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When I bought my home it hadn't been built yet and they didn't have a model. Fortunately someone else bought one that was move-in ready but the owner hadn't closed yet, so the builder was able to let me in to see it.
It was great to walk through the new, empty house. I knew right away it was a great floor plan for me and I didn't have to look past all the staged stuff to see it.
I prefer vacant. Really, it boils down to having good depth perception and being able to visualize things accurately. For example, our last house we bought wasn't vacant. It had all the owner's furniture and things everywhere. Their furniture was an eyesore, mismatched, in bad shape, etc. For me it just detracted from the house itself.
My wife though, she can't visualize something, and she's always way off when it comes to dimensions. She said there was no way our sofa was going to fit in the family room. I said it would fit perfectly. She swore up and down it wouldn't... but that's why I bring a tape measure to tour homes with, I can pull it out and physically show her that things WILL fit. My wife prefers having a home staged, because it helps her visualize our own stuff in the home because she can't do it accurately without it.
But as for me... I'd rather have a blank canvas to look at. I want to see all the flooring, make sure carpets aren't stained, wood floors aren't scratched, etc. Furniture hides a lot of that stuff.
I don't think a buyer should pay more, but I do think that staging may help a house sell more quickly and easily. There may be studies, I don't know. But I do assume that new home builders wouldn't bother to build and furnish/stage model homes if they weren't deriving a commercial benefit from it.
However, for a homeowner, I think that there are different degrees of staging. When I "staged" my own home, I didn't add anything, it was all about subtracting and arranging. I packed up lots of clothing, kitchen items, etc. so that the closets and cabinets and drawers were all neat and orderly and no more than 3/4 full. I packed up most of personal items like family photos, and pared down the rest of the decor to some carefully curated pieces - a little more of a minimalist approach than I ordinarily live with. I packed up a large number of the ridiculous large number of books I own, and also put some of my now empty bookcases into storage, along with several other pieces of furniture - side chairs, end tables, etc. I spot cleaned any furniture that needed it including using a marker to clean up any scuff marks on leather or wood so that it all looked as good as possible even though none of it was new.
I also took had the walls patched and touched up, carpet pulled and cleaned, windows washed, all light bulbs functional, steam cleaned grout and several other finishing touches, including having the HVAC system cleaned and certified.
I felt that my townhouse was going to appeal to either a first time buyer or a down sizing owner, and that they would likely appreciate a turnkey property. As it turned out, I ended up selling to an investor who paid cash, and was so impressed by the condition that he waived an inspection. Given that I didn't have to negotiate for any inspection findings, I think that the time and effort and money (for the services I contracted out) spent was well worth it in both stress relief as well as money in my pocket since I closed for my initial contract price with no concessions.
Still only 1 in 6 voted in the poll that they wanted to see furnished houses.
Staging is just a gimmick for real estate agents to soak their client for more money by convincing seller that the house will sell sooner or sell for more money.
Buyers are not so superficial as to be fooled by staging. Furniture just gets in the way, and may hide flaws. Myself, after I took possession of my house I discovered the furniture and some area rugs covered flaws in the hardwood floor. Unfortunately I discovered this after closing, too late to do anything about it, and it would have been too cumbersome to have attempted to move all the furniture and area underneath to inspect the entire wood floor.
Here is the proof that staging helps: {sound of crickets chirping}
Staging is just a gimmick for real estate agents to soak their client for more money by convincing seller that the house will sell sooner or sell for more money.
I believe it. For several years now there has been a column in our Sunday paper's real estate section about home buying and selling. The writer, who is a local agent, yaps yaps yaps about cleaning, decluttering, and staging. It's an obsession with her. (For example, one entire column detailed how to give throw pillows a "karate chop" so potential buyers will get that warm fuzzy feeling.) I get a kick out of turning to that page every week and reading the column just to say, Yep, she's going on about decluttering and staging, again!
But in our area, any home at a reasonable price is snapped up as soon as it hits the market, sometimes before. I see this in my neighborhood over and over again. Staging doesn't seem to have anything to do with it. The only reason I can see for this agent to make such a fuss about it is that she's getting extra money for her staging services and needs to convince everyone that it's necessary.
The house should be as clean as possible and definitely de-cluttered. Forget the staging, forget baking cookies. The "cookie" thing is just urban legend babble.
I would be annoyed if my agent gave away cookies etc. That's just more vacuuming for me as strangers walk around my house dropping crumbs all over.
If a home interests me re location, price, size and having most of what's on my wish list, I will look at it whether its furnished, staged or vacant.
I have no problem looking past other peoples stuff and/or staging to visual myself and my furniture in the house. I can also picture how my furniture would fit and how I would arrange it; if not I measure.
However, I usually find vacant homes creepy. I know you said all the homes were equally clean and odor free, but in reality, at least in my experience, that is rarely the case.
Every vacant house I have ever looked at smells musty from being closed up. Usually, there's dust evident and or stuff tracked in on the floors. Frequently, the toilets have rings or film from not being flushed regularly. Spider webs may be evident or even a dead bug or too. Some or all of that adds up to an "ick" feeling for me and I just want to get out of the house as soon as possible.
Add to that, the last time we bought was 2010 in a very slow market and a lot of the vacant houses had been sitting vacant for 6 months to a year. I am wary of buying a house that's been vacant that long, because bad things start happening to houses that sit empty, especially without appropriate climate control in harsh climates.
I do agree with Dave though that people responding here are probably not representative of the general population.
I wouldn't say it really matters to me, but if I have the choice, I think I would prefer unstaged. That being said, I've only ever bought one property that was empty. All the others have had someone still living there or it was staged.
I prefer vacant homes so I can more clearly see things that might be hiding behind furniture and pictures on the wall. It's pretty simple.
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