Struggling to sell your home? Maybe you should call the professionals

With their two teenagers growing up fast, Sarah and Olivier Rigault had long been aware that their modern four-bedroom house was soon going to be too big for their needs.

When then-chancellor Rishi Sunak introduced the stamp duty holiday in July 2020 it seemed like the perfect window of opportunity to sell up and move somewhere more suitable.

But before calling in the estate agent Sarah took a cold, hard look at her family home in Liphook, Hampshire. What she saw didn’t impress her. 

“It was a new build so there was nothing wrong with it, but it was a bit of a mish mash,” she said. “It needed some harmony to put it into its best light.”

So Sarah, 55, a translator, and Olivier, 58, an engineering manager, did what increasing numbers of homeowners worried about navigating the nervous property market alone have started doing – and called in professional home stagers to help add some finesse to their home.

They had their initial consultation with Natalie Evans, founder and CEO of Little Barn Door, in July 2020.

Ms Evans then drew up a to-do list, including repainting scuffed walls in warm neutral shades to make the home seem cosy and inviting, installing new carpets and buying new furniture and accessories she could use to restyle the house.

“It is all about making a good first impression,” explained Ms Evans. “Their home was in a lovely area, but it was very lived-in.”

Ms Evans also rearranged the couple’s furniture to make the rooms seem larger, and removed teenage artwork and photo collages from bedroom walls. The family used two rooms as home offices – Ms Evans decided one was enough, gave it a spruce up and switched the other back into a bedroom.

All in, Sarah estimates the process cost £7,000. Once dressed to impress, the house was put on sale for offers over £625,000 in September 2020. Around eight weeks later they had accepted an on-the-nose offer.

The sale completed the following February and Sarah and Olivier, who have a 16-year-old son and 19-year-old daughter, now own a smaller property in nearby Liss.

The number of people enquiring about home staging services has increased fivefold between 2020 and 2023 according to the Home Staging Association, which claims staged homes sell faster than those marketed au natural, and for a higher price. This claim is hard to test since it is impossible to know what would have happened had Sarah and Olivier gone it alone, but Sarah is happy with their choice.

“In hindsight it would have gone anyway, because everyone was desperate for houses at that time,” she said. “But I still think it was worth it. I learned so much from Natalie about what should be done with colours.”

‘It created a buyer frenzy’

Rachel and Steve Hewitt are equally pleased with the changes wrought on their country cottage by a team of home stagers.

They had first put their property on the market in 2018 for just over £600,000 – their three children were almost grown up and they wanted to downsize from the four-bedroom cottage, which is close to Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire.

They reasoned that downsizing would allow them to go mortgage-free, meaning Rachel, a gymnastics coach, and Steve, who worked in asset management, could retire early.

Unfortunately there were no takers for the house, which they had owned since 2003. “The market was very flat,” said Steve. “Brexit had put a massive handbrake on.”

In falling market conditions the couple decided they would be smart to go ahead and buy their onward home, a Grade II-listed townhouse in Melbourne, Derbyshire, and rent out the cottage until the market picked up.

In 2021 the couple were ready to try again. After two years of renting the house didn’t look its best and, aware of home staging from TV shows and encouraged by their estate agent, the couple hired Lemon & Lime Interiors to assist them in sprucing it up.

Elaine Penhaul, the company’s founder, visited the property and had a look around. Her verdict was that the circa 200-year-old house was gorgeous, but being let down by tired furnishings, shabby decoration, and general clutter – almost everything the couple hadn’t wanted to take with them to their new home had simply been left behind. 

“It was just not going to sell for what it was worth,” she said. “It had not had any love for a very long time.”

Ms Penhaul advised her clients to sand and re-varnish their wooden floors and redecorate the cottage and its one-bedroom annexe – which Steve used as an office – in light, neutral colours.

She then set to work on the décor. Dark, dated sofas were replaced with off-white models loaned from her stock of furniture, a heavy wooden coffee table was swapped with a more modern glass version. “The rooms were spacious, but they didn’t feel it with all the dark furniture,” she said.

Clutter was removed, and replaced with a few carefully chosen accessories and artworks, and the results were undeniably impressive.

Rachel, 54, and Steve, 56, put their house on the market in early June 2020 with an asking price of £625,000. Within 10 days they had three asking price offers, and the sale was completed that August. “It created a buyer frenzy,” said Steve. “Buyers wanted a turnkey property that was contemporary, not twee, and that is what we offered.”

The total cost of upgrading and restyling the property came in at around £4,000, which Steve considers money very well spent.

“I think that there is a misconception that home staging is very, very expensive and only for £1m houses, and that is not true,” said Steve. “We spent a few thousand to optimise the price of our house.”

Most estate agents agree that home staging is a useful weapon in a home seller’s armoury, particularly in the current buyers’ market.

Samuel Richardson, head of sales at Carter Jonas’s Mayfair office, said most buyers simply aren’t willing to overlook clutter and scruff to focus on the potential of a property.

“They are cash rich and time poor and always looking for something they can move straight into,” he said.

There is, of course, much you can do to stage your own home – freshening up paintwork, decluttering, and a vase of flowers in the living room is only common sense. But, and particularly in high-end markets, aspirational buyers are looking for something more than a spic and span space.

Jo Eccles, founder and managing director of buying agency Eccord, recently found home staging a worthwhile expense when helping a landlord sell off a rental property. 

“We arranged for all the scuffed walls to be repainted, removed the tired furniture and employed a home staging firm who dressed it beautifully, right down to vases and candles,” she said. 

The property sold within two months for £15,000 below its £500,000 asking price, and the home staging cost just £3,000. “Had it not been staged, I think it would still be on the market,” she said.

But buying agent Guy Meacock, director of Prime Purchase, warns that not all home stagers are equal. If they don’t know their Gods True Cashmere throws from their Seletti light fittings you could end up wasting time and money.

“The ideal is to create an appearance of lifestyle,” he said. “It amuses me how often the table is set as though it’s a regular occurrence to have eight people round for a formal dinner party, with glasses for each course and three forks, knives and spoons. Nobody eats like that and it looks dated, cheapening the space.

“Another example I saw recently opted for 50 shades of grey; everything was grey, from walls to carpets and flooring and furniture. It was the perfect opportunity for some colour to really bring the space to life, but the stager filled it with cheap, vanilla furnishings, sucking even more life out of it.”