Preparing Homes For Sale in Rockland and Bergen

Free monthly newsletter with advice for selling homeowners.

We can help you prepare your home for sale. To sell your house in weeks not months, start with an evaluation by a professional home stager.

Real Estate Agents: Staging Works!

The stager’s role is to prepare and present the house so the listing agent’s marketing activities are successful. In a difficult market, the time on market difference between staged and unstaged houses is magnified because buyers have more choices. They weed out poorly presented houses on line before visiting them. The impact has been growing as more buyers search on line.

2009 vs 1999 Stats: Less Time on Market Now

In an article describing home staging, USA Today reported (October 27, 2006) on a much-cited 1999 survey by Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage that verified that home staging increases sales prices and decreases time on the market. When Coldwell Banker looked at 2,772 properties in eight U.S. cities, they found that the staged homes sold, on average, in half the time of the non-staged homes, and the sellers of the staged homes ended up with 6.3% more than asking price. But that was 10 years ago. What benefits has professional home staging brought to sellers since then?

In 2007 and 2008 surveys by the Real Estate Staging Association (RESA), unstaged vacant homes that had been on the market and unsold for an average of 131 days (2007) and 190 days (2008) were taken off the market, staged and relisted. After staging they sold in an average of 42 days (2007) and 28 days (2008), 68% and 85% less time than the same unstaged properties before their withdrawal. Despite the difficult 2008 housing market, staging had a huge beneficial impact on sales.

Occupied homes that were staged before their first open house sold in an average of 39 days (2007) and 24 days (2008). Vacant homes that were staged before their first open house sold in an average of 44 days (2007) and 33 days (2008).

And what about today's very tough market? A 2009 StagedHomes.com survey of over 1000 homes (55% vacant, 45% occupied) that were sold from November 2008 through May 2009 across the US and Canada found that unstaged homes spent an average of 182 days on market before sale, while the 94.8% of staged homes (staged by Staged Homes-trained professional stagers) that sold spent an average of 37 days on market before sale. That's 80% less time on the market for professionally staged homes.

Role of the Internet

What accounts for the increasing impact of professional home staging over the past 10 years? More buyers are searching on line: 90% of all home buyers used the Internet to search for homes in 2009, according to the National Association of Realtors. And they simply weed out houses that don't look great to them in on-line photos. As a result, unstaged houses just don’t get the same traffic. Unstaged houses don’t show as well during visits either, so they draw fewer offers. Result: Unstaged houses spend longer on the market. If you want to sell a house fast, don’t take marketing photos until the house has been staged.

Virtual Tours of Staged Homes

Staging implementation is an important part of what we do at The Staging Prince because it connects a prospective buyer to the house -- it makes him want to move in -- and leads to an offer. Staging is not a single "thing" or set of rigid rules. It is neither decluttering nor decorating. Part common sense and part art, it is designed to achieve a goal, as you'll see in this 60-second virtual tour from our home page:

Virtual tours like this one help sell houses too. We can prepare them (pan and zoom with still photos) -- branded and unbranded -- for the real estate agents we work with, from the photos we take after staging. Call us for details.

The Staging Prince is a homeowners’ advisory firm headed by Jerry White. Jerry has been professionally trained in the science and art of home staging through the Academy of Staging and Redesign, and he works with a group of licensed and insured professionals who can accomplish whatever is needed to get a client’s house to market and showcase its best features.