
How do you turn an empty house into a buyer’s dream home? Zachary Crockett pulls back the curtain. This episode was originally published on August 27th, 2023.
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Zachary Crockett
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Zachary Crockett
Imagine for a moment that you are buying your first home, the biggest purchase of your life. You walk into an open house and you see a pristine mid century modern living room, the beautiful leather couch, the set of Eames armchairs, the brass bar cart stocked with crystal glasses in the kitchen, There's a bowl of perfect lemons in the backyard, a crocheted hammock wafts in the breeze. This is it, you say. This is the life I want. You have been sold on a dream, carefully curated by a home stager.
Cindy Lynn
There's some sort of weird animosity towards stagers, like how we're basically faking homes. We are really trying to help buyers to imagine, okay, how can I move in here and then really maximize my return on investment?
Zachary Crockett
For the Freakonomics Radio Network, this is the economics of everyday things. I'm Zachary Crockett. Today Home staging. Fifty years ago, people showing their homes to prospective buyers didn't do much more than tidy them up. That changed with a Seattle realtor named Barb Schwarz. She saw an empty home as an opportunity to set a scene to sell a potential buyer on a vision. Schwarz registered a trademark on the term stage in a real estate context and advertised her services to home sellers in Washington. But it wasn't until 30 years later that staging really took off.
Karen Prince
Before online listings existed, there wasn't really a need to stage a home so much.
Zachary Crockett
That's Karen Prince. She's an experienced home stager and the author of a book called Secrets of.
Karen Prince
Home Staging, you would just go to your realtor and you'd say, here's what I'm looking for and my price range. And then they would take you to homes and you had no idea what you were going to be seeing.
Zachary Crockett
With the introduction of online listings, buyers could browse through photos of dozens of houses in their area before deciding whether or not to go to an open house. Sellers had to up their game, and home staging became an expectation.
Karen Prince
Once some people started doing home staging, then it became necessary for more and more people to keep doing it.
Zachary Crockett
A stager's job is to decorate and furnish a home in a way that attracts as many buyers as possible. Sometimes that involves removing all of the owner's belongings, schlepping in a truckload of furniture, and building a new look from scratch. Other times, it might just mean embellishing whatever's already in the home. Prince says that part of the reason this industry exists is that most buyers can't see the potential in an empty house.
Karen Prince
First of all, when they're looking at an empty room online, it's hard to tell what the room even is. You know, is it a bedroom, is it a living room? And then also if you walk into an empty room, can we fit a king size bed in here or can we only fit a full size?
Zachary Crockett
For home sellers, staging can be a sizable investment. The rule of thumb is that staging, which includes monthly rental fees for furniture and other props, should cost between 1% and 3% of a home's asking price, depending on the size of the home. Most full stages cost anywhere from $2,000 to upwards of $25,000. But stagers say this cost is worth it. Industry surveys claim that staging a home can boost its price by up to 5% and reduce the amount of time it takes to sell.
Karen Prince
A lot of times I'd be brought in to stage a home that had been on the market for a while, and so many times it would just sell immediately for way more than what their asking price was.
Zachary Crockett
A seller will often continue living in their staged home while it's on the market. But stagers don't care about comfort or livability. Their sole focus is on enchanting the buyer.
Cindy Lynn
We're not just moving things into the space. Yeah, we're doing that. But it's with intention to get the best return on investment for your sale.
Zachary Crockett
Cindy Lynn runs a home staging course called Staged for More. Before starting her company, she was a stager in the San Francisco bay area for 11 years.
Cindy Lynn
Once you put your house on the Market, It's a product. You're selling a house just like you're selling a car. You're going to get it detailed. You're going to make it look as nice as possible.
Zachary Crockett
There's no one style, there's stagers use. They typically tailor the furnishings to the vibe of the neighborhood.
Cindy Lynn
You know, so if they have a lot of artisanal, local coffee shop, bakery, butcher, that kind of tells me there's a certain lifestyle within that neighborhood. So that means that the inventory we bring in needs to be a certain look and feel, maybe a color palette as well.
Zachary Crockett
The staging itself usually takes five or six hours. During a busy real estate season, Lynn would stage a home every day of the week. Staging all those homes requires a lot of furniture, or as stagers call it, inventory. Small time stagers might store their wares in a garage or a storage unit. More serious operations call for a warehouse.
Cindy Lynn
Yeah, we had, I think about 35 sofas.
Zachary Crockett
35 sofas, wow.
Cindy Lynn
That's not considered a lot, actually, for a staging operation. I have like thousands of pillows. Oh, my God. We have all sorts of side tables, all sorts of artwork in various sizes. Essentially anything to dress the house. I even have real bread. We go to grocery store, we buy these French bread, and they dry really nicely. And they can sit in houses basically for years.
