What is home staging?
Home staging is the process of designing the interior and outdoor spaces of a home to create maximum appeal with your target buyer. The home stager maintains an inventory of furniture, art, and décor, which it selects from and “installs” at the home to achieve this goal.
Are there different types of home staging?
Yes, there are three types of home staging: vacant staging, occupied staging, and virtual staging.
What is the difference between Vacant and Occupied staging?
Vacant staging is for homes that will be vacant when they hit the market. Vacant staging is the most common form of staging because it is difficult for home buyers to visualize themselves in an empty house. With vacant staging, the stager has a “blank canvas” and will use predominantly their own inventory.
Occupied staging is for homes that will be inhabited while being listed for sale. With Occupied staging, the stager provides specific instructions of what to keep and get rid of in the house, and then uses their inventory to compliment the home owner’s furnishings. Occupied staging is typically less expensive than vacant staging, because less of the stager’s inventory is used.
What is Virtual staging?
Virtual staging is the digital version of home staging. It involves overlaying digital furniture, art, and décor onto photography of the property. Because no inventory is involved, virtual staging is much cheaper than traditional staging. While the technology for virtual staging is improving, there is a risk of your buyer being let down when they see the un-staged property in person.
What types of staging does Delicious Decors offer?
Delicious Decors provides Vacant and Occupied staging at this time.
How does pricing work?
There are three main components to a home staging proposal: the up-front cost of the staging, the term of the staging, and the monthly rental percentage.
The “up-front cost of the staging” covers the design, setup, and removal of the staging. The “term of the staging” indicates for how long the staging will be in place (e.g. 60 days). The monthly rental percentage is the amount that will be charged against the up-front cost should the staging need to remain at the property beyond the initial term of the staging.
How much does staging cost?
The cost of staging can vary by company and region, but is usually determined by square footage of the property, spaces to be staged, and quality of the staging.
Most home stagers, including Delicious Decors, are happy to view your property and provide a quote for free.
As the Best Value home stager, we strive to provide a quality product at an affordable price.
Do I need to stage my entire home? What spaces do you recommend staging?
We stage entire homes, but by no means is that a requirement. As a baseline, we recommend staging the common rooms (e.g. living room, family room), kitchen, bathrooms, and master bedroom. These spaces often have the most impact, however, each home has unique spaces that can and should be featured, such as a great outdoor patio or a home office.
How long will it take to stage my home?
The majority of homes take Delicious Decors one day to stage. Some very large properties could take two days to stage, but that is rare. We use specialized software to create our design plan and load our trucks ahead of time, so that we finish promptly.
Are home staging and interior design the same?
While both home staging and interior design involve furnishing homes to make them look great, there are some big differences.
The home stager’s goal is to maximize the home seller’s return by making the property appeal to the largest possible target audience of buyers. They need to do this within a tight timeline (~2 weeks) at the lowest possible cost. To accomplish their goal under these constraints, home stagers maintain their own reusable, readily available inventory and charge a flat fee for their service.
The interior designer’s goal is to make the property appealing to a single homeowner (their client). Their main challenge is to understand and source precisely what their client wants. The client is responsible for all purchases and, because the process is time consuming, interior designers bill by the hour and often charge a markup on the items they source.
How does Delicious Decors determine which furniture to use for my home?
Creating a custom staging design for your home starts with viewing the property in person, typically with you and your real estate agent.
We take a consultative approach, walking the property together to understand its history, architectural style, and buyer demographic. With this information, we start to answer the high level design questions like, are we doing mid-century modern, contemporary, traditional, or a bit of everything? Is this a family, craftsman-style home that should be warm and approachable, a beach vacation property that could use a bit of boho vibes, or a swanky penthouse that likes straight lines and art with some flare?
From there, we go a layer deeper, taking measurements, making note of spaces to feature, and plotting a layout that maximizes flow. We then select the furniture, art, and décor from our 10,000 piece inventory collection that fits our design plan.
What is “inventory” in the context of home staging? Why is it important?
Inventory is the term used for the furniture, art, and décor that a stager owns. Combined with good design, inventory is one of the key ingredients to quality home staging.
Do you own your own inventory? How much inventory do you have?
Yes, we own 100% of our inventory. We have a 6,500 square foot warehouse full of kick-ass inventory. We spend tens of thousands of dollars on new inventory each year, cycling out irrelevant items to keep our styles fresh.
Check out our portfolio to see all of the styles and types of projects we support.
How will my home look after it’s staged?
The goal of home staging is to bring out the unique beauty of your home for maximum property appeal to your buyer. Keep in mind this may or may not be in line with your personal tastes (or ours).
Do you do changeouts?
Yes, design changeouts happen. We are receptive to customer feedback and are happy to accommodate within reason. Our main objective is to create the best design possible to maximize your return.
Do you have insurance?
Yes. We carry worker’s compensation, professional liability, and general liability insurance, which we will happily provide proof of upon request.
Can you help us move our furnishing out of the house prior to or on the day of staging?
Unfortunately, no. As much as we like to help our customers in whichever way possible, our insurance does not cover us for moving others’ furnishings.
Do you ever sell your inventory?
Yes. Please let us know which items you or your buyers’ are interested in and we will gladly provide pricing.
Do you hang art as part of your staging service? What do you do with the holes once you remove it?
Yes, art is one of the finishing touches that brings your property to life and ties the whole home staging design together.
Once your home is sold, we remove our art and nails from the property. However, because every home has different paint, it is not feasible for us to patch and repaint the holes that are left over from the hanging art.
