The Real Estate Staging Association® (RESA®), is the professional association for real estate stagers. RESA® defines staging as “The preparation of residential or commercial properties for sale in the real estate marketplace.” While accurate, we believe staging is much more than that.

As a seller, you want to sell your home for as much money, and as quickly, as possible. To achieve this, buyers need to develop an emotional connection to your home. They need to see themselves living there.

As much as we love our homes, our things can get in the way of a buyer connecting with the home. Your furniture and accessories may not be arranged in a way to highlight home features. In staging, we alleviate clutter and minimize display of personal items. And arrange furniture and accessories to spotlight the lifestyle potential for each space.

We want buyers to visualize themselves in the staged home. They imagine walking into the kitchen each morning to get their first cup of coffee. They see their family and friends celebrating special occasions around the grill or table. They see the future in rooms for children, home offices, hobbies, and more. These emotional connections have potential to influence purchasing decisions more than budgets and spreadsheets.

Today’s buyers do plenty of online research before deciding to see a home in person. If your listing photos don’t put your home in the best light, potential buyers are likely to click away from your listing and go on to the next one. Staging highlights the best features of your home. These highlights come through in listing photos. The result is your home makes buyer’s list of homes to see in-person.

We typically make a house ours when we fill it with our interests. Examples include family photos, trophies & certificates, and home gyms. While these elements make a home ours, they’re distracting to buyers looking for emotional connections of their own.

Staging sells homes quickly and for top dollar. It does this through bright and beautiful listing images that bring buyers to the home where they make those emotional connections.

Home staging is more than cleaning, painting, and fluffing pillows. Stagers study buyer demographics to make listings appealing to specific buyers. Let’s say a neighborhood is most popular for young families. In these circumstances, Stagers include homework desks in children’s rooms. For a community of retirees, the Stager might create a cookie decorating area for visiting grandchildren. Other Stager tasks may include some or all of the following.

• De-clutter (we call it “editing”)
• Maximize space with furnishings that draw the eye from room to room and suggest function for various spaces
• Highlight the best features of the home
• Marginalize less desirable areas
• Include special vignettes like reading nooks by a window that might include lamps, lap blankets, and reading glasses

The core of all our services is the home staging consultation and report.

We talk with the seller and real estate agent to learn about your project. We want to understand seller goals (e.g. sell fast as possible or sell fast at top dollar), special features of the home, neighborhood demographics, problem areas and staging budget.

Next, we tour the home to see firsthand where staging can focus the buyer’s attention on highlights and architectural features of the home. We make notes of items causing the home to look cluttered and personal items to remove.

The result is a report that details every step required to prepare the home from the curb to the attic. The staging report contains some or all the following:

• Tasks required to prepare the canvas that is the home itself (repairs, painting, landscaping, etc.)
• What to add, remove, or store
• Arrangement of furnishings to spotlight the best features of the home
• Vetted vendors where needed
• Before images with links and illustrations to assist sellers with preparation tasks

If you want to be known as an agent that gets top dollar for your customers, yes. With a few exceptions, sellers want the most money they can get when selling their home. Listing photos of staged homes get buyers past online viewing and in the door. Once in the home, staging welcomes the buyer home and creates an emotional connection. These emotional connections have potential to influence purchasing decisions more than budgets and spreadsheets.

Absolutely. A buyer visualizing themselves in the home is key to selling a home for the most money. Staged home listing photos get buyers off their computer and out to see the home. Once they arrive, they are welcomed into an environment that says this is your home as opposed to an un-staged home where they may feel uncomfortable and that they are intruders in someone else’s home. While home buying is a financial transaction based on all kinds of numbers. It is also an emotional decision. In fact, the emotions can overrule financial considerations and lead to higher priced offers.

According to the Real Estate Staging Association®, budgeting .05% to 1% of listing price is a good estimate for selling a home fast and for the most money. While a staged home is not guaranteed to sell for more, staging statistics have shown they sell faster than un-staged homes and often for a significantly higher sales price.

Prices for our home staging consultation and report are on our Services page. Occupied and vacant home staging are dependent on size and luxury level of the home.

Yes. Our Staging Report provides a stand-alone road map to prepare a home for listing. We know that each of us is emotionally attached to the details of our homes. Buyers rarely view through the same lens. The point is that it is highly unlikely for sellers and buyers to have the emotional vision. We will gently help de-personalize and help get the home sold fast so your sellers can move on to their next chapter. We always say, “Staging isn’t a luxury. It’s economics!