Every spring we get the same call from agents: "The seller is on the fence about staging. Can you help me make the case?" After six years of staging homes from Greenwich to Westport to Norwalk, the case is easier to make than it used to be — because we have actual data.
What we measured
Across 86 staged listings between 2021 and 2024, we tracked three things: days on market, sale-to-list ratio, and the number of competing offers. We compared them against a control group of 142 unstaged comps in the same towns, in the same price brackets, listed in the same calendar quarter.
The headline numbers
Staged homes spent an average of 38% fewer days on market. They closed at 2.4% above list on average, versus 0.9% below list for the unstaged comps. And 61% of staged homes received multiple offers in the first ten days, versus 23% of the unstaged group.
Where staging matters most
Two categories drove most of the lift. The first was vacant homes — empty rooms photograph poorly and feel smaller in person, and the swing was largest there. The second was homes priced above $1.8M, where buyers expect a higher level of presentation and visibly react when it's missing.
What staging actually costs
For a typical four-room vacant staging in Fairfield County, our fee runs about $4,800 for a sixty-day rental. On a $1.5M home, that's roughly 0.32% of list price. The average lift in sale price across our data set was about 1.5% of list. The math, as they say, is the math.
The intangibles
Numbers aside, staged homes change the conversation. Agents tell us their open houses feel different — buyers linger longer, ask more questions, and start picturing themselves living there. That's the part that doesn't show up in a spreadsheet, but it's often what closes the deal.
If you have a listing coming to market, we'd be glad to walk through it with you and your agent. Get in touch and we'll set up a time.