Realtors Say Staging a Home Increased Offered Prices, Cut Marketing Time

Does staging really work? This was one of the home buying and selling topics covered in a new National Association of Realtors® (NAR) survey, and the answer seems to be “yes”.

Eight-two percent of buyer reps said home staging made it easier for a buyer to imagine the property as their future home. The staging also seems to increase how much buyers were willing to spend on a property. 23 percent of shopper reps said home staging increased dollar value on offer by between 1 and 5 percent compared to similar homes in the market that weren’t staged.

The reaction of the sales representatives was almost identical: 23 percent stated a price increase of 1 to 5 percent for offers for staged houses and 18 percent of salespeople stated that the price increase was between 6 and 10 percent. None of the seller’s brokers reported that home staging had a negative impact on the dollar value of the property, and 31 percent said home staging greatly reduced the time a home spent on the market.

“Staging a home helps consumers see the full potential of a particular space or property,” said Jessica Lautz, vice president of Demographics and Behavioral Insights at NAR. “It shows the house in its best light and helps potential buyers imagine its various options.”

The changed sales methods caused by the pandemic, such as video tours, could have increased the importance of the staging. 83 percent of buyer representatives said that it has been more important to have photos for their offers since the beginning of the pandemic. 74 percent of shoppers said the same thing about videos, and 73 percent said that with COVID-19, it is more important to provide virtual tours for their deals.

“At the beginning of the pandemic, personal open house tours either went back or were completely discontinued, so that buyers in search of their dream home were dependent on photos and virtual tours,” said Lautz. “These features become even more important as housing stock is limited and buyers need to strategically plan their personal tours.”

Opinions on the parts of a house to be staged differ, with the living room (90 percent) and kitchen (80 percent) being the most common, closely followed by parents’ bedrooms (78 percent) and dining rooms (69 percent). Since many workers were forced to work from home due to the pandemic, 39 percent staged a home office or office space.

Television doesn’t help agents with staging or other aspects of home buying as it affects the way buyers view a potential property. Realtors surveyed said a typical 10 percent of buyers felt that homes should look the way they appear on TV shows, and 63 percent said buyers wanted their homes to look like homes that were staged on TV. “The magic of television can result in a home change happening in a short 60 minute timeframe, which is an unrealistic standard,” said NAR President Charlie Oppler.

Television presentations of the home buying process also distort expectations. 71 percent of agents said that television presentations influenced their business with unrealistic or elevated expectations. Sixty-one percent said television has higher expectations of how homes will look, while 27 percent credit television shows as generating more educated home buyers and sellers.

Forty-five percent of realtors said they hadn’t seen any change in the proportion of buyers planning to convert a home over the past five years, while 42 percent said they had. Fifty-nine percent said more buyers are planning to remodel a home in the past five years, while 34 percent said they hadn’t noticed any change. The realtors surveyed said that typically 25 percent of buyers planning a remodel will do so within the first three months of buying their home.