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Send in the Stagers

With the real estate market sluggish, a little decluttering won’t be enough to sell your home. Time to turn the space into a showroom.

All the World’s Staged

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Stefano Ukmar for The New York Times

John and Molly Cesarz have three young sons and an insufficient number of bedrooms to go around. This past August, they decided it was time to put their Upper East Side co-op on the market.

Martin Eiden, an associate broker at Compass Real Estate, laid things out for his clients. To ready the apartment for its close-up, the two bedrooms as well as some cabinets would have to be painted, and all the family photographs on display tucked away.

The couple, who were preparing to close on a four-bedroom co-op nearby but would have to remain in their apartment for a few months, had fully expected such diktats and nodded agreeably.

But Mr. Eiden wasn’t finished.

He also wanted to rearrange some furniture and temporarily replace several pieces with things he believed would make the space more pleasing to prospective buyers. The list included lamps, a sofa, an area rug, plants and assorted knickknacks.

“Our first reaction was ‘No way,’” recalled Mrs. Cesarz, a high school teacher. As for the couple’s second reaction, well, let’s just say a beloved Oriental rug that once covered the living room floor can now be found tied up in a closet.

These days, thanks to New York’s sluggish real estate market, all the world’s staged.

Inventory is high, buyers are eager to find fault with a property (get a load of that plaid sectional in the living room and the statue of a shepherdess in the foyer!) and quick to find the exit. Understandably, sellers want to ensure that those prospects — any prospects! — stick around long enough to sniff the fresh-baked cookies. Thus, they are living, and not always happily, in the company of unfamiliar sofas, easy chairs, end tables, headboards and tchotchkes, and relegating much of their own furniture to storage.

In some instances, the sellers haven’t yet closed on their new homes and would like to skip the bother and the added expense of a short-term rental. And, of course, many people simply can’t afford to carry two properties, so they’ve got no choice but to stay where they are until they’ve lassoed a buyer.

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"Our textiles and accessories are key to the quality of our staging," said Cathy Lorenz, owner of the staging company Cathy Lorenz Designs.Credit...Stefano Ukmar for The New York Times

“Staging is the new norm at all price points,” said Stuart Moss, an associate broker at the Corcoran Group. “Back in the day, it was recommended only if the apartment had certain flaws, like a bad view, or relatively a lot of wear and tear, or if the space required a better definition of space.”

[Tastes are constantly shifting, but here are the top ten items being used these days to stage apartments.]

When the market was booming, even an estate sale might call for only minimal tweaking. “If an apartment was in nice condition with a view, you expected prospective buyers to come in and have their own imagination and know how a room could be laid out,” Mr. Moss continued. “Now every apartment has to be prepared for showing.”

As Nicole Beauchamp, a sales agent at Engel & Volkers put it, “Five years ago, the discussion would have been, ‘Let’s declutter, let’s maybe touch up the paint and let’s do a professional cleaning.’ I would have brought up staging only if absolutely necessary. But these days the staging discussion happens at every listing appointment.”

And sellers don’t need a lot of convincing.

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Anne Kenney, owner of the staging firm Anne Kenney Associates, has a cache of decorative accessories that includes sculptures, hurricane lamps and moss balls and stones. Credit...Stefano Ukmar for The New York Times

“It used to be that the conversation around staging was, ‘Wait, you’re saying I need to fork over 10 or 20 grand up front, and it might help but it might not?’” said Ari Harkov, an associate broker at Halstead Property. “Now they’re not arguing. They get it.”

Disheartening statistics help explain sellers’ willingness to get with the program.

In the third quarter of 2018, New York City home sales were down 8 percent from the same period last year, according to the Real Estate Board of New York, a trade association. Sales in Manhattan had the deepest plunge, of 15 percent, with Queens dropping 9 percent and Brooklyn 7 percent.

But the difficult market isn’t the only driver here. “Because of HGTV, we’ve become more visually and design-oriented as a society,” Mr. Harkov said. “Many of us are skimming through Pinterest or looking at photos on Facebook, so we expect to see things look a certain way.”

Mr. Moss is currently representing the owners of a three-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath condo on Riverside Boulevard with water views. “My clients bought it new construction, and a few years ago I would never have bought a stager in,” he said.

