Property Styling Perth - What does it cost?
The only sellers I’ve ever experienced who book property styling Perth prior to knowing what it costs, are sellers who have staged their home with us previously and already know roughly what it is going to cost.
Property styling, like anything you do to a home in preparation to for sale is a large expense, for many sellers. Given the rise of property styling in Perth, for many vendors it’s their very first time their agent has suggested they consider home staging their property. Often citing that the cost of the styling will add numbers to their final sale price.
So what does it actually cost to style a home in Perth?
Most property styling companies in Perth have home staging packages starting anywhere between $1500-$3500 with the majority being around $2000-$3500 for a small unit. Larger homes may vary between $3000-$8000 for an average 4bed 2living home, and a lot more for over sized homes where we are considering 3+ living areas, games rooms, over 5 bedrooms etc, pricing can easily escalate to $10,000+.
While there are many varying factors that determine why someone would select a specific Perth property stylist, today since we are talking about costs, I’m going to focus on what determines the above costs of home staging in Perth from TWO perspectives:
Perspective One; the details of your home, such as:
- Location in Perth of the property to be styled
- Property size and how much of the home the seller would like to stage
- Vacant, integrated, or occupied home staging – Partial property styling or complete.
Perspective Two; the internal business details of the property styling company:
- The staging companies business model
- Your property styling companies’ overheads
- The property stylists minimum hire period
- If the home staging company is connected to or funded/ co-owned by a furniture store
- Experience of the property stylist
- How In Demand that particular property stylist is
- Calibre of home staging inventory
Let’s explore how these factors influence what a property styling costs are likely to look like when you receive home stagers quotes, and why.
Your Property's Location in Perth
Where your property is situated is going to be a factor in terms of the cost to home stage in Perth. For example, if your stylists warehouse is situated in Morley, and your home is in Dawsville, you are going to pay more to style your home with that property stager, than if you were in situated in closer Perth suburbs such as Maylands or Bayswater or even a little further away like Wattle Grove. Since Dawesville is approximately 1hr and 20 minutes from Morley. This isn’t just 1hr 20 minutes, it’s actually 8 hours travel when you consider the stylist who needs to go and quote the job, the truck and the van (the stylist travelling down separately to style the property) and the truck returning to destage. And that is not even taking into consideration hitting traffic, which that time frame could easily double.
So it makes makes sense your property stylist would adjust their price accordingly depending on distance in Perth from their own warehouse.
Further if you are located in one of Perth’s affluent suburbs like Dalkeith, Peppermint Grove or City Beach, some home staging companies may vary their price simply on account of that. Or they may simply only stage in those suburbs as the calibre of their furniture is more suited to budgets in those areas. This is not the case though for many staging companies, including Perth Staged to Sell.
The Size of Your Property
In general, the size of the property and how much of it you would like styled is likely the largest determining factor (regarding your home) that will determine the property styling costs. The bigger the house, the more furniture you’re going to require to Stage and fit out the property properly. If you have a one bedroom unit with one living area, then it’s not going to take a lot of furniture to home stage your house so therefore it is going to cost less as opposed to if you have a six bedroom home, with three living areas, a study and a games room. More areas to stage = more furniture/ decor/ art = adds to the overall cost of your property styling.
However, many home staging companies, offer options called ‘Partial Property Styling’, ‘Integrated Home Styling’ and ‘Occupied Property Staging’ all these options will vary the cost of your property styling.
Partial Property Styling
Partial Property Styling is where the property is vacant, but the seller chooses to leave off certain areas in order to reduce cost. Eg. They may have a four bedroom, two living area home, most staging company’s would always quote to stage the entire property and others (like us) may include an option to stage all the living areas, such as – Living, dining, outdoor area and only the master bedroom, dropping off the three minor bedrooms. This will save/ spare the seller the cost of styling those minor three bedrooms. It should however be mentioned that the layout of the property may determine what areas in a partial stage should be included and what areas are ok to be ‘dropped off’.
