Decluttering is NOT Home Staging: The Top 6 Home Staging Myths, Debunked!

Home staging is like magic fairy dust for residential real estate.  It enhances a financial transaction by creating an emotional connection with potential buyers, increasing market value and the home seller’s profit every time.  We know we’re biased, but we know home staging to be the secret sauce that brings home the bacon for home sellers everywhere.

But there are so many misconceptions about home staging.  Maybe this is because it masquerades as interior design?  Maybe this is because sellers don’t understand the point of home staging (hint: it’s NOT to “put money into your home for someone else to enjoy.”)  Maybe it’s because we as a home staging industry have not done a great job at communicating our value proposition… hmmm… interesting thought.

Home staging is visual marketing combined with buyer psychology and change management all wrapped up into one.  It is a complete strategy to increase, literally INREASE, the market value of a home.  That’s pretty amazing stuff!

But, sometimes it’s a lot easier to understand what something IS buy understanding what it is not.  Therefore, here are six common misconceptions about home staging, debunked and deconstructed.  If you’re a real estate agent looking to have more meaningful conversations with your clients about home staging, this one is for you.

Top Six Myths About Home Staging, Debunked!

 MYTH #1: DECLUTTERING IS NOT HOME STAGING.

Decluttering your home is absolutely essential before listing your home.  Buyers expect a home to be clean and well maintained – and, contrary to popular belief, they don’t have the ability to “see past” any shortcomings.  However, decluttering is not a form of staging. 

Before we go any further, let’s talk about market value.  In very simple terms, a property’s market value is the amount someone (an actual human) is willing to pay for it.  Decluttering preserves market value, bringing the home back to neutral and ensuring it will align with it’s comps.  Decluttering is table stakes to get an average return on your home.

Home staging, on the other hand, is a comprehensive visual marketing strategy that actually increases the market value of your home. By enhancing a home’s perceived positives, downplaying any perceived negatives, and demonstrating the aspirational lifestyle the home can provide, buyers perceive that the home is literally worth more than they would if the home was not staged.  And when buyers perceive higher value, they make higher offers. This doesn’t happen with decluttering alone.

MYTH #2: HOME STAGING IS NOT INTERIOR DESIGN

It’s true – home staging and interior design have a lot in common.  Both create beautiful spaces based on the principles of design, color theory, and human scale.  Both use home furnishings and décor to create a desired feeling within a space.  Both are very capital intensive.  But that’s about where the similarities end.

Interior design creates a space specifically tailored to one person or family’s tastes, home, and interests. It is an incredibly personal and intimate process that enhances the lifestyle of those who live there, incorporating design styles, colors, and personal items that help the client to feel at home. 

Home staging, on the other hand, is designed to appeal to as many buyers as possible in order to entice as many offers as possible.  Professional staging endeavors to create an emotional connection between they home and the potential buyer without knowing exactly who that buyer will be. This necessitates a neutrality in style, color, and artifacts that makes home staging a decidedly impersonal undertaking.

And there’s one other glaring difference, the one that trumps all others, in many ways – interior design costs you money while home staging makes you money.  Boom.

MYTH #3: HOME STAGING IS NOT JUST A FINANCIAL TRANSACTION

While the purpose of staging is to enhance a business transaction (the sale of a home), and tracking key performance indicators are important to the business of staging, the staging service itself is so much more than a transaction.  Staging is the melding together of visual marketing and change management. It is an immersive experience for the buyer and an emotional experience for the seller, both of which need to be respected and handled with the utmost care. 

When we start thinking of home staging as purely a transaction, we discount the emotional and energetic aspects of the staging process – and I’d like to argue that it is these intangible aspects that have the greatest impact on the overall success of a home staging project. 

The single greatest factor in determining the success or failure of a home staging project is the seller’s feelings about the project.  A professional home stager will be there to assist the seller in making the transition from thinking of their house as their home to thinking about their house as an investment vehicle to be cashed in – and this transition can bring up all the feels.  Once a seller has made that transition from homeowner to home investor, they’re willing to put all their efforts into staging to maximize their return on their investment.

The home staging process helps the seller move on to a new phase while simultaneously helping the buyer find their new phase in the seller’s home.  It’s a delicate balance that goes way beyond the transactional exchange of dollars for staging.

MYTH #4: HOME STAGING IS AN EXPENSE.

An expense is something you pay for a product or service rendered without any assumption of a return.  Staging, however, has a positive return on investment.  According to the Real Estate Staging Association (RESA), with a 1% average investment of the sale price into staging, 75% of sellers saw a 5-15% ROI over asking price for their homes.

Let’s look at that math. A 1% staging investment on a $1M home is $10,000.  A 5-15% increase over asking price is $50,000-$150,000.  If you gave me $1 and I gave you $5-$15 back, would you consider that $1 to be an expense?  No, it would be an investment.  Staging, therefore, should not be viewed as an expense but as a financial investment – one with almost immediate (and highly profitable) returns.

That being said, the IRS considers staging to be a tax deductible moving expense. Say what?!?!  It’s true – your staging services are tax deductible.  I don’t agree with the terminology, but talk to your tax accountant because any time the government wants to give us money it’s a good day!

MYTH #5: STAGING IS OPTIONAL FOR A TOP DOLLAR SALE.

If you want to truly sell your home for top dollar and get every last possible penny out of it (and I don’t blame you one bit for that) then you HAVE to stage it.  True top dollar is not possible without professional staging because buyers will not perceive an unstaged home as having top dollar value.

Thinking of listing your home unstaged and “seeing how it goes” for a couple of weeks?  That’s likely not a great ideal.  The greater the number of days on market, the more buyers automatically devalue the property – and in a crazy market like this, even one week can cause significant devaluation.  Your chances of getting top dollar are never as high as they are within the first two weeks of listing (in almost any market).  To make the most out of that profitability window, your home must be staged from the moment it hits the market.

MYTH #6: EVERY HOME NEEDS TO BE STAGED.

My fellow stagers may consider this statement to be heresy, but it’s true.  Staging is not for everyone.  If you’re fine getting whatever you can for your home in whatever condition it’s in, you don’t need to stage.  If you are strapped for funds and don’t have the cash flow to invest in staging, perhaps you’re better off putting your limited funds into a fresh coat of paint for the house (and this IS a suggestion we’ve made to pre-listing consultation clients in the past) than bringing in a full staging team and rental furniture.  If the house is a total tear-down, it’s likely not worth it to stage – and, if the condition of the home is poor (think: mold, pests, water, etc.), you may not be able to get a stager who is willing to put their inventory in the home anyway.

However, for most sellers, maximizing profit on the sale of their homes is a priority.  If this is you, you need to stage.  Full stop, no question.  Staging increases market value like nothing else can.  Staging maximizes profit.