Why stage a home to sell?

It has been a busy weekend, managed to get a day off, the sun is out and it is warming up and back to work today. I spent the morning with a seller on the art of staging and they wanted to know why staging is so important. 1st the value of staging is a bit overblown but it is valuable in the right home and done the right way. Simply put staging is the art of creating an atmosphere in a home that allows buyers to see themselves in the home and excite their emotional response to want the house to become their home. What staging is not is redecorating the home to some one else's taste or making a home faddish. Staging is not cheap but by the same token does not need to cost $10,000's of thousands of dollars either. In addition staging does not mean that a home will sell for more money, in fact the real value of staging is to shorten the market time and improve the return to the seller (keep in mind owning your own home for 3-4 extra months with taxes, insurance and mortgage payments adds up fast). But to go into staging to think that the home will sell for more money is probably not the soundest approach. Staging came about for the simple reason that most homeowners did not have the time, money or assistance of a professional as they put their home together over the years. In fact many homeowners drag along old, outdated furniture from new home to new home and added to the daily clutter of all of our lives a home can show less than perfect. A good stager will compensate for these common issues and inject life into a home and create an atmosphere that is more appealing to the buyer and allow the seller to achieve selling the home at "fair market value".