Why You Can't Afford NOT to Stage Your Home

A professional real estate agent is skilled at conducting a competitive market analysis, researching and determining the proper asking price for your home. It is your job to ensure that your home is WORTH every penny of the asking price. Staging will play a big role in that. By properly staging your house, you present it as having high value and create an emotional connection to buyers.

Without proper pricing and staging to underscore your home’s value, it may sit on the market longer than you would hope. Take into consideration how much it will cost you each month in carrying costs, not to mention a possible price reduction, before you begin to lose any potential profit you would have made.

Carrying costs are the expenses you incur each month to maintain the house, and include your mortgage, taxes, insurance, utilities, etc. They eat into your profit margin with every month your house sits on the market. Here is an example of how it works:

Example: Assume your asking price is $300,000 and your monthly expenses are:

Mortgage and insurance         $2,000
Utilities                                         300
Taxes                                           300
Maintenance                                  50
Monthly carrying costs         $2,650

If unsold, the first price reduction is typically taken 30 - 60 days after the house enters the market. How much of a price reduction would your Realtor suggest? 5%? 10%? 20%? On the lower end, we’ll use 5% for this example, which would be a $15,000 price cut.

So if your house were on the market for 2 months, you will have lost:

$2,650 x 2 months = $5,300 + $15,000 = $20,300 AND your asking price would be lowered to $285,000.

Add $2,650 for every month your house stays on the market.

Staging your home wouldn’t cost nearly that much! Why wouldn’t you do everything possible to make your house stand out among the competition and increase your chances of a quicker sale? Do the math. Staging just makes sense.