Should you hire a home stager?

They're the fairy godmothers of the real estate industry. They take your dark, cluttered and style-challenged home and transform it into a buyer's dream. They're home stagers -- professional stylists who size up your home and suggest ways to make it more appealing.

Think of a home stager as a combination interior designer/real estate agent. Like designers, home stagers know how to emphasize your home's assets and play down its flaws. Like agents, they know what buyers in your area want and will suggest improvements with the goal of increasing your home's saleability.

You can purchase many levels of service from a stager. If you don't want to spend a lot of money, you can have a stager walk through your house and make recommendations to make it show at its maximum potential. This might include removing clutter, painting the walls or hanging a couple of mirrors in strategic spots. For a larger fee, a stager will redecorate your house, repositioning furniture, arranging flowers and fruit and putting out new towels in the bathrooms. Some stagers have a warehouse full of furniture and accessories they can use to make over your home.

The cost of a home staging will vary with the size and condition of your home and whether the stager charges a flat fee or hourly rate. Typically, it costs about $100 for a quick inspection and recommendations for improvements. But if redecorating and furniture rentals are part of the package, a staging could cost thousands for a large home.

Stagers say the cost is worth it, based on the higher prices commanded by homes they fluff, and the speed with which they sell. Joy Valentine, a California-based Coldwell Banker real estate broker, analyzed data from the sale of 2,772 homes in eight California cities in 1999. She found that the average time the homes were on the market was 30.89 days and that the sale prices averaged 1.6 percent above list prices. By contrast, the staged homes in the sample were on the market for an average of 13.9 days and sold for about six percent above their list prices.

According to Barb Schwarz, founder of the Accredited Staging Professionals, staging can increase prices from two to 10 percent in a moderate market and up to 50 percent in hot markets or for luxury homes.

Before you get out your checkbook and hire a stager, consider whether it is worth it, given local market conditions. Houses in a hot seller's market may not need staging in order to move. In some areas, staging may be interpreted as a deceptive practice.

Further, many sellers are skeptical about the benefits of shelling out money for the tried-and-true advice of "a little paint, scrubbing and a ficus tree." And if homes and prices in your neighborhood are modest, it likely won't pay to have your home staged to look like the Taj Mahal.

For busy people, the money may be well spent. Home stagers can whip your home into selling condition, often in just a day. If you need to sell quickly or if your house has languished on the market for months, staging might help.

If your home could benefit from a stager's services but the cost is prohibitive, discuss the potential benefit of using a stager with your real estate agent. Some REALTORS^{?/sup> will pay all or a portion of a stager's fee as part of their marketing plan.}