According to The Mortgage Reports website, staged homes sell 73 percent faster. If you are planning to sell your home in the near future, you should start preparing it now. Staging a home is done to help the house appeal to the greatest number of buyers and promote a fast sale. Stripping your personal life out of the home allows prospective buyers to imagine it with their family’s belongings.

What is Professional Staging?
Staging is a technique that allows buyers to see a home’s potential. When each room in a home is stripped to the basic essentials, the distraction that decorative pieces add is gone. Staging a home allows it to be presented as a neutral environment, and buyers are able to picture it with their own possessions being added.
Professional stagers arrange rooms to look large and inviting and may suggest certain pieces of your furniture need to be stored. If an owner is moving out before the house sells or is listed, a professional stager may add pieces from their own inventory or use rental furniture to stage the home.
The price for professionally staging a home will vary depending on location. There is an initial design consultation, which can range from $350 to $750 plus a monthly fee for each staged room that can cost an additional $500 to $600. The most important rooms to stage are the living room, dining room, kitchen, home office, and master bedroom. Most professional stagers require a three-month contract. The total for each staged room and the consultation fee can add up to several thousand dollars. You will also have the expense of a storage container for your belongings that will be removed from the house.
Do Your Own Staging
Staging your own home does require your time and money, but it will save on the overall cost. All the things that make your house a "home" to your family should be removed and placed in storage.
- Personal photographs, trophies, awards, and other memorabilia should be carefully wrapped and prepared for moving.
- Pack up off-season clothing and outerwear to give closets a more roomy appearance. Bedrooms should look as large as possible.
- Toys, sporting equipment, storage containers, desks and extra chairs should be moved into storage.
- The display of your photography on the dining room wall must be removed in spite of your talent and pride in your work.
- Antique kitchen utensils used for decorative purposes distract from the size of your kitchen and make it look smaller.
- Collections of every kind need to be packed up for their new home before prospective buyers look at your house.


What Else Does Staging Include?
Whether you hire a professional stager or do it yourself, you will likely need to:
- Paint the interior of the house
- Replace some outlet and light switch covers
- Change outdated lighting fixtures
- Put new knobs and drawer pulls in kitchen
- Remove old blinds and complete other similar small projects.
Stage the Bathroom!
- Hang new towels in the bathroom
- Replace old sink and bathtub faucets
- Put up a new shower curtain, and
- Add one or two new throw rugs.
All of this requires an investment in money and time, but it is worth the outcome when the home sells.
Staging Hints
When doing staging yourself, remember these hints to help you arrange your home in a way that is most appealing to a potential buyer.
• Arrange furniture around the natural focal point of the room such as a fireplace or bay window.
• Use neutral colors in rooms.
• Remove all personal items including family photos.
• Don't crowd a room with unneeded pieces of furniture such as extra chairs and small tables. It will make the room look smaller.
• If you have moved out, stage the home with some rental furniture. Empty homes look small and unattractive.
• Flaws are conspicuous when a home is empty. The need for minor cosmetic fixes may appear to be more serious repairs.

Staging a home doesn't create illusions, it simply opens up the space to show the prospective buyer what the property has to offer. Whether you do it yourself or hire a professional, you'll benefit from staging your home. A quicker sale and a higher selling price are the benefits you'll reap.
