Most of the time I prefer to see a bare room as well, but when I was buying my first house (and second) I had a hard time visualizing what it would look like with furniture in it. "Is there room in here for a bed and a dresser?" "Where would I put the couch?" Those kind of questions. That's when staging helps. Also helps when you have rooms with strange layouts or dimensions.

A friend of mine got tired of flipping houses and opened a staging company in Richmond VA about 6 months ago. His first job was a house that had been on the market for a year. He staged and without lowering the price, they had a buyer in less than a month.

I think with the large # of houses on the market these days, sellers should take advantage of whatever help they can get.

__________________

If you watch enough episodes of "Designed to Sell," you can get the basics of preparing your house for house-hunters without hiring anyone: clean and declutter the place, depersonalize it, finish unfinished home-improvement projects, show off your home's best features (don't block fireplaces and sunny windows, etc.), make sure each room has a clear purpose, tone down wild wall colors...

That said, I readily bought a house in which none of this stuff had been done, and in which the sellers had their bed smack in the middle of the master bedroom, making the room look tiny... obviously they never watched any of the home-staging shows.

It helps the seller, not the buyer. Staging won't tell you that YOUR furniture will fit, only that the existing furniture fits. And, as another poster mentioned, the furniture (or "furniture") that the stagers use can be smaller than normal to make the room look big.

It seems to me that the best thing would be to list the dimensions of your major furniture pieces. Then, take those measurements and a tape measure to the houses you're considering.

__________________
"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected." G.K. Chesterton

I disagee. When looking at a bare room, many people don't have the visual skills to see it with any furniture and think "Oh this room is too big/small/weird layout/etc. If they can see a couch, chair, tables and TV, they can imagine how it will look furnished, be it their furniture or someone else's.

Same problem with taking your measurements with you: unless you can imagine that tape measure as a 3-D object, it doesn't do much good for a lot of people. It's one thing to say "the corner of my dining room table will be right here" but quite another to see how an actual table fits in the space.

__________________

My grandfather worked with materials and could tell the length of something by an inch. Me, my world is no further than 2 feet in front of my face. I work with three 21" LCD screens and for the majority of the day that 2' by 3' desk area is my world. I can't tell distances worth a damn and I have no idea how furniture fits.

Tall ceilings can also mess with my size perception. Ad to it that some people look through pictures first and I can't tell if the place is 25 foot square or 100 foot square.

You can also mess with the eye in the same way. I could fit four cooper minis in my garage. If I parked two end to end on one side of the garage it would look gigantic. (So can I advertise 4 car garage parking?) I could even fit 9 smart cars in there (theoretically).

__________________
Peace Out, Philly!

Just de-clutter. Be ruthless when it comes to getting rid of stuff. I'm already beginning to work on it, even though we aren't putting the house on the market until December.

We're going to repaint in beige-y tones with bright white trim. We're also replacing all outlet and switchplate, and vent covers with brushed nickel covers. We have a finished basement which is one gigantic room. We're going to divide it up into organized storage, a family room, and a "bedroom", which won't be claimed as a real bedroom since it's not a walk-out basement, but it gives the "impression" of an additional bedroom.

Look for some kick-as$ garage sales in Wallingford this spring...

__________________
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/be30300653

I also bought an unstaged house that had horrible carpets, wall papers and paints, and holes in the walls (but a terrific location). However, I got it for a huge discount, so that's OK - I'll fix it up my way.

Aha, but that's the point. When you're selling, if you want "Top Dollar" (as Clive of HGTV likes to say), a certain amount of de-cluttering/cleaning up/staging will go a long way.

Absolutely! I think the former owner left a lot of $$ on the table by not fixing it up. But he'd moved on, new marriage and all. Still, for only a few thousand, he could have had a crew to patch, paint, clean and redo floors and brought in that proverbial "top dollar" and probably sold much more quickly. Oh well, his loss; my gain.

There is a similar house to this one that went for $50k more but is quite a bit smaller; it was gorgeous. I thought seriously about that one, but it was just a little too small. For only a few thousand (and lots of time and aggravation) this will someday be even nicer -- and done the way **I** want it!

Ours was similar. It had been owned by an older couple since it was built in the early 1960's. They had sold it to a young professional woman who never moved in because her company transferred her. The relocation company had it on the market for a year because it was so dated: old old old wallpaper, carpet, paint and drapes stained with nicotine. Perfect condition, but very difficult to see past the age of the decor.

We figured out what we wanted to pay for it, subtracted the $40K or so we figured that it was going to cost just to update it and offered that amount. Wouldn't have done that if it hadn't been on the market for so long and wasn't sure they would take it, but they accepted within an hour of us making the offer.

__________________