Would you need to pay a professional stager to come in and do this to your home when you're ready to sell it?

You said it all with (common sense) how many people today really have any?
Not many in my experience.

“Wow, the room surely looks awesome when you turn the lights on!”

S/he did arrange the space and decluttered a bit , but all images are based on “make minor changes, turn on the light, and zoom in.”

The rooms sure look better, but you don’t need a pro for this, just wobble your head a bit and there you have it.

I’d have a hard time because that minimalist look is just not my style! I think I could do it, though. I would just hate living in such a sterile place until the house sold. But…I would do it.

As @Sneki95 said, most of the difference is in the lighting. It’s amazing what people will waste money on if they are told they need it.

One of the biggest mistakes people make when showing a house is leaving all the clutter. Even if the buyer is comfortable with clutter, they want their own clutter.

So instead of having four appliances (a coffeemaker, a toaster, a microwave, a blender) and a knife block out on a counter, you put that all away so you can show off the spacious counter tops.

A professional also knows to shift furniture around so that it “opens up” an area. The backyard looked cozy and conversational with the two benches facing each other in the before picture, but moving the Adirondack chairs there made it look spacious, all spiffed up with the bright colorful pillows.

It would be a pain to put the coffeemaker, a toaster, and microwave away everytime you wanted to show a house. Especially the microwave.

I agree with the assessment of the back yard, but I wouldn’t buy expensive chairs just for show. I realize we could take them with us, but I’d be more likely to paint the benches and put throw pillows on them. Whatever I can do for the least amount of money!

@Dutchess_III But with the coffee maker and toaster out, you are making it look like there is no counter space. You want to make all areas look spacious. I can’t stand clutter and if I walked into a house that had stuff everywhere, I probably wouldn’t buy it.

@Dutchess_III That is why stagers have a warehouse of furniture to pull out of storage. When i sold my house, everything was out before the stager came in.

You don’t want a microwave out on a counter. You are trying to sell a house. Go without the microwave for a few weeks while the house is shown.

Both of my houses were on the market for over a year and I had decluttered this one bigly and took the advice of the Realtor for furniture placement and so forth, but it never sold. (It was the Realtor I went to work for last year actually, so now I’m not surprised that it didn’t sell. He’s an idiot. His advice for getting the house ready was good, but he’s a moron otherwise.) We finally pulled the the last one off, and still live here. When I was house hunting it really didn’t bother me that you could tell that people lived there, as long as everything was clean. I’m able to look past all of that. However, the bedroom of a teenaged boy of one house I looked at had nude pictures all over the wall. I’m out!

I didn’t know about the warehouses @zenvelo. That’s interesting. Also, did you go some place else to live until the house sold?

@Dutchess_III Yes, my ex and I had both moved out. The house needed work to get it ready for sale: painting, some carpet, small repairs. My ex did not take care of the house while living there.

In some parts of the country, staging is de riiguer. In places like Kansas, probably not. I like to think I could do it myself, but often, staged homes do look more attractive.

If you really want to sell your home then you stage it, to look more spacious and attractive, even if it’s a huge pain in the ass you give the customer what they want and are looking for if not you don’t sell.

When I was selling my first home I was still running a daycare out of it! I made those kids work pretty hard to help me keep it spotless.

Oh, I’m not question whether or not a house should be prepped for selling. I’m only asking if you’d need to hire a professional or if you could do it yourself.

Real estate agents bring in stagers here as a matter of course. They’ve got warehouses full of furniture and accessories, though one local guy posted an ad in our facebook group looking for wine bottles. He had a gig staging an enormous house that had a 500 bottle wine rack that was empty. Neighbours gave him their empties and he gave them vouchers for a show of some sort. The photos of the full (of empties) wine rack was impressive. The house went for something in excess of $10,000,000.

I don’t have a warehouse of modern furniture to put into my house. Staging on our block probably makes the difference between $800,000 and $1,000,000 so I’m good with letting someone make the house look like I don’t live here. Luckily houses tend to sell in 1 – 3 days so it’s only a few days of inconvenience. Go to a hotel for the weekend of open houses, Then go home and wait for the offers.

I agree that staging a house is important.

I was a professional home stager for years, mostly vacant homes for sale where we brought in all sorts of furniture, artwork etc. to create the home. We also assisted with re-arranging, painting and window covering suggestions, re-purposing pieces already in the home. As @BellaB says, we had a huge storage unit full of inventory and received rave reviews for our work, out-staging pun intended long term competitors the first year.
Light is important as well as zipping things up with fresh paint and accents such as area rugs. pillows, throws, etc. It’s amazing what a handful or new pillows, an area rug and a few creative accents can do to the shift the entire look/feel of a room.

Staging often, especially in vacant homes, makes all the difference in how quickly a home sells. Many people do not have a creative eye and by staging you give them a subliminal boost in seeing the home as a homey and habitable dwelling not just a empty rooms.

Couldn’t resist sharing the link to my old staging company.
Just for fun!
We were very creative and had an eclectic style. Many of our pieces were thrift store and consignment pieces.

Here’s some examples of our work. :-)
We really went all out and I used to joke that most home stagers specialized in “Early Best Western” style. The cheesy hotel look. lol
Most stagers just bring in a couple of things but we made every room in the house look lived in and comfortable.

www.stagecoachtosell.com

How much does something like that cost? Also, why didn’t you stage homes that people actually still lived in? Not everyone has the means to go live some place else for as long as it takes to sell a house.

@Dutchess_III We charged a particular rate depending on the size of the home and then, if it didn’t sell within 3 months we charged rent on the furnishings. We also asked for and split a 1% sale price commission. Nice little bonus when a $500— 7–800k home sold.
Most of the homes we worked on were vacant and on the market, owners that had bought something else or whatever their circumstances were. We got very few requests for staging, re-arranging occupied houses.

99.% of our staging work was in vacant homes and we had a lot of work before the bubble went bust. haha Of course this is CA. land of high priced RE.