What home staging does, and what it doesn't

Almost every advertisement for home staging carries a percentage. Ninety per cent above asking, fifty-six days instead of a hundred and fifty, a valuation ten per cent higher. Trace the source and you invariably arrive at staging companies, staging courses or the stagers' own trade body. Parties with an interest, without a published method and without a control group. Independent Dutch research into the effect of home staging does not exist.

So we don't quote those figures. What does exist is transaction data on something else, and it is far more useful.

What sitting on the market costs a seller

brainbay, the data arm of the Dutch estate agents' association NVM, set selling time against eventual proceeds, using every transaction in the second quarter of 2024. Homes sold within a month go for an average of 5.4 per cent above the asking price, and 82 per cent of them beat the asking price. At three to four months that flips to 2.5 per cent below. Beyond six months it is 4 per cent below, and only one in ten still sells above asking.

The turning point sits at three months. Between a fast and a slow sale lies 7.9 percentage points, which on a 500,000 euro home comes to almost 40,000 euros. That is the sum that matters, because it is not about staging but about standing still.

Usually it comes down to the price

There is a caveat here that most staging companies leave out. Those figures show correlation, not cause. The gap does not appear because time passes, but because something about the price or the property keeps it on the market. In its report on the second quarter of 2026, the NVM writes that homes with a poorer energy label or in mediocre condition tend to linger, as do homes in the higher price brackets.

So the price is the first thing to look at. If that is right and the home still does not move, presentation is the next thing you can change. That is a decision worth a few thousand euros. A five per cent price reduction on a 500,000 euro home costs 25,000 euros.

Where presentation makes the difference

• —An empty home looks smaller. Without furniture a buyer has no sense of scale and mostly notices what is wrong. That is precisely why a vacant property is the strongest candidate for a full furnishing.
• —The first weeks decide the interest. A home is at its most visible just after publication, and that attention does not come back on its own.
• —Relisting works as a relaunch. New photographs and a new publication date return the home to the top of the search results and to funda's alerts.

Staging without new photographs is money wasted

If the new interior never reaches funda, nothing changes about the interest. With a staging, photography is not an upsell but a condition, and it belongs in the figure you compare. Anyone weighing one bare staging fee against another is comparing two incomplete quotes.

Unsure whether staging adds anything in your situation? We will say so when the answer is no. Arrange an introduction and we will look at the home together, and at what is really going on.

Sources: brainbay, Woning langer dan 3 maanden te koop, 9 July 2024, based on transaction data for the second quarter of 2024; NVM quarterly report on the second quarter of 2026.