Nitty Gritty Benefits of Occupied Home Staging

It’s a delicate balance selling a home with occupants and working around all their possessions. There is a high probability cluttered rooms, ill-placed and dated furnishings, artwork, overstuffed cabinets and closets, plus day-to-day messes exist and they will distract homebuyers, plus look unappealing in photographs. Encouraging buyers to fall in love with an unstaged home becomes a challenge and the home could remain on the market for months on end with multiple price reductions.

Before - Cluttered Living Room with Antler Chandelier

Professionally staging a home is a strategic marketing tool and will provide value to the bottom line. “32% of home buyers are willing to offer more money for a staged home compared to a similar non-staged home.” — National Association of Realtor’s 2015 Profile of Home Staging

Sellers have misconceptions about staging a home for fear they must live in a sterile home void of personality, and that simply isn’t true. Occupants can live in the home and with a few modifications it can be comfortable, attractive, and affordable. 

The process of staging makes a difference, and yes, there will be changes to attract buyers and capture their attention, especially for photographs, such as:

• Arrangement of furnishings to enhance traffic flow, increase vantage points or show off architectural features.
• Reducing the amount of furnishings or décor in a room to create balance, harmony and showcase room sizes.
• Simplification and organization of collections, décor, paperwork, and closets to reduce clutter and chaos allows buyers to appreciate the home and see the potential.

Additional considerations, include:

• Deep cleaning the entire home, including windows and tidying up the exterior. Cleanliness plays a huge role in welcoming buyers. They don’t want to buy someone’s dirty house.
• Update outdated fixtures, lighting and wall colors attracts buyers wanting a move-in ready home.

After - Spacious and Improved Floor Plan of Living Room

Taking steps to showcase the home before it is listed can increase the selling price and decrease the duration of the listing, which ultimately is the win-win everyone wants. Staging and photostyling the home is a powerful tool before listing and can generate higher offers for sellers!

Getting down and dirty and knowing where to start is daunting. The training and experience of a professional home stager offers to stage an occupied home will help to ease the transition, provide resources and help to transform the home. The home stager is a trusted professional to help you get the most for your home.

Debbie DeMarais is a professional certified home stager with DeMarais | Home Staging + Design and has successfully staged and styled hundreds of occupied and vacant homes in Santa Fe, resulting in beautiful homes receiving fast offers and quick sales. Debbie is a member of Home Staging Resource (HSR), Real Estate Staging Association (RESA), and Allied Member of ASID.

Challenges If Not Staging a Home

There are challenges in selling a home that is vacant compared to one which has been staged. For instance, the first thing buyers experience is empty, cold and unattractive rooms, areas of neglect are front and center, even if the rooms have been painted, there is nothing for buyers to connect with visually, and no perspective for the scale and size of the space. The home remains on the market for many months with little or no interest from buyers and their agents and ultimately frustrating the seller. Buyers do find ways to ask for a reduction in price because they see the duration of the listing period and assume that the seller is eager to sell. Empty homes also lose momentum when listed before they are staged. Many sellers think they will save money if they stage it later, however the listing period continues even after staging and each month results in big loses for their return on investment.

The benefits of staging an empty home are enormous! Using a trained home stager, they will work with the home and each room to create strategic placement of furniture, decor and artwork, the home says "welcome" to prospective buyers, and home staging provides intention while giving each room purpose, plus the features of the home are highlighted.

Vacant home before and after images of master bedroom and living room with dining room.

In this example, upon entering the house, in the living room is immediately off the front door,  the couch was placed against the wall to project a larger room size and draw focus to the kiva fireplace, rather than the odd shaped and small room.

Of course the major benefits to home staging is more money in your pocket and faster sales, incredible photos for on-line marketing, which do make a difference, and in most cases staging a home will increase the selling price.

As a trained and certified home stager, I encourage my clients to make the most of their listing and invest in the process of staging their home at the start. This means taking the time to fix and mend those neglected areas, freshen up the wall colors, replace outdated light fixtures, do a deep clean, and hire a trained home stager. Trained home stagers know how to maximize and position the home to sell, they focus on placement, furnishing arrangements and are trained to style the home to attract buyers. Some home stagers are able to use existing furnishings or they have an inventory you can rent.

These little tips will bring in faster offers in a shorter timeframe and the home will stand out against the competition. Buyers are savvy, they do not want to buy a house if it is dirty, unattractive, has a lot of repairs to do (unless of course the house is sold-as is for a lower price), looks a mess and is empty. Buyers want the perception they are getting move-in ready home and one that feels like a five-star hotel when they walk in.

All homes deserve to look their best and this can be achieved through home staging. If you want to sell your home quickly, first step hire a trained home stager, it's a wise investment that gets great results!

Debbie DeMarais is a trained and certified home stager at DeMarais home staging + design, and trained in the field of interior design. She provides full service solutions for occupied and vacant staging, color consultations, and interior design services. She can be reached at 505-699-4989 to schedule a personalized consultation to sell your home faster.

