Educating home sellers on the power of home staging requires contradictory messaging at times. We find ourselves making cases on both sides of the investment…. some days it’s, “Holy moly, please hire professionals and do not go the route of a budget stager,” and other times it’s, “A lot less money can be spent by taking the right steps.”
You’ve heard the saying: you get what you pay for. But there are times when you pay more and get less. This is especially true when it comes to staging. There are times when going for the ‘budget stager’ becomes a budget buster.
A homeowner came to us four months ago to get a staging quote. They deemed our price too high and went with another stager that offered a lower monthly rate. After four months of this house sitting with no offers and no money coming to the homeowner (not to mention continued monthly payments going to their ‘budget stager’) they came back to us and asked for help. We encouraged them to move out of their ADU and stage it along with fully staging the rest of the house. Vacant homes look better and sell faster - that’s just a fact. No one wants to buy a home with someone else’s junk in the way. Occupied homes make a buyer feel like a guest and not a tenant. Clean up, move out and sell the house as intended.
After the restage, they received an offer in two days. Altogether, it was staged under a Spade and Archer Guaranteed Home Staging® program for 16 days and it sold. The lesson here is to do it right the first time. The homeowner actually paid MORE for their budget stager than they did for our top-of-the-line service. On paper it looked good to start, but the reality is they way overpaid for subpar performance. Not only did the homeowner get to pay more money over a longer period of time ($8000 for four months as opposed to $6000 for two weeks with us), but they had to incur all the other expenses that accrued over that four-month period. They had to pay the mortgage, the insurance, the taxes, and the principle on top of a monthly fee for staging that wasn’t working. What a waste of money!
AFTER the full home stage, this Portland house was ready to be listed again fresh!
Bargain hunting isn’t always a bargain. Think of it like this: You go to the grocery store to buy a steak. You narrow it down to two options. You’ve got the family-size $10 chuck that looks okay or the $20 prime cut that looks amazing. You opt for the cheaper piece of meat thinking it will suffice. But when you get it home and cook it, it’s got a lot of hidden grossness you don’t really want anything to do with. It ends up being chewy and tough and when it’s all said and done you got less and worse quality from the cheap meat than you would have gotten from the more expensive, yet perfect $20 steak. Go for quality over cost-cutting and you will be satisfied every time.
AFTER the restage, it’s super easy to see how to use every single space in the home.
Spade and Archer is the World’s First Guaranteed Home Stager® and we have over 10 years of experience selling homes quickly and for more money. Our Guaranteed Home Staging® program is 98% effective. Our Pay-Up-Front, full staging is 93% effective. That’s a solid A no matter how you slice it. When we start doing partial staging, that percentage dips down to 86% which is decent B. This only proves that when you start with an appropriately high level of intention and attention, you get appropriately high levels of return.
Some companies are now offering financed staging. Don’t be fooled! You have to pay interest on that and you still have to pay whether the house sells or not. You are still paying a ton of money, for a longer period of time, and with no guarantee that it will sell at all. Why would you want to pay for staging years after you’ve sold your house and moved on? At Spade and Archer, we never charge interest and you only pay us when the house sells. It makes sense.
Sunny, bright, spacious, functional, scaled, and completely appropriate for family living, this Portland home staging set the right course for this house to sell in days after months of inactivity on the market.
You do get what you pay for so don’t short change yourself by paying more for less. We love to swoop in and save the day, but think how much more effective it would be if we were your first line of defense. It’s much better to get the job done right the first time without lingering bills. When you shop only by the price tag, you end up with chewy meat and half-ass staging. Go for the filet mignon from the beginning and don’t look back.