Zachary Crockett
Stagers will often look for attributes in a piece of furniture that most buyers wouldn't really care about.
Karen Prince
I realized after pulling in and out of so many homes, what actually I wanted was a couch that was really lightweight, which I would never have thought about for my own couch. So you look to see how much the couch weighs and also the color. In staging, you want a light colored couch, which you don't necessarily want when you're living with it. The quality of it isn't all that important. It's more about aesthetics and price.
Cindy Lynn
I feel like sometimes staging is like a optical illusion, so to speak. We might actually expand the bed by, you know, putting mattresses together or making it higher with bed risers. We might overstuff the bedding as well. Instead of one duvet into a duvet cover, we might do two. Or we stuff extra, like cotton balls into corners of the pillowcases to make them super fluffy and stand out.
Zachary Crockett
Furniture is the lifeblood of the business, but it's also a depreciating asset. It goes down in value with every scratch. And Nick and stagers have to keep track of the return on investment for each piece they buy.
Cindy Lynn
Usually I would say, if I have a sofa, I Will want it to go out at least five times to make the money back.
Zachary Crockett
This can be harder than it sounds. For starters, moving furniture around every week causes a lot of wear and tear. And people who visit open houses, they don't always treat stuff very well.
Cindy Lynn
We once had a throw, like a really nice throw actually on the bed. And then some kid braided her own hair into the blanket and then put bubble gum over it.
Zachary Crockett
In Tennessee, one stager had an entire home worth of furniture cleaned out by thieves. Lynn has had to deal with robberies of her own, though they were usually pretty minor.
Cindy Lynn
Once we had a house that came back. All the light bulbs were stolen. I'm pretty sure as a college kid, like, need toilet paper and light bulbs, so they went to open house. I mean, I may or may not did similar thing when I was in college.
Zachary Crockett
Stagers use their own eye and design sensibility to pick their inventory, but they can't go wild. Everything in a staged home needs to be vanilla. They need to present the home as a blank slate. That's appealing to as many buyers as possible. And a big part of that is removing any hint of the current owner's personality.
Karen Prince
Depersonalization is important because before a buyer will make an offer, they need to imagine themselves living in the space. If they see a bunch of personal photos of other people, they see, I don't know, sports teams that they don't like and, you know, or they see religious items that are a different religion than them. It's really hard for people to look past all that and imagine themselves living there. I would be looking around the home thinking, okay, what is going to turn buyers off?
Zachary Crockett
The first thing Prince usually eliminates is, is the house's smell.
Karen Prince
Well, often it's odors like cat pee, cat litter. There's some really, really offensive odors people have in their homes, and that will just turn people off the moment they walk in.
Zachary Crockett
Some stagers have faced steeper hurdles.
Cindy Lynn
Stripper pole. We've seen that a few times.
Zachary Crockett
What do you do with a stripper pole?
Cindy Lynn
We asked them to take that off. I mean, I don't know how well that thing is installed. That's liability for the seller.
Zachary Crockett
Then there are certain artistic touches that buyers might not fully appreciate.
Cindy Lynn
A homeowner had a very personalized mural in their bathroom. Those are things we will ask them to repaint over. Because it's probably really inappropriate for people to come in and see your wife nude in the bathroom. You know, that's too personal, and that's all they're going to talk about once they left the house.
Zachary Crockett
Most stagers will want to get rid of any trace of you when they're setting up your house for sale. But if you're famous, it's a different story that's coming up.
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Zachary Crockett
The.
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Zachary Crockett
Learn more@chase.com Sapphire Reserve cards issued by JPMorgan Chase bank and a member FDIC subject to credit approval. The Economics of Everyday Things is sponsored by crowdstreet. You're the kind of person who reads the fine print, who likes to make your own calls, who's built a life, not to mention a career, by thinking independently. So why shouldn't you invest that way too? Crowdstreet is built for self directed investors who want direct access to private market opportunities like private equity, private credit and real estate. Vetted offerings, transparent data and clear diligence summaries help you make confident, informed choices. Because independence doesn't stop at your desk or your business or your weekend projects, it should extend to your investments too. Invest the way you live independently. Learn more@crowdstreet.com. In 1998, a woman named Meredith Behr was a screenwriter living in Hollywood. She was in her 50s and she didn't expect that she'd soon become the godmother of the modern home staging industry. But she had made her rental home look so nice that her landlord decided to sell it. She needed a place for her stuff.
Meredith Behr
I had a friend trying to sell a house and I said, how about I bring over all my furniture and put it around your house and. And that will kind of show people the lifestyle they could have there. The house sold after I did that for half a million dollars over asking in two days to the head of one of the studios. And all of a sudden everyone was calling me, all these brokers, would you do this for me? Would you do this for me? And I went, sure.
