Hi Justin,

I am a stager. I just spent 12 hours yesterday installing hardware and ironing draperies in a modest home in Lafayette, Louisiana, We cleaned light fixtures & windows, removed nails and patched holes, and touch-up nicked paint. There was another stager with me. It is a two year old vacant home.

People hire stagers because property preparation is hard work that is time-intensive. We also spent 12 hours with three people prepping the exterior of the same home for curb appeal last week, painting & adding shutters and landscaping.  That is 60 hours so far, just in prep...no furnishings or accessories.

But like yourself, we have marketing overhead, auto expenses, affililiation dues, etc, plus inventory storage and insurance for our company. So, as you can see, minimum wage is not going to cut it.

Not to mention we are seasoned professionals in the field of decorating & staging. It's not just some paint and some window treatments... it's carefully chosen items designed specifically to enhance the image and architectural features of one particular house, installed and applied correctly, using the proper professional tools and techniques.

Typically, staging requires design time, selecting and acquiring furniture and accessories, loading them with extreme care so as not to damage them, unloading them on-site, installing them, and then waiting to get them back, only to uninstall, re-pack and load them un-pack and unload AGAIN back into storage.

It's not easy. If it was, everyone's home would look snazzy all the time.

If you can get someone to do all that work for a grand, I'd go for it. Staging works. It's not nearly as risky to client's equity as traditional marketing and reduction strategies...

~Michelle

Hi Justin,

I understand it seems high, however,please consider this very realistic scenario if you wanted to stage a house: Let's say you see that you have a simple staging and you do not want to pay those absurd staging fees. You actually happen to have a bunch of furniture and accessories, in storage, enough to complete a whole 3bdrm, 2 ba house, so you are just going to use that furniture. 

Just to move it from point A to point B is going to cost you $332.43,  to rent the U-Haul to get it there. That is just you a truck, and furniture pads and dollies, putting only 50 miles on the odometer.

Now, you know you need help, to load it in, and load it out. So you found one guy, super cheap, for $80 a day plus a burger for lunch, for both load in and load out at the site, is $90.

You originally paid $25,000 for your furniture and accessories. It's nice and new stuff, but not super-nice, and you have no definitive time when you will have it back. Could be two weeks, could be four months. And some of it may not come back in the shape it went in. So what is that worth to you to loan it out?  You are a nice guy,  so you intend to charge 2% of the cost of your stuff per month to rent. That's only $500 a month, a full 18% below the fees of a real furniture rental place.

You and you alone pack up all the bedding, art, vases, plants, pillows and decorative items the night before, carefully, so the cheap labor guy doesn't break them in transition. This takes you three hours to package and label. Remember, we are talking a full house 3bdrm 2 ba, so that's about 20 pieces of art, 100 decorative items (vases, plants, lamps, candles, etc), 30 pillows, 4 area rugs, AT LEAST.

At 7 am you go get the truck, and the guy meets you back at the house. You both load the truck. That takes another 2 hours.

You arrive on-site, and unload. That takes two more hours.

Then, you arrange the furniture and erect the beds. Two more hours down. Your helper has put in his 8 hours, and he goes home to his wife and kids.

Then, you hang the art and accessorize. That's three more hours.

Then you return the truck.

You personally have put in 14 hours of hard labor once the truck is finally returned.

And don't forget....you have to do it all again when the house sells. Your costs will be far, are over about $825 no gas, no tax.

But the furniture rental will SAVE you, right? You didn't enforce the industry-wide three month minimum, and the house sold in two months. So it took you $25,000 in inventory 14 hours of your physical labor initially, and about 8 more hours to get the truck again and the guy, to retrieve and re-store your items, $825.00 in moving costs, to warrant $1824.86  in fees.

And that is if everything runs perfectly smooth, the furniture fits well, and you had no shopping to do for specific pieces, and absolutely not one second of design or planning time.

That seems like an awful lot of work, risk, capital, and waiting for your stuff to come back to you in good condition, for $1000. If you paid yourself a ultra-crummy $15 an hour, you get to pull yourself $330. That gives you a whopping $570 in profit. And if a piece or two shows up ruined, you are not a professional stager and have no insurance to cover the damages, no legal contract to seek a remedy, and it will cost you every cent you made to replace that dining room table.

So, like I said, if you have someone who is charging you $1000 per month flat fee to stage, jump on it.  They might not be in business much longer!!!!!

Thanks for bearing with me through all of that. But that is the reality of staging one house in one day, and de-staging on another day. 

And staging does sell houses faster, the statistics bear that out, or major markets wouldn't be using it. Click Here and scroll to the bottom of the page for the latest 2008 statistics.

Best of luck to you!
~Michelle

Hi Lenn,

Actually, it is pretty hard to remove the built-ins and upgrades I suggest as a stager.

When I tell someone they to replace an existing metal awning with something more in line with the price point of a house & neighborhood to increase curb appeal, I assure you the structure is not portable.

Or upgraded staircase railings on the interior.

Or Silestone counter tops.

It is a common misconception that all we do is paint things and add pillows and art. Staging is not all foof. A lot of it is bring a house out of the 70's or 80's. You can't do that without suggesting and choosing the PROPER upgrades, which comprises a fair portion of a stager's work.

Some stagers, I am sure, never venture into the land of upgrades, but not many. We have to have that knowledge of what buyers truly desire, and get the house up to snuff in that regard.

We most certainly do add actual value. As a stager, one of my clients recently added $45,000 worth of suggested upgrades, renovating a kitchen and 3 bathrooms, all in preparation for sale. I don't see any way that is not going to get them a better actual appraisal.

~Michelle

Whoops... almost forgot...

Regarding stats. I personally staged a house, previously on the market for 6 months, no offers, which sold to the first buyer who saw it after staging, at full asking price.

I call that a hole in one. The staging MAY POSSIBLY have had some influence there, I do believe.

Another custom home, on the market for TWO YEARS, sold within one week of simply staging the  the exterior only, again, full asking price.

The stats may be astounding, but we specialize in astounding people with faster sales resulting in more equity, than the "It will sell when it the price gets low enough" plan. The way sellers present the home is a HUGE factor.

Investors may love ugly houses, but buyers prefer to buy move-in ready property.

~Michelle