Can professional home-stagers add value to a property?

By Chris Hammond

That’s the claim as more sellers call in experts for a spruce-up.

A note on the figures below. This page reproduces press coverage of Beau Property Staging from 2023. The “8%” in it is what home-stagers were reported as claiming at the time – it is not a Beau figure and it is not a verified UK measurement. The one UK-specific source is the Home Staging Association UK & Ireland, which surveyed around 330 UK property professionals between January and April 2019: 78% said staging raises offer value by up to 10%, but 38% put the uplift at 1-3% and only 16% at 7-10%, while 86% said a staged home sells up to three times faster. Those are professional opinions rather than audited sale prices, and they date from 2019. The “73% faster” figure quoted widely elsewhere is Real Estate Staging Association data from the United States, not the UK. The market movement quoted below is also from 2023 and has since changed.

Selling a property used to be simple. You’d hire a smooth-talking estate agent; they’d draw up property details (full of bad grammar and advertising puff); you’d fill the house with the smell of roasting coffee, and wait for viewers to come knocking.

Well, those days are as dated as one of Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen’s cravats. Nowadays, if you want a quick sale you call in the ‘home-stagers’.
Five times more people inquired about home-staging last year compared with the year 2000, according to the Home Staging Association, and Tracey Taylor, of Tunbridge Wells, Kent, was one of them.
72428449 12224181 Investment It costs around 5 000 to stage a two bedroom flat an m 9 1687457868984
Investment: It costs around £5,000 to ‘stage’ a two-bedroom flat — an insignificant sum when compared with the 8% home-stagers claim they can add to a sale price
She had been letting her two-bedroom, lower ground-floor flat overlooking the town for several years, and had not anticipated any difficulty selling.
However, when she put the property on the market, it became a ‘sticker’.
‘There was nothing dramatically distasteful about the flat but it had been let to tenants and was just a bit dark and cluttered,’ says Tracey, 59, an exam invigilator. The estate agent, Savills, advised me to hire home-stagers.’
She hired Beau Property Staging. ‘Beau changed a soulless, dated flat into a warm, chic apartment,’ she says. ‘They cleared out our pokey little utility room, then spruced up the kitchen and added some modern units.’ 
Beau finished their work on August 24 and the flat soon had two offers. Tracey sold it for £480,000, well above the asking price, in December.
It costs around £5,000 to ‘stage’ a two-bedroom flat — an insignificant sum when compared with the 8 per cent home-stagers claim they can add to a sale price. 
Also, the property market is falling — down 3.4 per cent compared with this time last year, according to Nationwide. So it makes financial sense to sell as fast as possible.
Joss Miller, at Beau Property, has a clear staging strategy. ‘Make sure that rooms have an obvious purpose, and use mirrors to add space and light, she says.
‘Don’t fill rooms for the sake of it. If a piece doesn’t amplify or enhance the property, it’s not needed. And never base your staging on your personal taste.’
‘Don’t fill rooms for the sake of it. If a piece doesn’t amplify or enhance the property, it’s not needed. And never base your staging on your personal taste.’
WhatsApp Image 2023 06 27 at 12.41.19

To read the entire Daily Mail article click here.

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