In a nod to the current climate, a stager was engaged to do the living room and master bedroom to the tune of $3,000 a month.

Many stagers typically accept jobs only on properties that have been emptied of furniture — and emptied of occupants. They don’t want the wear and tear on their sofas and rugs; they certainly don’t need the aggravation. But some stagers, loath to miss out on a revenue stream, are taking all comers.

“I’ve had to come around and loosen my strings on what we will do,” said Cathy Lorenz, the owner of Cathy Lorenz Designs. Two years ago, 90 percent of Ms. Lorenz’s business was staging vacant properties, and 10 percent owner-occupied spaces. Now it’s a 75/25 split.

Staging for a studio runs about $5,000, including the consultation and installation fees and the cost of renting the furniture for three months (although most staging contracts are for six months). The tab can run $40,000 to outfit a Classic Six, depending on how high end a client wants to go. “Everything we bring in has a price tag,” Ms. Lorenz said.

Of course, storing a seller’s furniture has a price tag too. Done & Done, a move management and organizing company, charges $400 and up each month, depending on the size of the storage room, said Ann Lightfoot, a founder of the company.

If an apartment sells — mirabile dictu — on its very first day on the market, “That’s wonderful news,” Ms. Lorenz said. “But our contract still holds in its entirety because of all the work we already put into the project.”

Churchill Living, a furniture rental company often used by stagers, offers a special promotion available only for vacant apartments: Pay for three months, get three months free. “But we’re getting more stagers doing owner-occupied apartments,” said Eileen Guinnessey, a senior account manager at Churchill.

Ms. Guinnessey has also seen an uptick in requests for, say, a headboard but no mattress or a dining table but no chairs to go with it. “That’s the kind of order from a stager that tells me someone is still living in the apartment,” she said.

Stagers face a particular set of challenges when working on an owner-occupied apartment — the biggest being the presence of the owner and the owner’s stuff.

“You can’t do all the things you’d be able to do with an empty apartment, when you have total control of the design and can choose a style and a color palette and make sure everything is the right scale,” said Sid Pinkerton, the owner of Manhattan Staging.

When the seller hasn’t moved out, “you’re working with what’s in the apartment,” he said. “The people may have a navy easy chair and a maroon sofa, and I think, ‘Hmmm, now what am I going to do? Maybe I’ll bring in white pillows or a white rug to make the room feel lighter and brighter.’”

In some instances, stagers working on an owner-occupied apartment will charge an additional fee to cover wear and tear on the furniture and accessories. Ms. Lorenz has just instituted a 10 percent security deposit on every item from her own inventory. She and several fellow stagers have also established some new terms of engagement. Ms. Lorenz, for instance, will not stage an owner-occupied apartment that has pets. And if she puts a bunch of wine glasses on the bar for show, she said, “we don’t want clients to use the glasses.”

For her part, Anne Kenney, the owner of a staging company called Anne Kenney Associates, does not invite client participation in the process.

“I have to tell people all the time that they don’t get a vote about the kind of couch or end table I’m going to use, and I have to be very firm on that point,” she said. “I explain to them the difference between interior design, which is for a specific taste, and staging, which has to have broad appeal. That’s our expertise.”

Last month, partly in response to the softening market, Compass introduced Compass Concierge, a service that assumes the costs of decluttering, painting and staging clients’ apartments; the cost is repaid by the sellers at closing.

“It’s even more important in this climate to put your apartment in the best light,” said Samantha Lynch, the senior director of corporate development and strategic finance at Compass. “The program lets sellers invest in their homes while we assume the upfront costs.”

In some cases, real estate agents themselves will take on the role of ad hoc stager, in the interest of saving a client both the cost of furniture rental and the staging fees charged by the professionals.

Ms. Beauchamp, of Engel & Volkers, has a cache of chairs, lamps, glassware, vases and multiple sets of bed linens that she keeps in her own apartment and deploys gratis to dress up residences that she finds wanting. “It tells clients ‘I’m in this with you,’” she said.