Integrated Property Styling
Integrated Property Styling Perth may occur when the seller has some furniture in the property already which they either do not want or can’t move, or it may be nice furniture, or they may be living in the home. If the property stylist only needs to bring in Linen, Artwork and Lamps for a bedroom as opposed to Linen, Artwork, Lamps, a bed and Bedside tables, it may cost less to do this. Although many staging companies have minimum job value and quite often setting up the ‘smaller/lighter’ items takes more time than the logistics team to move the larger physical pieces of furniture.
Another example of Integrated is if there is furniture that is either built into the home (theatre) or perhaps if the games room already had a pool table in that property and the seller wishes for the pool table to be sold with the home. The Perth property stylist, may not be charging for a games room, or they would only be charging to accessorise a games room rather than furnish it. This obviously affects overall price of your property styling.
Please note due to a variety of reasons that Perth Staged to Sell no longer offers Integrated Property Styling.
Occupied Property Styling Perth
Occupied Property Styling is where the seller intends on living in the property while it is home staged and sold, and in this case the home stylist may be required to largely use a lot of the clients furniture. This may reduce the cost, however, with occupied staging there is often more advice around what the seller needs to do with everything else, and occupied staging combined with integrated may make furniture and decor selection more complicated for the home stager (as you have to work around what is already there), and these things may actually increase the staging cost.
Again, please note, due to various reasons, Perth Staged to Sell no longer provides occupied property styling in Perth. /
The internal business details of the home staging company
The Property Stylist's Business Model
The Property Styling Furniture: Some staging companies hire furniture from large furniture companies in Perth. And other Perth home staging businesses purchase their own furniture. Both options have pros and cons for the Perth property stylist. If you purchase, your costs are going to be greater in the beginning since you have the upfront cost of purchasing the furniture and you will have the cost of warehousing the furniture when not in use. More furniture = bigger warehouse. But stylists that hire their furniture’s costs will be determined on the cost to hire their furniture from a hire company. Their profit will be determined by their mark up, which ultimately affects the cost to stage your property.
The Property Stylist’s Transport: In house or external transport for their home staging installations and pick ups with one of the biggest factors in terms of cost of your home styling. I have had countless Perth Removalist contact me for staging, we have until late kept it house, purely because of flexibility. If a stylist is paying for an external removalist they could pay $1500 for transporting a home compared to an in-house staff moving the furniture may be half that. Keeping in mind with an in-house removalists there is not just the hourly rate of the staff (which is lower than an external removalist) but there is the cost of staff insurance, superannuation, along with the cost of either purchasing or hiring a truck. In Perth the cost to hire a truck for a day was anywhere from $130 to $240 for a 3tonne truck + diesel. If you own your own truck, the there is the cost of truck repayments along with servicing and anything else the truck may need – tie rails, repairs, tires etc. All varying factors in what it will cost to style a home in Perth.
The Property Stylist's OVerheads
As we just outlined, the size of a home stagers warehouse is going to determine their cost of the warehouse, not to mention the location of the Warehouse in Perth. This is true for all other expenses associated with home staging. If you have a large warehouse, and a lot of inventory, in most property stylist’s cases, they own way more furniture than their warehouse can store (as most is out at properties), therefore the costs of advertising, marketing and networking would be greater than someone who is just staging 1-2 houses per month and using their a large at home garage or a smaller storage unit for their surplus. It cost to get sellers through your door to stage your home, Google Ads, Networking Groups, Brochures, Flyers, Search Engine Specialists, Website People, Social Media People. Some staging companies (not us) will also pay agents a finders fee.
Perth staging companies vary in size also, so there may be one stylist + transport, there may be 5 stylists + transport. There may be office staff, purchasing staff, business development…there may be one business owner, there may be three all these things will determine the cost of their staging.
The Styling Minimum Hire Period
The minimum home staging hire period varies greatly from one Perth Property Styling company to the next. Eg. Some have a 2 week option, some have 4 weeks, some have 5, 6 and even 8. The vast majority are around 4-5 weeks. How long the property stylist offers you as a minimum hire period is a factor in what it will cost to stage your home in Perth.
