The Difference Between DIY and Professional Home Staging - Which is right for you?

You have heard about all of the benefits of staging your home before selling and have decided that you are all in and want to get the best return on investment for your home sale. Congrats, your listening skills are about to pay off big time! The next decision is which is the best staging method for you? We’ve got you covered with this brief explanation of the types of staging that we offer and when each is your best choice.

The two basic home staging options that we at Staged By Design® offer are The Staging Consultation and The Full Staging Service.

Let’s start with The Home Staging Consultation

The Home Staging Consultation, also known as a prelisting consultation, is usually the starting point for staging your home to sell. One of our consultants will arrive at your home armed with everything needed to advise you on how to prepare your home for the market. We will walk through your property with you (inside and out) and give suggestions for enhancing curb appeal, furniture placement, home maintenance concerns, and inexpensive updates that can be utilized. Working with your own furniture and decor, we will give you specific strategies you can use to highlight architectural features, enlarge the feel of each room, enhance the flow of the home, add additional light - basically how to emphasize the positives and downplay the negatives. We even give you a full report including paint colors and shopping links that you can use to make the most of your time and get your house ready with less effort and confusion. All of this can be done in about two hours (based on the average sized home).

Home Staging Consultations are a fantastic choice for someone who is not afraid of a little DIY and wants to have control over the project while still benefitting from our professional experience. For home owners who will still be living in the property when it goes on the market, a Home Staging Consultation provides the insight needed to best present the property and the ability to keep your possessions in the property until your actual move.

As a real estate agent, your best move is to offer these consultations as a service. We can have the hard conversations with your client while you remain in neutral territory. We handle all the difficult topics with polite and kind diplomacy so you can do what you do best. When we began our business we developed our “Consultation Credo”. (You can read all about this Credo in this post we did last year: How to Add Value with Your Listings with Consultations. This credo allows us to train new staff to have the same consistent delivery of information and it is the main reason why our agents continue to include our consultations as part of their real estate services to their clients. Just take a look at the return a consultation can do for your client:

return on investment with staging consultations

Now, let’s take a look at our Full Staging Service

A Full Staging may begin with a Home Staging Consultation to choose all of the paint and finishes needed to make your home shine. After the suggestions in the Staging Report have been completed, the homeowner moves out of the home. They may be moving into their new home, or simply putting their possessions in storage and staying elsewhere while the property goes on the market. Some lucky homeowners use this time to take that vacation they had been planning. Either way, the property is empty, clean and ready for us to bring on the magic! Our team of stagers will visit the property taking photos, video, and tons measurements to help us draw up floor plans which we will use to plan out your staging project. We then use those plans to choose furniture, rugs, and decor from our extensive inventory to best emphasize the style and features of your home. Every Staged By Design project is a unique individual design, custom curated from our regularly updated inventory. Your home will not look the same as anything else on the market.

On staging day, our turn key service begins with a professional team of movers accompanying our design team to your property. With extra care taken to protect your home, we will furnish and accessorize and leave your property photo ready, locking up on our way out. In a matter of just a few hours, we will transform your home from empty to fabulous!

The Full Staging option is a fantastic choice for anyone who has the ability to move out of the property before going on the market. Full Staging a vacant home makes the selling process much less complicated for the home seller with the effort of physically staging the home removed, as well as the convenience of not having to manage the viewing schedule and all that  it entails. Full Staging also allows your property to shine through the use of furnishings and accessories that are styled by professionals who understand the tastes of the current home buying market and how to elicit an emotional response from the potential buyers. If your furnishings and decor have not been updated within the last couple of years, Full Staging would be a great way to show the buyers a magazine ready look without that significant investment on your part, and when buyers see that a home looks up to date, they tend to feel more secure in the value of their purchase and are frequently more willing to offer a higher price. This is what we mean by return on investment. A little money spent upfront can yield much more money in the end!

return on investment with home staging

As you can see both services only put money in your pocket! It’s money worth spent. So, which choice is the right choice for you? Well, the best starting point would be scheduling a Staged By Design Consultation. We would be happy to help get the ball rolling and offer further suggestions for your individual situation. Let us shine a spotlight on your listing!