Mr. Eiden, of Compass, rents a few storage spaces to hold a collection of furniture and accessories (much of it from Wayfair) sufficient to outfit four two- or three-bedroom apartments. “I don’t charge my sellers anything,” he said. “It’s all-inclusive of my commission. That’s how important it is to me.”

These part-time stagers may lack a certain je ne sais quoi. “You start to see some of the same accessories at showings,” said Lisa Larson, an associate broker at Warburg Realty, enumerating items like white nailhead love seats, cowhide rugs and small abstract sculptures, including various versions of metal orbs. Ms. Lorenz said she has had many sightings of a certain lightly textured cream-colored rug and a glass-topped coffee table with a gold base.

Sellers accept the invasion of the end tables and accent chairs with varying degrees of enthusiasm. “Initially, people are a little bit worried to sit on the sofa that isn’t theirs. They’re a little intimidated by the whole setup,” Ms. Kenney said. “But several of our sellers have thrown parties because the place looks so darn good they want people to come and see it.”

Mrs. Cesarz, Mr. Eiden’s client, described her staged apartment as “feeling institutional.” She isn’t wild about all the throw pillows on the bed, and she doesn’t care a whit for the blue-and-white area rug that has taken the place of her Oriental. “But it probably photographs well,” she said.

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“I don’t like the rug our broker brought in when he staged the apartment but it probably photographs well,” Mrs. Cesarz said.Credit...Stefano Ukmar for The New York Times

But Mark Mayo and My My Tntien, the parents of two young children, were only too happy for Mr. Eiden to have his way with their two-bedroom apartment in South Park Slope. “A lot of our furniture is stained with baby vomit and milk,” said Mr. Mayo, 40, a data engineer. “Martin showed us a couple of sofa styles, and he let us choose.”

Mr. Eiden also switched out the coffee table and TV stand and staged the couple’s roof deck, adding a Buddha statue, an outdoor rug and plants. “We had to water them and everything,” Mr. Mayo said of the plants. Listed at $869,000, the apartment recently sold for $800,000.

“Martin told me I would have to lose my sectional and maybe the dining table,” said Alex Hall, 43, whose Mercer Street duplex recently went on the market for $1.5 million.

“I was pleasantly surprised that he and his team kept a couple of my things here,” added Mr. Hall, who works in the tech sector. “I mostly love what they’ve done, even though my apartment is no longer perfectly set up for slouching around and watching a movie marathon.”

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“I mostly love how my broker did the staging,” Alex Hall said of his Mercer Street duplex. "I assume the apartments I'm now looking to buy are also staged."Credit...Stefano Ukmar for The New York Times

Occasionally, a staged apartment looks so good that sellers rethink their decision to move. One of Ms. Kenney’s first projects was an owner-occupied two-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side. The clients were suburbia bound.

“The apartment wasn’t set up well,” Ms. Kenney said. “Most people aren’t designers; they just do the best they can. We had the sellers take a lot of stuff out, then we rearranged everything and brought in accent pillows and bedding.”

She continued: “And when we got done, they said, ‘This is so great. We’re not going to move.’ And I thought, ‘I am never going to work in this town again!’”

Three months later, the couple decided, on second thought, that they really did need more space.

Mr. Eiden recalled a similar experience, when the owners of a three-bedroom duplex in Chelsea said to him, “Please don’t be mad at us. The apartment looks super great, and we don’t want to sell it.”

He had decluttered their apartment, brought in lighting and a clutch of throw pillows, and rearranged the furniture to better define the space. “I made more than my commission back with all the referrals they’ve given me,” Mr. Eiden said.

But with staging, as with weight-loss products, results may vary.

“I don’t think, in this market, we can guarantee that if you stage you will get X amount more dollars or a bidding war or even the asking price,” said Ms. Larson, of Warburg. “It’s just that this is a buyer’s market with a lot of competition, and we need to check every box we can.”

Still, staging does have one invaluable benefit: Like packing up the pots and pans and books and linens, it’s another, well, stage in the letting-go of home sweet home and the moving-on process.

“I really think staging in an owner-occupied apartment helps people detach from the property,” said Ms. Beauchamp, of Engel & Volkers. “Then it becomes a commodity that we’re trying to sell for the best price possible.”

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A version of this article appears in print on  , Section RE, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Staging the Set. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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