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DIY Home Staging Returns 299% of Your Investment

By Donna Dazzo

Home Stager with Designed to Appeal, LLC

January 18, 2011 11:56 PM

Low cost, do-it-yourself home improvements produce a significant return on investment when a home is sold.

HomeGain just released the findings of their survey of 600 real estate agents nationwide to determine the top 10 low-cost (less than $5,000), do-it-yourself home improvements for people getting their home ready to sell.

Based upon return on investment (ROI), Home Staging ranked 3rd as the most profitable improvement that can be made to a home, yielding a 299% ROI. An average investment in home staging of $550 produced a $2,194 price increase.

Home staging as defined by the survey includes adding fresh flowers; removing personal items; reducing clutter; rearranging furniture; adding new props or furniture to enhance room/s; playing soft music; and hanging artwork on walls. A home staging checklist compiled by HomeGain offers more tips for making the home attractive to buyers so that they can envision themselves living there.

Cleaning and Decluttering ranked number 1, with a 586% ROI. Almost every real estate agent (99%) recommended this in the survey.

Cleaning and decluttering was followed by Lightening and Brightening which produced a 313% ROI. Lightening and Brightening include opening windows; cleaning windows and skylights inside and outside; replacing old curtains or removing curtains; removing other obstacles from windows blocking light; repairing lighting fixtures; and making sure windows open easily. 97% of real estate agents recommend this step.

80% of agents surveyed recommended home staging to their clients. Here are what a few had to say:

"We believe staging is so critical. We own our own staging company and provide a $3,000 staging for free as a part of our listing package." - Carl Medford, California Prudential Realty, Castro Valley, California

"Staging, I think, is the most important item when selling a home. I usually give my clients a free consultation, so no need to hire anyone. But if they hire someone, I think it's the best money they will ever spend. You need a neutral party who knows what homebuyers focus on when looking at homes." - Harry Martin, RE/MAX United, Escondido, California

"Homes that are "Priced to Sell" and "Staged" to look better than all other competitive listings are the homes that are selling in this challenging housing market." - David Jaffe, Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, Arlington Heights, Illinois

"I always tell clients to stage. It's more effective than price reductions and usually costs less in the long run." - Edward Sullivan, Massachusetts

Here are the full results of the survey:

For more information on this survey, as well as for definitions and homeowner checklists for each improvement, click here.

About the Author: Donna Dazzo is president and owner of Designed to Appeal, a home staging company serving New York City and the Hamptons. Designed to Appeal helps homeowners and real estate agents sell homes quickly and profitably, by expertly creating an environment that buyers want to live in. Designed to Appeal also helps homeowners not looking to sell with interior redesign, which involves using mostly what the homeowner already has. Donna writes frequently on home staging and interior decorating and design topics.


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Barbara Michaluk

Weichert Realtors | Phone Direct 240-506-2434 | 301-681-0550 office - Silver Spring, MD

Leisure World Specialist / Full Service REALTOR

Home staging has become mandatory in this market to prepare a home for sale. Sellers need to be mindful that the way they live in their home and the way it should look when it's for sale are different.

Jan 19, 2011 12:01 AM

Ginger Foust

Certified Staging Professional - Oakhurst, CA

Home Stager Oakhurst CA, Dream Interior Redesign & Staging

Donna I find this a bit difficult to decipher because I consider ALL of the items on HomeGains list to be part of HOME STAGING. When they list "staging", do they mean the work that we stagers do to showcase a house? Not sure that I could use these stats and I have distributed HomeGain materials in the past. Just thinking.....

Jan 19, 2011 06:14 AM

Janet Jones

Just Your Style Interiors, LLC - Kihei, HI

Home Staging, Interior Redesign Kihei, Maui, Hawaii

Donna--Thanks for this post. I'm delighted to know that the 2010 numbers are out. I do agree with Ginger (and I guess I had never thought about it that way)--all the things they list are part of staging, even if we can't get clients to agree to do them all!

Jan 19, 2011 08:39 AM

Donna Dazzo

Designed to Appeal, LLC - Manhattan, NY

Home Stager in the Hamptons & New York

Yes, I agree the other items are all part of staging, but you have to look at their definition of staging which Ive included in my article. The only overlap is decluttering, which they've included in their definition of staging, but also has its own category.

Jan 20, 2011 01:41 AM

Liz Murray

Renaissance Home Staging & Redesign - Chandler, AZ

Professional Home Stager

Donna, I think home staging has actually dropped in terms of the return from a few years ago. It also looks like the number of realtors suggesting home staging has dropped, too.

It would be great if 80% of the realtors suggested staging. With all of the homes bank owned in the Phoenix area, I don't think that study reflects the sentiments of the realtors in this market. This is a national average, and in this market, realtors have rejected the idea of staging, but that could be changing.

I also think that aside from statistics, Matthew Ferrerra's information on the demographic profiles of Generation X is pretty profound. He is is on the money. Literally. Lifestyle and buyer expectations are something to consider. Sellers need to understand that more than anything,.. Who is your target market?

And Realtors need to make sure they are at the top of their game in this market. There are no "short cuts" to a sale these days.

Jan 21, 2011 07:45 PM

Liz, yes you are correct, the numbers have dropped. The number of real estate agents recommending staging has dropped only slightly from 82% to 80%. The return from staging dropped from 586% to 299%, however, if you read the extended article home staging seems to be in the top few year after year but it's ranking changes around each year. This may be due to the difficulty in quantifying the ROI from staging since so many of the other items on the list are what we stagers consider staging, particularly the first two - Lightening and brightening and cleaning and decluttering.

Jan 22, 2011 12:54 AM

DIY Home Staging Returns 299% of Your Investment

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