If the staging company is connected to or funded by a Furniture store
Many property styling companies are start ups or purchased businesses, but there are a couple staging businesses in Perth that are connected to or invested by furniture stores. It makes sense that if a business is connected to a furniture store, their ‘hire fees’ may be much lower (internally from their furniture tore to their staging company), if there is fees at all, or if they are utilising furniture from their ex-display. Further furniture stores are purchasing at much larger wholesale pricing than that average stager can get (usually a dismal 5-10%). So if this is the case, expect to cost to stage with an independent smaller property stylist to be higher, simply because they are paying more for their furniture than the furniture store and it will take them time to grow on account of those costs.
Experience will factor in on PRoperty styling costs
Has your property stylist been around for two months or have they been around ten years? A new property staging business may be keen to get their first few jobs an establish their relationships with agents and their price may reflect this. They also may not have as many overheads right now and also due to being new, they may not really know the full cost of what it takes for their business to operate.
Whereas a property stylist that has been around for a decade should have a very astute understanding of the costs of their business, have well established relationships and overall – they are likely to be in demand. If a property stylist is good enough at their job to be in demand enough to be booked out, their prices may be higher because if they are very good at what they do home sellers and agents will be prepared to pay a higher price for a home stager to stage their listings.
How In Demand the Property Stylist Is
I do get asked to discount every now and the and I can say with certainty that if your property stylist in Perth is fully booked with a long lead time there is almost no chance she would lower her price to win a job when there are jobs backed up ready to go at full price. But if your stager is not in demand and is not as busy, she may be open to this.
What the Styling Company Includes in their Standard Quote
For a master bedroom, many staging companies will quote a queen bed, two side tables, two lamps, artwork, linen. And they may quote that regardless of the size of the bedroom. But when you have an oversized master bedroom, that would take all those items, plus switching the queen bed out for a king and also adding in a sofa – the company may automatically quote you for including the extra items, or they may not. Some may still quote the standard items and list the other upgrades or extra furniture as ‘options’. These options will look different on quotes/ and overall costs to style your property.
Calibre and Costs of Furniture and Inventory
The calibre and suppliers of a home stager’s inventory is another factor that affects their bottom line and the associated cost to stage a home. In Perth, a home stager could only be using ‘designer pieces’. These pieces may come from Perth supplier such as Globe West or Nick Scali, art may only be hand painted items or artworks ranging $1000 upwards, it makes sense then that when you stage with home staging companies like this, home staging costs will be higher than if their furniture is sourced from more moderately price supplies, such as Freedom, Amart or Julie Arnez… and compared again to property stagers who only source furniture from very competitively priced suppliers like Ikea and Fantastic Furniture. In general – I hope it makes sense that having a $5000 sofa to stage your home, or a $1500 sofa is going to heavily influence the cost of your property styling.
And that is not even getting into home staging companies who have furniture custom made either here in Perth, or import it to Perth direct from Vietnam or China. I am unsure if the cost to import direct from suppliers that supply the likes of Freedom could be cheaper than buying from these stores in Perth, considering the volume a stager would have to purchase in order to get the trade discount that warrants purchasing a lot of the same and the costs and research to travel over to somewhere like Vietnam to make it happen. But I can say – it would influence the end cost to stage a home in Perth.
In Summary
In conclusion, whoever you engage to quote you on staging your home in Perth, it’s important to understand while staging companies are providing the ‘same’ home staging service… It may not actually be the ‘same’ due to the varying factors outlined above, and all these things will affect their bottom line, and affect what their quote will look like, and what the costs will be to you.
Your Property Stylists Advice
My advice – choose one that offers the service you need (vacant/ occupied+integrated)… (complete or partial).. figure out the calibre of your home, and find one who’s furniture is in the came calibre, and as close to their warehouse as you can find 🙂
Good luck, and Happy Property Styling 🙂
~ Hope
PS. Our home staging packages are outlined here on our packages page. We published these packages almost a year ago to save sellers and agents time. But please note these are ball park figures for standard homes and the price might vary pending physical walk through.