Zachary Crockett
Today, Bear runs one of America's largest home staging empires. Her company, Meredith behr Home, stages 2000 properties all over the country every year. And it specializes in the ultra high end market.
Meredith Behr
We currently have a house at Tantarpond in Palm beach that is its own private island that is for sale for $220 million. But most of them, I would say, are more in the, you know, the low would be a couple of million.
Zachary Crockett
Her services start at around $10,000 and can run up to $250,000 for a massive estate. She has 35 designers on staff, nearly 400,000 square feet of warehouse space, and an estimated $76 million worth of inventory.
Meredith Behr
We have stacks and stacks and stacks of mattresses on shelves. We have rows and rows and rows of decorative pillows of lamps, rows and rows and rows of floor lamps, table lamps. There's every kind of toy for kids rooms. And glasses just put next to the table casually look like someone just left them there. Fake cherries and fake lemons and oh my God. We have a massive art department that just rows and rows and rows of art. Different sizes, different values, different subjects. It's just anything you can imagine. Some of the oddest things you've ever seen in your life. We probably have 50 antique wooden pitchforks. I don't know how they got there. Some idea someone had probably me at some point.
Zachary Crockett
And of course, her favorite prop that goes in every single home she stages.
Meredith Behr
We have a lucky pig. I once found this store that had this concrete pig that was just the cutest thing. The next thing I know, I bought like 400 of them and we put them in the kitchen and whenever kids are around, I say, rub it on its back and make a wish and it'll come true.
Zachary Crockett
She sources her stuff from all over the place. Furniture shows across the world from Paris to Singapore, flea markets, estate sales Some of it even comes from her own personal collection.
Meredith Behr
I have my parents mid century Paul Macabre bedroom set that still floats around all my houses. I have my grandmother's china that she never used. It shows up in houses.
Zachary Crockett
Wow. I bet your grandma never thought her china would end up in like a $40 million home somewhere in LA.
Meredith Behr
I'm sure she didn't.
Zachary Crockett
The homes that bear stages belong to some of Los Angeles most famous residents.
Meredith Behr
Let's see, off the top of my head, we staged for Janet Jackson. We staged for Meryl Streep. Oh, Kelly Clarkson. Reese Witherspoon bought one of the first houses I ever staged. Oh, gosh. Bob De Niro, Scarlett Johansson. She and her husband had a stage and when they saw what we had done, they said, I'm sorry, we're taking the house off the market. Can we buy all this?
Zachary Crockett
While most stagers want to depersonalize a house, the celebrity game works the other way around.
Meredith Behr
Normally we would ask, get rid of those family photos. People want to imagine themselves there, not you. But if it is somebody really glamorous, we'll take the opposite approach and bow to them in the staging. We did a house for a famous film director and we asked him to leave his Academy Awards on the shelf. Just seeing that is going to really excite a buyer. Right. Leave those photos with those movie stars out there.
Zachary Crockett
But Karen Prince says that in some ways, this is the same principle used in less glamorous homes. If you look at enough photos of homes on Zillow or Redfin, you'll start to see the same tricks used over and over again. A bowl of lemons on the kitchen counter. An art book on the coffee table. The goal is to sell a buyer on an aspirational lifestyle because a new home feels like a chance for a reset.
Karen Prince
The bowls of lemons make a buyer think, oh, when I live here, I'll be eating healthy food. I'll be eating lots of fruit. One thing that I always thought was really great for staging is a hammock. Anything that points towards having a relaxed, healthy lifestyle helps sell a home.
Zachary Crockett
Unfortunately, what's appealing to buyers doesn't always go down well with the sellers.
Karen Prince
Most people don't like it when you take their stuff away and you bring in new things. It's really unsettling. I mean, there was one client who broke down crying because she didn't like the furniture that I brought in.
Zachary Crockett
Cindy Lynn says that stagers might charge a premium to this kind of client.
Cindy Lynn
There's the pain in the butt Tax. Right. If they know the client's going to be extra difficult, they might charge a little to compensate the extra labor and time they had to spend dealing with that client.
Zachary Crockett
Recently, though, the staging industry has had to deal with a bigger problem. The traditional business model is being shaken up by technology. There's something called virtual staging, which superimposes computer generated furnishings on unfurnished properties. It's a fraction of the price, and it's increasingly popular for online listings. Lynn, for one, is skeptical.
Cindy Lynn
When you see photos online, you have this expectation as a buyer. Because you look at photos, you're like, oh, my God, this house looks amazing. But when you go in, it's completely empty. There's not a lot to see except, like, dead flies in the corner or like spider webs. So there's kind of like a reality versus expectation issue.
