To Stage Or Not To Stage...

[Beth D.]

I've always been of the mindset that staging a house to sell gives people a "visual" on how it looks as a home. However, when we bought our personal residence it was completely empty which I preferred because then I was less distracted by furnishings and could see the bones of the house/details.

Our current project is a house that could have different "options" for layouts... (meaning the dining room could be one of two places). Part of me wants people to have it empty so people can envision where they would put it without precedence and the other part of me doesn't want them to be confused about which room it should be.

So which is better for rehabbed homes?
Do you keep empty, partially stage, or fully stage?

[J Scott]

There are lots of threads on this topic...if you do a search you'll find a lot of great info.

Personally, I'm a huge fan of staging. And in the situation you mention above (where there are multiple potential layouts of the space), staging is even more important. Most buyers have no imagination and if it's not obvious where the furniture would go, they'll spend more time being confused and thinking about how the house is designed than they will enjoying it and thinking about what it will be like when they're living there.