Do real estate agents tend to charge for "staging"?

[Anonymous]

We're about to put our house on the market quick, and will likely need a lot of help on staging (prettying up, taking out extra junk like kids toys, etc). I know some realtors have whole teams of stagers, etc. Do they usually charge for this, or is it part of their regular fee/commission?

[Anonymous]

We are using an outside company recommended by our agent. We've known our agent for years and trust her judgment. We agreed to pay for the staging, but our agent has in reality paid for a fair amount of it.

[Anonymous]

I believe most agents charge, and many of them do crappy jobs unless thy hire actual stagers to come in. If you already know your house is cluttered and full of toys, then you can easily do it yourself. And if you don't have the eye for "prettying it up," I'm sure you'd have friends who could give you some suggestions.

[Anonymous]

Ours does not charge extra for this. Last time we sold, he helped us figure out what to thin out/put into storage to make the place look bigger, and he also made recommendations on small things to upgrade/change to make it a bit more neutral/appealing (change a few light fixtures, a few paint changes etc.) But he didn't actually pay for the new changes or the storage or help us move things.

We're now thinking of selling again, and he's done the same type of advising about things we can do to make it ready to sell. We will likely move out before putting it on the market and he volunteered to handle the staging -- rent some furniture and accessories so it's not stark empty inside. He'll be picking out the staging items and paying for it himself, which is nice.

[Anonymous]

Some might not charge you to tell you what needs to be moved or painted, but they aren't going to do the actual work for you.

[Anonymous]

Ours did not charge for what they did - plan the stage, tell us what to do, rearrange things, and bring in extra pieces of furniture, home decorations, etc. We did all packing up and putting things in storage, and did or paid to have the painting and landscaping freshened up and some minor repairs.

[Anonymous]

Watch a few episodes of real estate intervention and you'll get the idea of what you need to do:

http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv176/videos/index.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are using an outside company recommended by our agent. We've known our agent for years and trust her judgment. We agreed to pay for the staging, but our agent has in reality paid for a fair amount of it.

May I ask how much they charge? We are thinking about having someone come in and stage as well.

[Anonymous]

If you hire Mike Aubrey himself to sell your home, you will not have to pay for the stager.

We hired him, and while our stager was not Sabrina Soto, she did pick new paint colors, advise on furniture placement, and gave other practical advice. We did not pay her for anything beyond the actual items she purchased to help the staging.

Our house sold in four days.

[Anonymous]

Ours did not charge for it. They came in and gave us a list of things to do (most of which we could have predicted) and then they switched out some of the stuff we had on the walls, where things were, etc. Our house was gut-renovated four years ago and most of our furniture is simple and neutral, so there wasn't all that much to do but declutter and deep clean. We got several offers on our house and sold for very close to asking price last year.

I would be skeptical of spending a ton of money for staging. It's not rocket science. And honestly, as someone who has looked at probably 100 homes and bought 3 of them over the years, I can look past a person's arrangement and decide if I like the house. (As long as it's neat and clean and doesn't smell bad.) I don't think any of the homes I bought were ones that had been professionally staged.