? about staging a home for sale

No. They use their own furniture. You just have someone come in and rearrange it, clean up all the clutter, and make it nicer.

If you have a good realtor, staging the home is usually part of their services.

They advise you on what to remove and it gets packed up at stored somewhere. They advise you on small changes you can make to make the home more appealing to buyers.

Then, they often bring in things that make a big difference in a room. Sometimes it’s furniture. Sometimes art, flowers, accessories.
Sometimes it’s just for an open house, sometimes they leave the home that way the whole time it’s on the market.

Frankly, your sister has a shitty realtor. There’s no way any good realtor would have used the photos in her listing.

Look at the Facebook Page Lindsay Wilcox Howard Realtor.
She posts lots of examples of no cost staging that she does for her clients.

ETA to my prior post:

Some good examples are her posts from
Aug 3, 2021
July 27, 2021
June 22, 2021

Again, this should be included in a realtor’s services and I would certainly expect it in a realtor for a house at that price point.


This is a realtor who is local to you, so this isn’t a varies by region thing.
It’s a good realtor vs lazy realtor thing.

It depends. A real estate broker used to hire a stager and me to look at each house she listed. The stager used the homeowners’ own furnishings to stage the house. The houses usually had too much in them so he’d store pieces and box up a lot of random stuff. He often rearranged furniture. (I’d do a quick color consultation to advise if painting was needed in all or part of the house.)

It was a buyer’s market and the broker was smart. She spent her own money hiring us and if needed, painters. But it paid off. During a period when houses would go unsold for long time, or prices severely cut, her listings regularly sold very quickly—and weren’t underpriced. 

We had our home staged 20 years ago - it was 90% not our furniture.

We had 2 little kids and I was pregnant - we moved out of our house into a rental - stagers came in and completely redid interior and then house sold with multiple offers way over asking.

Basically every house for sale in Bay Area is completely staged it seems.

Our realtor had a company come in and give a booklet filled out for each room with what could stay. Thankfully we had already purchased a home before we put ours up for sale, so we had the weekend to move everything out of the house that needed to be moved prior to pictures and we sold right away, so we were lucky to only be without the few furniture pieces for a few days.

ETA:  The home we purchased was staged by a company and I know they paid 5k to have it staged for a weekend.  Kind of crazy.  And the furniture they staged it with was pretty old and had a distinctive smell.  The garage was still filled with the owner's stuff though.

I also think it depends on your market and price point. In my market (at least months ago when the houses were selling as soon as they were listed) you didn't need to stage in our price range (which is around $250,000-$375,000, which now is almost a starting price point in our area)... my realtor friend said all her houses have sold 'as is' in this range. And basically you really just needed to declutter, get rid of personal items, clean, make it pretty on your own, common sense stuff)... Higher the price of the house then more staging if you wanted.

We just sold our home. The realtor had us remove as much as we could. We had 1 recliner, an end table, and tv on the main floor. This floor had a kitchen, family room, living room, and 3 season room.

Upstairs were 4 bedrooms. The master had a full sized bed and nightstand in it.

Basement had nothing and it was finished with 2 extra rooms in it.

My husband was still working and living in the home while it was up for sale. Our home sold in 2 hours of it being listed.

I've had stagers for both the homes I owned. In addition to removing clutter, neutralizing decor, bringing in furniture/decor, etc, sometimes they will do things like painting a room that isn't an updated color or putting an updated area rug over a floor that isn't updated. It helps a lot both to get people into the house and to get them seeing themselves in your home once they are in. It can be hard sometimes not to take it personally -- I like my decor! I don't think that room is cluttered! -- but the goal is to sell.

We didn’t have a stager but got a storage unit and moved a lot of stuff out. It makes the house look larger. We also repainted several rooms to freshen them. You don’t want any clutter as you want people to be able to see past your stuff snd envision their things in your home. I think moving stuff into storage also helps when you actually move as a lot of your stuff is already packed. I loved having almost nothing on any surfaces to it made cleaning so much easier. It also made leaving so the house could be shown with only a few minutes notice easy to.

This was our experience and the realtor paid for the service.

It probably feels overwhelming and maybe unnecessary to your sister to clear out everything and rent a storage unit for her items but she’s moving and needs to start packing anyway. In the end it’s not much extra work, she’s just doing it earlier than she planned.

My realtor paid for the staging of my house.  They used a mix of my furniture and they brought some in.  The girl came to my house with the realtor and they walked through it, the realtor telling her what he liked of my stuff and what he wanted done.  Then I packed the majority of my things into pods. The stagers then came and brought in living room and family room furniture and accessories for the other rooms.  They hung pictures, put pillows and a comforter on my bed, and they even hung drapes in the living room and dining room.  That part surprised me.  They were very efficient.  It was two girls that have done this for about 6 years together.

To be honest, I wasn't sure staging the house was necessary.  I knew I was going to have most of my stuff out of the house anyway.  But seeing it after they staged it, I was impressed.  It did make a big difference over just the empty rooms.  

People looking at houses are weird.  Some come through an open house specifically to steal things.  They split up and one keeps the realtor busy with questions while the other pockets what they can carry.  I have even heard of a situation where they stuck a larger item into the bushes in the back yard and returned to get it after dark.

Also, parents don't really monitor their children.  I had kids jumping on my bed, climbing into the closets, opening drawers, etc.  My neighbors were here and told me what was going on during the open house.  I had a friend have some expensive necklaces stolen from her home, another had medication taken.  I made sure all of my personal things were either locked up or I put them in the car with me when I left for a showing.  She is going to be packing up anyway, so she may as well get it done now so that the house is devoid of personal things.  You want the buyer to picture their stuff in the house.  If you have too much stuff in there, it is harder for them to do.

 
It could be, or it could be an older realtor who hasn't bought into the modern way of staging to sell. Or do you think your sister might have resisted the idea of staging the house and clearing things out? But that still doesn't excuse the cluttered rooms. Clutter never reads as well-maintained to a buyer. 

FWIW, it bugs me that the realtor's information isn't on the listing linked. I was curious to see what other listing she has and if they are staged.

As others have said, staging can be with your own furniture but really needs to be dramatically edited so show the space.

Is your sister looking at properties for her move yet? Any way you could talk through what looks appealing to her in those listing as I doubt she will be drawn to a cluttered house. Or take a serious look at the photos of her comps and gently lead her to the idea of boxing up half her things.

FWIW, we had 2 properties in our neighborhood for sale. The first was empty and looked tired (carpet/paint) and sat for four weeks before dropping their price. The second listing came on the market more than $100,000 higher, beautifully staged with a major renovation flaw. I told DH the second would sell first because of the staging (despite the flaw) and it did. The first house ended up with a second price drop and another couple weeks on the market.