Staging a Long Island Home for Sale: What $0, $100 and $500 Each Buy

ByPawli Paola Meyer

Freddie Mac’s weekly survey on October 8 put the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate at 7.40%, compared with 6.30% a year earlier. In Suffolk County, the median single-family price reached $760,000 in August and sellers received a median 102.2% of their original list price, according to OneKey MLS figures reported by Long Island Guide. Buyers are carrying a bigger monthly payment for the same house, and sellers still hold some leverage in a market short on inventory. Rates and inventory sit outside a seller’s control. How the house looks in its first photos and at its first showing does not, which is why staging gets a closer look every fall. The wider fall picture is covered in Selling This Fall After the September Nor’easter, With Mortgage Rates Above 7%.

What the NAR staging survey found

The most recent national numbers come from the National Association of Realtors’ 2025 Profile of Home Staging, built on a February 2025 survey. NAR invited 49,806 active Realtors and received 1,266 usable responses, a 2.5% response rate with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.75% at the 95% confidence level. The results describe what agents reported seeing, not what happened to any particular listing.

What agents reportedShareAgents asked
Staging reduced time on the market49%Sellers’ agents
Staging raised the dollar value offered by 1% to 10%29%Sellers’ agents
Staging raised offers 1% to 5% versus similar unstaged homes17%Buyers’ agents
Staging had no effect on the dollar value offered41%Buyers’ agents
Staging made it easier to picture the home as theirs83%Buyers’ agents
Recommended decluttering91%Sellers’ agents
Recommended cleaning the entire home88%Sellers’ agents
Recommended improving curb appeal77%Sellers’ agents

Two figures deserve a place side by side: nearly three in ten agents saw higher offers, and about four in ten buyers’ agents saw no change in price. Read that way, staging works as a tool that helps a sound listing show well, with no promise of a markup attached. NAR’s deputy chief economist, Jessica Lautz, described the reason in the release: “The typical home seller resides in their home for 10 years before selling,” long enough to stop noticing what a stranger will see at the front door.

The 41% figure is reported by Atlanta Agent Magazine from the same NAR report, and News 12 Long Island repeated it in a segment, crediting it to the “National Federation of Realtors.” The survey itself belongs to NAR.

The cost against a Long Island price

NAR reported a median cost of $1,500 when a staging service is used and $500 when the sellers’ agent handles the work. Set against Suffolk’s $760,000 August median, $1,500 comes to about 0.2% of the price and $500 to roughly 0.07%. A 1% increase, the bottom of the range that 29% of agents reported, would be $7,600 on the same house. Those percentages are the writer’s arithmetic on published figures. They predict nothing about a specific sale, and the 41% group is the reminder that no result is guaranteed.

Photos first, then the showing

Photos led the NAR data. Among sellers’ agents, 88% said photos in a listing were much more or more important to their clients, compared with 47% for video and 43% for traditional staging. Buyers’ agents put photos at 73% and physical staging at 57%. Since most buyers meet a house on a phone screen before they ever park in the driveway, the sensible order of work is to prepare what the camera will see and then what a visitor will walk through.

Shingled North Shore Long Island home at golden hour with a fresh front door

Timing adds a wrinkle in October. Clocks move back on Sunday, November 1, 2026, and after that late-afternoon showings begin to happen at dusk. Every fixture should work by then, and the bulbs inside a room should match in warmth so the photos and the visits look alike.

The no-cost round

Most of the early work takes time and a few boxes, and it follows the order buyers notice things.

  1. Clear the kitchen counters down to a handful of items. A stager quoted in NAR’s REALTOR Magazine limited sellers to three items on the counters and had them move a sofa so the fireplace drew the eye first.
  2. Take down family photographs and personal collections, and pack the excess furniture that blocks a walking path from the door to the windows.
  3. Clean everything, including the places a buyer opens: the oven, the closets, the laundry area. NAR’s 88% figure for whole-home cleaning sits right behind decluttering at 91%.
  4. Stage the hidden spaces. HGTV’s five-step staging video with designer Monica Pedersen lists closets, the basement and the attic alongside the main rooms.
  5. Open every blind and curtain for photos and showings, and photograph the house in daylight.

Under $100: small supplies

A modest shopping list handles what cleaning alone cannot reach: scuffs on walls and switch plates, lint on upholstery, picture frames that sit too low, and a front entry that tracks fall leaves and mud inside. The list at the end of this post covers five items used for exactly that.

Around $500: where a modest budget goes

NAR does not break down what its $500 median pays for. An allocation based on the room rankings below, which is opinion and not survey data, would put lighting and the entry first, then the living room, then the primary bedroom. Neutral bedding, a pair of lamps, and a mirror hung at eye level move the photographs more than new furniture would.

Rooms in priority order

RoomBuyers’ agents: most important to stageSellers’ agents who staged it
Living room37%91%
Primary bedroom34%83%
Kitchen23%68%
Dining roomn/a69%
Guest bedroom7%22%

The guest bedroom ranks last on both lists, so a seller short on time can leave it as a clean, empty room and spend the hours on the first three.

Staged is not the same as a television set

NAR asked about the influence of home-renovation and buying shows. Forty-eight percent of respondents said buyers expected homes to look as if they had been staged for television, 58% said buyers were disappointed by how homes compared with those on TV, and 77% said the shows set unrealistic or higher expectations. A house that still looks lived in, only clearer and brighter, tends to hold up better in person than one dressed for a camera.

Decluttered kitchen with white quartz counters and a bowl of lemons

Local video worth watching

News 12 Long Island ran two staging segments within a month of each other. In October 2025, a real estate broker from Daniel Gale Sotheby’s International Realty offered tips in How to stage your home for a quick sale. In November, Walt Kane’s Kane in Your Corner segment featured agent Megan Bonnano, who described the goal as a “clean, crisp, and emotionally inviting environment.”

Where staging stops

Presentation has limits. A staged room should not conceal a known condition, and the line between strategy and concealment is covered in Staged to Deceive and Staging Is a Material Representation. Homes near the water face extra wear from salt and spray, which Salt, Spray, and Staging addresses. Scent and sound are the subject of the sensory staging guide, and a room-by-room schedule appears in Declutter Like You Mean It.

Supplies used in this plan

Each item below was chosen for a step above.

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Questions sellers ask

Is virtual staging a substitute for physical staging? NAR’s report found sellers’ agents split: 34% considered virtual staging less important to their clients and 24% considered it equally important. Listing rules on labeling digitally furnished photos vary, so the listing broker should confirm what applies.

Calm primary bedroom with white hotel-style bedding

Does a house have to be empty to be staged? No. The NAR figures cover occupied homes too, and the most common recommendations were decluttering, cleaning and curb appeal, which cost little.

How much should a seller spend? NAR’s medians of $500 and $1,500 are the only published benchmarks used here. A listing agent can say what a given house needs, and a seller can compare that advice with what the house is likely to bring.

This is for informational purposes only; consult a licensed attorney or financial advisor for your specific situation. Staging results reported by NAR reflect agents’ experiences and do not predict the outcome of any sale.

Real estate markets change. For current listings and market data, contact Maison Pawli at maisonpawli.com/about/.

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