Differences between "Chaos and Calm" when selling a home

Selling a home and retaining an "as-is" presence, because you like how you live, will only hinder your ability to get a home buyer to fall in love with your home and sell it quickly, let alone a real estate agent interested in showing it at all.

In this home the home owners followed our advice to replace the pet damaged furniture, de-clutter and move their many projects and excess furniture out of the living room. We recommended painting a neutral palette on the walls and kiva fireplace, replacement of the tattered rug and furnishings, and other outdated items. In staging and styling the room conversation is encouraged, purpose and connection is provided and incredible views just outside the windows are highlighted. Upon completion the room felt larger and more spacious, home buyers lingered and were able to envision themselves living in this home.

Staging a home and transforming it can speak volumes as it highlights the architectural features and by updating the furnishings and decor it matches the home value. Home buyers expect a home to reflect the appropriate living conditions and decor reflected of the listing price. The decision to not stage a home and leaving it in the original condition will not only turn buyers away but the loss of a potential sale at a high asking price greatly diminishes.

For more before and after examples, visit www.homestagingsantafe.com

Before and After Home Staging

Updating an Outdated Home with Home Staging

Holding on to outdated styles is never a good thing when selling a home! An outdated home reminiscent of bygone era’s can drastically reduce the value. Without making the necessary updates to fixtures, finishes, appliances or furniture the home may stay on the market longer than those with updated and desirable features.

In this home its pink wall-to-wall carpeting, outdated and monotone furnishings, antiquated fixtures and appliances, and lack of style had no appeal nor garnered interest from potential buyers. 

In an attempt to sell the home for three years, this homeowner, unaware that his home and its contents were keeping buyers away, enlisted the help of a home staging professional. Trained to identify the key selling features buyers look for in a home and staging it for maximum appeal for a targeted demographic is one of many bonuses in hiring a home stager. Looking at the home from a ‘buyers perspective’ the seller was ready to make the necessary upgrades to sell his home competitively in today’s real estate market.

Suggestions included replacing the carpeting with hard wood flooring, fresh coat of paint, new furnishings, appliances and fixtures, plus the designing a stacked fireplace in the living room as the focal point in the room. The results were astonishing. The seller admitted the home was unrecognizable with the updates and remarked the transformation went from a “sow’s ear into a silk purse”. Eager to put his home on the market he has more confidence that it will sell quickly.

When preparing your home to sell, consider enlisting the assistance of a professional home stager. They can show you where your home may hold you back from getting top dollar and selling your home quickly.

Selling a Lifestyle through Home Staging

How the interior space of a home is styled says more than you think. Selling a home takes more consideration than just painting the walls or planting flowers outside. Consider the message the interior speaks, does it scream that it needs help?

This living room had some great items to work with. Before we staged the room it was overcrowded and unappealing. The room appeared to be very small and had many focal points. Making a detour around the room to sit down was the entry point. Considering Feng Shui principles, this room represents blocking creativity, flow and keeping your guard up.  Unfortunately, it isn’t very welcoming as the first impression into the home, especially if it is for sale.

Using home staging techniques and interior design principles to maximize the space and highlight the homes features will make this home extraordinary. By removing excessive accessories, eliminating unnecessary and over scaled furniture, plus introducing appropriate décor items we can begin to paint a picture for buyers. One that highlights the occupant’s lifestyle, maximizes the size and functionality of the room, improves the perception and sensibility of the space, plus adds value to the home.

First impressions count and by creating a focal point for each room that is inviting, comfortable and beautiful will increase the on-line viewing and selling potential. Homebuyers can see the potential and possibilities of envisioning their family making the house their own and will be ready to buy.

Whether you live in your home or it is for sale the placement of furniture, décor as well as scale speaks volumes. Does your home reflect the lifestyle you aim for or does it hold you back?

View more changes to this home.

Case and Point about De-Cluttering

The importance of de-cluttering is to enhance the rooms and showcase the features of the home. It also frees up space and increases the livable areas of the floor plan. If a home is going to be listed for sale, the best thing is to strip it down and start from the beginning to highlight those great features. This also means trading out dated or period specific furnishings and linens, removing personal photographs, and paring down the furnishings.

Recently, I was asked to prepare (do some home staging) to an occupied home that was going to be photographed and listed for sale. The owners were gracious to follow my instructions and we went from room-to-room of a very full house and started emptying the rooms, storing all extraneous furnishings, books, collectables, etc., into storage. We even gave some rooms a new coat of paint. With that complete the next step was to rearrange and style the rooms for good flow and ambiance. Sometimes there's nothing one can do with existing furnishings, especially when it's occupied, so you make it work and that's what we did. For a fresh facelift, we brought in updated linens, removed old towels and throw rugs, plus added new artwork. There was plenty more work behind the scenes that took place to showcase this home, and now it feels as if it's square footage has increased! Future buyers can envision creating a new life, dreaming of how great it will be to gather with friends and family during the holiday's in the great room, and calling it home.


Does your home tell a good story or does it warn people to look the other way? If you're uncertain, then getting an impartial professional to do a walk-through can help. It may be all you need to seeing your home in a different light.


There's so much more to see in this beautiful home, take a look at the unique features and the fun exercise/music room.