Zachary Crockett
Agents have even started experimenting with virtual reality hardware. A potential home buyer will come to an empty property, pop on a headset, and choose what kind of fixtures they want to see from a menu of options. In Lyn's opinion, these newfangled tactics take away something special, a certain emotional history that can only be conveyed by real objects in a real space. Stagers can become highly attuned to those.
Cindy Lynn
Histories, especially divorced houses. Usually divorced homes are very like everything is stripped apart, like a war had gone through. As a stager or any real estate professional, you are encountering people in different points of their lives, and sometimes it's really the lowest point.
Zachary Crockett
The stager's job is to exorcise those demons and make the house tell a different story. A story of plump mattresses, fresh lemons, and a concrete pig just brimming with good tidings.
Karen Prince
You know what?
Meredith Behr
It's romance. Some cute guy asks you for a date. You're not gonna wear your old sweatpants with holes in them, are you? No. You're gonna doll up. We want to make the house irresistible. We're gonna do everything we can to be as sexy as possible.
Zachary Crockett
For the economics of everyday things. Hi, I'm Zachary Crockett. This episode was produced by Sarah Lilly with help from Lyric Bowditch and mixed by Jeremy Johnston.
Cindy Lynn
It definitely hurt stories, you know, like the S and M dungeon, which happens what.
Zachary Crockett
The Freakonomics Radio Network.
Cindy Lynn
The hidden side of everything. Stitcher.
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Zachary Crockett
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Host: Zachary Crockett (Freakonomics Network)
Release Date: February 19, 2026
This episode delves into the world of home staging—the industry and psychology behind preparing homes for sale by furnishing and decorating them to lure buyers and maximize sale prices. Journalist Zachary Crockett uncovers the origins, economics, and quirks of home staging through interviews with stagers Cindy Lynn, Karen Prince, and industry pioneer Meredith Behr. The episode highlights how staging has evolved, why it's effective, how it operates on both small and massive scales, and the impact of new technologies on the field.
“Once some people started doing home staging, then it became necessary for more and more people to keep doing it.”
— Karen Prince (03:24)
"A lot of times I’d be brought in to stage a home that had been on the market for a while, and so many times it would just sell immediately for way more..."
— Karen Prince (04:55)
"What actually I wanted was a couch that was really lightweight, which I would never have thought about for my own couch... In staging, you want a light-colored couch, which you don’t necessarily want when you’re living with it."
— Karen Prince (07:21)
“We once had a throw... on the bed. And then some kid braided her own hair into the blanket and then put bubble gum over it.”
— Cindy Lynn (08:52)
“Depersonalization is important because before a buyer will make an offer, they need to imagine themselves living in the space…”
— Karen Prince (09:54)
“We have a lucky pig... I bought like 400 of them and we put them in the kitchen and whenever kids are around, I say, rub it on its back and make a wish and it'll come true.”
— Meredith Behr (16:57)
“Normally we would ask, get rid of those family photos... But if it is somebody really glamorous, we’ll take the opposite approach and bow to them in the staging.”
— Meredith Behr (18:34)
"The bowls of lemons make a buyer think, oh, when I live here, I’ll be eating healthy food... A hammock... Anything that points towards having a relaxed, healthy lifestyle helps sell a home.”
— Karen Prince (19:37)
“You look at photos, you’re like, oh my God, this house looks amazing. But when you go in, it’s completely empty... So there’s kind of like a reality versus expectation issue.”
— Cindy Lynn (21:01)
“It’s romance. Some cute guy asks you for a date. You’re not gonna wear your old sweatpants with holes... We want to make the house irresistible.”
— Meredith Behr (22:24)
On staging as seduction:
“We want to make the house irresistible. We’re gonna do everything we can to be as sexy as possible.”
— Meredith Behr (22:24)
On the emotional labor involved:
“As a stager or any real estate professional, you are encountering people in different points of their lives, and sometimes it’s really the lowest point.”
— Cindy Lynn (21:47)
On reality vs expectation:
"There’s kind of like a reality versus expectation issue."
— Cindy Lynn (21:01)
On bizarre situations:
“Stripper pole. We’ve seen that a few times.”
— Cindy Lynn (10:45)
“We asked them to take that off… That’s liability for the seller.”
— Cindy Lynn (10:50)
The episode pulls back the curtain on home staging—showing how an industry originally meant to help buyers “see themselves” has become a high-stakes performance blending retail psychology, logistics, design, and data. Whether it’s replacing pet smells, hiding odd installations, or massaging expectations amidst new technology, stagers walk a fine line between illusion and aspiration. The ultimate goal? To make every house look like the start of someone’s best life, one artfully displayed bowl of lemons at a time.