potential homebuyers to envision themselves living in your house.

 A good home stager will know exactly how to use shadows and lighting to make rooms look larger, cover up flaws, and make the home feel a lot newer. Stagers for homes follow similar principles you would follow if you were preparing your house for guests or  or working on improvements to increase your home value.  

The point is to encourage people to feel like this home is “their” home. They also know how to make use of your existing fixtures and furniture to bring out the highlights of every single room. Once a home stager has worked their magic, your home’s unappealing “lived in” feel will transform into something more showroom-ey. 

An Improved Walk-through Experience

The benefits of this transformation are of course plain for all to see. A home that looks good on the inside and outside is going to be a far more appealing prospect to any potential buyer. On top of just making things look better, real estate staging can also make practical improvements to your home. Namely, they can rearrange furniture and fixtures to allow foot traffic to flow more easily, therefore making better use of the available space. 

Even small additions can significantly improve the look and feel of your home.

Updated Items in Your Home

Home stagers will also have an eye for what looks outdated, tired, or in need freshening up. They may recommend that certain rooms be repainted, furniture be replaced, or that you toss out the worn-out area rug you’ve had for fifteen years. Special attention will be paid to central rooms in your homes such as the kitchen and living room. These are of course places that a potential homebuyer will be using every day so it is important that they look nice, functional, and usable. 

Improved Layout and Flow  

After years of living in your home, you may have gotten used to certain impractical floor layouts and might not notice rooms where the available square footage is being used poorly. A real estate stager is an expert in spotting those kinds of deficiencies and nipping them in the bud. 

You might also have started not to notice broken fixtures, damaged brick masonry, lightbulbs that are out, or other minor deferred maintenance items. Sometimes you need a fresh eye to point those things out. This is of course quite important since any and all flaws are going to reduce your home’s value regardless of how trivial they may seem on a day-to-day basis. 

Most homes have so many details that it can be easy to forget about flaws.

Small Changes, Big Profit

Beyond the stuff that’s already in home, there may also be ways for you to improve your interior with some small additions. A home stager knows that even small things like a tea candle here, a mirror there, or an ornamental vase in an empty corner can make all the difference when it comes to sprucing things up. After all, it’s best to inject your home with flair without personalizing things too much, and a home stager knows exactly how to tread that line. 

Depersonalization

A home that has been lived in for years tends to take on the character of its residents. This is of course unsurprising. You have unique tastes and interests so it’s only natural that you express that with your interior decor. However, it is a good idea to remove those personalized touches from your home if you plan to sell it or rent it out. 

Decorative items that are meaningful to you, as beautiful as they may be, will only serve to distract buyers from seeing their life in your walls. In fact, these kinds of details can be a big (although at times unconscious) turn-off for potential buyers. Fortunately, a real estate stager makes this process a whole lot easier.  

Limitations of a Stager

As with all things, real estate staging cannot fix every defect in your home. If your home has a particular odor, like kitty litter or perhaps even mold, a home staging will not be able to help you. Stagers for homes are unlikely to hold the relevant qualifications to deal with such challenges and so you will have to turn to other specialists for these kinds of problems. Also, while it should go without saying, please note that a real estate stager will not help you to conceal defects or flaws which must be disclosed to any buyer by law. 

Major Issues Are For Other Professionals

For example, a professional cleaner or relevant specialist will be the go-to person for major issues that constitute an immediate health risk. The same goes for structural issues such as foundation cracks. Additionally, a small room is always going to be a small room. A home stager might be able to make a cramped space feel a bit bigger and airy, but they can’t help with increasing its ceiling height or adding a window for increased lighting.

Home Value Dependent on Bigger Factors

Lastly, there is no guarantee that real estate staging will "up" the value of your home significantly. There are many factors that can affect a home’s value including location, home size, the age of your home, whether the home was renovated, and interest rates just to name a few. To be sure, a home stager can positively affect this by maximizing your home’s usable space or improving curb appeal. Just bear in mind that a value boost isn’t always a done deal without some major improvements. 

The best way to work with a real estate stager is by trying to do the most with less, like with Feng Shui. By maintaining realistic goals, you and your home stager can work together towards a profitable outcome.   

A Stager Is Not a Market Guru

Don’t expect your home stager to be an expert on the ups and downs of the housing market. A home stager’s job is not to offer professional advice on market trends. For instance, a home stager is not the person to go to if you’re trying to find out whether home values in your neighborhood are falling or rising. They also cannot forecast how much money your home will sell for. 

Get Started

A beautifully staged home is just a few taps or clicks away.

If you’re itching to improve the showroom appeal of your home before the open house and increase chances for a higher profit, you’ve probably started searching for the perfect home stager for you on Contractors.com. You are sure to find value in adding them to your budget.