The last time we talked, I told you how important I felt staging our home was to getting it sold in less than a month. I gave you a few reasons why investing some time and money into making your home look appealing to the highest number of potential buyers would pay off at the point of sale. And I shared a list of things that we did prior to putting it on the market to stage it for a quick sale. Today, I’m going to share the breakdown of what we spent to stage our home, and tell you how it paid off for us. (If you want to catch up on some of my other posts about selling our house, you can read them HERE.)
Music Room to Dining Room Makeover
- Paint: Behr Antique White, leftover from other projects – FREE
- Curtains: already in the room – FREE
- Decorative plates: already owned, hung on the wall with a combination of paperclips and hot glue – FREE
- Table: (bear with me) purchased from Target for $225 with the intent to keep and use in next house. After assembly,we realized it was too small for our family and only held together with four bolts. But it looked so cute that we actually considered it for 14 days before packing it carefully back in the original packaging and returning it to Target. I don’t recommend doing this, unless you really, truly want to see how a piece of furniture fits into your home but, well {hanging head in shame} – FREE
- Table Settings: purchased linens and napkin rings from Target for about $35. (And I did not return them!!!) Used dishes I already had – $35
- Flowers: single grocery store bouquet lasted the entire two weeks the house was on the market, believe it or not, and cost me $6.
- Total cost of Dining Room Makeover: $41
Den Makeover
- Replacing an extraordinarily ugly shelving unit with a nice filing cabinet that I don’t have a picture of: $200. Money well-spent, since it eliminated a huge clutter zone. (Sorry, no pictures of this transformation!)
- Flowers for the window seat (3 bouquets over the course of 14 days), since I simply ran out of time for making curtains or a cushion and needed something to distract people from the missing cushion and curtains: $10
- Total cost of Den Makeover: $210
Elimination of Clutter Spots Everywhere
- Rental of a 10×20 ft. self-storage unit within 2 miles of our home was $95/month and we used it for 2 months. It was actually more space than we needed–we never filled up the unit completely. However, we did store a lot of clutter, boxed storage like Christmas decor and out of season clothing, and garage things like tools and lawnmowers. Getting those things out of our closets and garage opened a lot of spaces and showed off all of our handy storage areas to their best advantage.
- Purchasing cardboard moving boxes and packing tape from Home Depot to contain some of the clutter: $50
- Total Cost of Eliminating Clutter Spots: $240
Painting interior and exterior trim work
- We used some paint we already had, but purchased a gallon of exterior paint for $40
- We hired a local college student to paint. I think we ended up paying him about $150 for what he did.
- Total cost of Painting: $190
New Curtains & Pillows for the Great Room (updating colors)
- Valances were made by me, using fabric I already had – FREE
- Creamy white draperies from Target – $65
- Two cute pillows from Target, plus the ones we already had that matched – $40
- Total cost of Curtains: $105
Storage Bench near Door (to corral shoe and jacket clutter)
- Purchased bench from Target for $125
- Baskets also from Target for $12/each
- Total cost of storage bench: $161
So, the amount we spent on staging our home during the month before it went on the market was about $947. Was it worth it? According to Bankrate.com, we should have received a 586% return on our staging investment, which is roughly $6K. I think the best way to figure out if we recouped our cost is to take a look at how our competition (the other homes for sell in our neighborhood) fared. One home in our neighborhood that was quite comparable to ours (same age, size, beds/baths, finished basement, etc.) went on the market several weeks ahead of our home for $5K more than the price our home was listed. Several days after we accepted an offer, the price of the competing comparable home dropped by $20K, and two months later, it’s still on the market–as are the other five houses in the neighborhood that were listed for sale before our home. So yes, we feel that $947 was money well spent!
