With the number of houses for sale reaching a 20 year low, it’s truly a great time to be selling a home.
As millennials age into the part of their life where they’ll be needing a place to settle down, you’ll find it’s a seller’s market. If you want to make sure your house looks great online and in photos, you need to find out how much does it cost to stage a house.
Staging a house is helpful in that it can help potential buyers visualize what it would be like to live there. By adding furnishings and small touches that show off the home’s style, you can aid the imagination of potential buyers.
If you’re wondering what it will cost you to stage your property, think about these 5 things.
1. Judge By Size
The price of how much it’ll cost to stage your house for sale will depend on the size of the home. Larger homes with multiple bedrooms are going to increase the price.
You also need to consider how many of the rooms you feel like staging. Adding a couch and an end table here and there is one thing, but if you’re trying to stage a two-car garage and a parlor, you could be spending quite a lot. The cost of staging will increase to the extent you feel you need to stage the home.
Staging a mansion will, of course, be more expensive than a studio apartment.
2. Measure According To Your Market
You can stage with inexpensive, borrowed, or cheap furniture if you just desperately need something for the photos. You can even move furniture from one bedroom to the next if you’ve got a change of sheets to make it look like a different room.
However, if you’re in a high end, upscale market, you might have trouble faking it. You might need to think about hiring an interior decorator or at least running some ideas by one. They can look at the market, the style of the home, and make some suggestions for the direction you should go.
This can cost you thousands. If it’s more important that you sell quickly, you could end up saving money on a property that could depreciate or incur tax bills for the months it sits vacant. You can visit Myers & Myers Real Estate and see what their pros suggest.
3. Consider Hiring a Pro
If you’ve never staged a house for sale before, a professional can help you to visualize what you need to do to get rid of the property. They’ll be able to make suggestions that might even be less expensive than if you’d done it on your own.
A professional knows what is trendy, what buyers are looking for, and what your market demands. They know how to set up a home so that it looks great in photos and from every angle when your potential buyers arrive. While it might seem like a daunting investment up front, reserving a few thousand for a staging professional could get the house sold and teach you some new tricks.
They can even suggest landscaping ideas to make your home look good from every angle.
4. Decide Whether To Buy Or Rent Furniture
When you need to stage your house to sell it, you’ll need a lot of furniture and equipment to make it look legit. While you might think you can just throw some furniture into a room, snap a few photos, and get your listing up, you might need to invest more than you think.
When you’re staging a house, you need to have furniture that is simple and matches the kind of house you’re selling. You need to decide whether you want to buy new furniture, rent some, or use some of your own.
While some people decide to use their own furniture, that means that the next place they’re living with could be unfurnished. This is an uncomfortable prospect. Also, if you have multiple properties, you’re listing, this just isn’t feasible.
Other people rent furniture to stage their house for sale. This is a good idea if you can get a low rate. Your real estate agent might be able to suggest someone.
If you’re making a big splash in a local market, it might be good to buy some of the furniture outright. While you don’t have to spend a lot to make a home look good, you should buy a quality of furniture that matches your local market. Remember that you can fake it here and there, like replacing a bed with an air mattress making it so you could use that bed again and again.
5. Think About Including Everything As a Feature
If you’ve got an eye for interior design, you could consider including everything in the home as a feature of the sale. If you’ve taken the time to shop carefully for the perfect furnishings to match the style of your home and the market you’re trying to capture, this tactic might work.
If you’re selling inexpensive starter homes or condos to a younger market, they may appreciate that you’ve taken the time to track down good furniture. Offer it to potential buyers. While they’ll surely have some furnishings of their own, it could be a winning prospect.
Moving into a new home can be stressful, especially for young professionals or new parents. Moving into a house that has everything already included in it takes one more thing off of their plate, at least for the time being. This way, you could buy good furniture and then make that money back.
How Much Does It Cost To Stage A House Varies By Property
Each home is different in style and price. Because the market has such a strong influence on property costs, knowing how much does it cost to stage a house will take some experience. You’ll need to see what other homes like yours go for and who the buyers are.
If you want to stage your house with your own DIY furniture, be sure to check out our guide to making cool DIY tables.