FAQs

Q: WHAT IS HOME STAGING?

A: Home Staging is an effective sales technique that integrates decorating with marketing and creates an experience for home buyers. It’s about more than just furnishing a home – it’s about selling a lifestyle. The elements of home staging will help to neutralize your home by eliminating all potential distractions and drawing the focus to the features of the home instead. Home Staging allows you to market your home to the largest audience possible by maximizing your home’s potential. This can be as simple as reducing clutter and reorganizing the space, or as complex as creating a staging plan and providing the furniture and accessories needed to execute the plan. Each home is unique and will require a different variety of services but all start with an initial consultation, providing a full home evaluation including a written report complete with all recommendations for improvements and updates. We help to clearly define all areas of the home to eliminate those distractions that will keep buyers from seeing and remembering the great features of your house.

Q: WHAT IS INCLUDED IN THE HOME STAGING CONSULTATION?

A: With the home staging consultation, you will receive a full home evaluation, including a written report with all recommended updates, repairs, furniture arrangements, paint colours, and decorating suggestions. The consultation generally takes approximately two hours to complete. Our report will help to provide you with a clear action plan for preparing your home for sale.

Q: WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE CONSULTATION?

A: You will receive the full evaluation notes from the consultation immediately following. If you have requested pricing on further staging services or staging rental items, you will receive these within the next day or two unless otherwise advised. You may then decide if you wish to implement the recommendations yourself.  Once the necessary recommendations have been completed, we may then return with any requested staging rentals and provide final photo preparation.

Q: DO I HAVE TO IMPLEMENT ALL OF THE RECOMMENDATIONS PROVIDED?

A: You don’t have to do any of them! However, the more you complete, the better your chances of selling your home, faster and for the most money. We understand that some of the recommendations may not fit your timeframe and/or budget, but suggest that you aim for a minimum of 75% of all suggestions. You or your Real Estate agent have hired us to provide our expert opinion regarding the best way to showcase your home and we are therefore required to provide you with all recommendations for increasing the overall saleability of your home. All recommendations provided are based on buyer expectations, and adjustments that could be made to best appeal to them. How much you choose to do is up to you, however most BTSH clients implement approximately 90% of our recommendations.

Q: WILL YOU RETURN TO REVIEW THE WORK THAT WE DO?

A: We offer a “Pre-Listing Walk-through” for just this reason! With a pre-listing walk-through, we will return prior to the day of photos to review what has been done, what is left to do, and any follow-up questions that you might have. The service is approximately 1 hour and there is a small fee for this visit. We recommend scheduling this visit for approximately 1 week prior to the day of photos to allow yourself the time needed to implement any final recommendations provided during the visit, however the time for this can vary based on your home. Contact your home stager to review what timing works best for you.

Q: WILL YOU BRING IN ALL NEW FURNITURE?

A: We aim to work with what a homeowner already has as much as possible, but also offer top quality home staging rentals, including quality furniture, artwork, linens, and accessories, if these are required to achieve the best results. We understand that you need to live in your home – in our consultation, we will work with your daily routine and provide you with solutions to make the home selling process as painless as possible. That said, we want to ensure that we are appealing to your ideal buyers and demographic, and it may require the addition of some items in order to achieve this result.

Q: WHERE DO YOU RENT YOUR FURNITURE?

A: In order to maintain quality control and maximum flexibility, Upstaging Inc and Design never rents from third-party vendors. We offer some of the finest home staging rental items in the region – all furniture, artwork, linens, and accessories rented from Upstaging Inc and Design are the property of Upstaging Inc and Design. This allows us flexibility with style, availability, rental period, and pricing.

Q: HOW DO I KNOW IF I SHOULD RENT?

A: Here are just a few examples of why to rent:

  • Have you removed personal photos from your walls? Avoid leaving the walls bare, and with exposed holes (and save yourself the hassle of patching and re-painting these areas). Artwork rental pieces start as low as $15/piece.
  • Are you a minimalist? In order to provide a warm, welcoming home, we may wish to add some accessories and soft accent pieces to cozy up the home.
  • Do you have old, outdated furniture and/or décor? Give your home an instant update by renting the pieces you need to update the look of your home. Our team will select the items that will best appeal to your ideal buyers and complement your home.
  • Do you have vacant rooms or bare spaces in your home? It’s always a good idea to show every room in your home fully furnished and decorated. This not only helps to define the space, but allows potential buyers to visualize the best use of space and the optimal furniture arrangement in each room. You can rent it all from BTSH – furniture, artwork, accessories and more!

Q: IF I RENT ITEMS, WHAT FEES AND CHARGES CAN I EXPECT?

A: Each item rented has a monthly rental rate. In addition, your home stager will need to charge for their time to select, pack, prep, and install the rented items in your home. These will appear on your estimate and invoice as “Home Staging Services fee” – the rate for this is billed at $110/hr for the lead home stager, and $55/hr for their assistant (if needed). As well, depending on the items required, and your location relative to Beyond The Stage Homes’ service area, you may also see a delivery fee on your bill. All charges will be clearly outlined and explained in an estimate provided to you for approval prior to commencing any work.

Q: IF I CHOOSE TO PROCEED WITH HOME STAGING SERVICES BEYOND THE CONSULTATION, WHAT WILL YOU NEED TO GET STARTED?

A: In order to proceed with home staging services following the consultation, we require the following:

  • 50% down-payment
  • Signed terms and conditions or contract
  • Signed credit card authorization form (we keep a credit card on file in case of late payment/damage to the rental items. We do not process your credit card for the down-payment unless you ask us to, and we do not process it for the payment of the balance unless you haven’t paid by the due date)

NOTE: Staging date and home staging rental items will NOT be held until the above items have been received.