There is no difference, all these terms are used interchangeably.

People shop with logic but they buy with emotion.

If your home looks fantastic and the buyer can immediately imagine living there, they are more likely to make an offer. If enough buyers are bidding on your home, the selling price goes up way past your asking price.

Most buyers can't look past unattractive or disorganized rooms or figure out how their furniture might look in an empty room.

Home staging creates the "dream home" environment for buyers so they don't have to use their own imagination and can immediately fall in love and say "this is home!"

I can clean and declutter, why do I need a Home Stager?

It's incredibly difficult to view your own home with the eyes of a highly critical buyer. A professional Home Stager can objectively assess how best to use what you already have and determine if anything else needs to be added.

You're emotionally involved in your home and the contents so it's hard to be completely objective. It's hard to see your collection of beloved family photos the way a stranger will when they're trying to imagine themselves living in your home.

You've been living there so long there are many things you don't even see anymore. Have you stopped noticing that really ugly wallpaper in the kitchen? Have you become used to tripping on the large carpet wrinkle running down the center of your living room? Did you stop caring that your bed looks like it belongs to the dog or your kids?

You don't necessarily have the designer's eye that a Home Stager will.

You may not have the time or patience to deal with all the details the way a professional Home Stager will. Just the idea of moving can be overwhelming. It's natural to want to pretend everything is OK the way it is because you have no idea how to deal with it otherwise.

Home staging usually goes beyond cleaning and decluttering and into decorating and rearranging furniture, art and accessories.

CNN Money did a story on 5 strategies homeowners can use to get top dollar in a slower real estate market.

Home Staging was the top strategy and they interviewed Home Staging expert Debra Gould, also known as The Staging Diva to explain why.

Basically, the slower the market the harder you have to work to get a competitive edge over the other similar houses for sale.

Take the weekend and check out all the houses for sale in your neighborhood and decide how yours will stack up against them.

Don't you owe it to yourself to do what you can to blow away the competition? Wouldn't it be great to get a bidding war going because your home looks so much better than everything else in your price range?

It should change the price. The magnitude of the change depends on what your house looks like now, and what it looks like after staging.

Debra Gould, also known as The Staging Diva, and president of Six Elements Inc. staged the house on the right for a client at a cost of $5,000 (including fees and some rental furnishings). The agent had originally planned to list the home for $759,900. When she saw it again after staging, she increased the list price to $799,900 (that's a $30,000 increase in the list price).

The home sold in days with multiple offers for $820,000. That's an increase of $60,100 after investing only $5,300. From start to finish, the project took two weeks.

How else can you make a 1034% return on your money in 14 days, without breaking the law?

How do I find a Home Stager in my area?

We get requests for home stagers from all over North America and as far away as South Africa and Israel. We have a database of over 900 home stagers who can help you no matter where you live.

If you can't find someone in our Directory of Home Stagers, try our FREE Home Stager Locator Service and we'll find a home stager for you.

If your real estate agent is willing to reevaluate the price they recommend listing your home at after the home stager has finished transforming your home, you can see the home stager after you've hired your real estate agent.

On the other hand, having your home completely staged before having a few agents in to evaluate your home and make list price recommendations, will allow them all to see your home in the "best light"!

Despite the $1.5 million asking price and the client having little furniture, his agent did not recommend staging this home until the client requested the service.

Will my agent pay for the Home Stager?

Some agents will pay for an initial consultation with a home stager as part of their package. Others will reimburse you for a portion of the fees once your home is sold and they've collected their commission. Obviously, the higher the price point of your home, the larger the commission they'll be working toward and the more money they'll be willing to spend on your listing.

Some agents are afraid to recommend staging because they're worried that their client will be offended at the suggestion and they don't want to jeopardize the relationship. Other agents may discourage you from using a stager because they're afraid you'll want them to pay for it.

If your agent doesn't suggest consulting a home stager, ask their opinion and see what they say.

Do not let your decision of which real estate agent to use rest on whether or not they will pay for a stager. You should pick your agent based on their expertise in your neighborhood, whether they are strong negotiators and what kind of job they'll do marketing your property.

In the end, it's the homeowner who has the most to gain or lose by how well their house shows and whether they've picked an effective real estate agent.

Repainting may be recommended, but it's up to you whether you want to act on that advice. Not all homes need to be repainted before going on the market.

It all depends on how fresh the current paint looks, whether the walls can be cleaned or touched up, the price point of your home, and what the current colors are.

How do I decide which Home Stager to hire?

There are no official credentials to be a home stager. Make sure you see before and after photos of projects they've worked on, check out any references or look at testimonials.

Interview the home stager by phone and see if you feel comfortable with them and whether they seem confident about their business. Do they have any success stories they can share with you?

If you need furnishings for staging purposes, can the home stager provide what you need? They don't necessarily need their own inventory.

Home staging expert Debra Gould does not keep an inventory despite staging hundreds of homes like the ones you see throughout this site and sixelements.com. Instead she prefers to source items specifically for a client's home and its target market.

Do not base your decision on price. This is penny wise and pound foolish.

A more experienced stager may charge more per hour, but they probably work faster. Hourly rate is not necessarily the final determining factor in how much the project will cost.

If you need help finding a home stager in your area, we can recommend one. However, we do not guarantee the quality of their work, you still need to decide for yourself whether you think they can do the job for you.

Why Home Staging works