Staging a property to make it more appealing to your target audience is usually something that is reserved for selling a house.
It’s often thought that property staging helps with achieving a higher price since it presents the property in its best possible light.
The best stagers will conduct market research to determine what the target audience is looking for in the property in order to style it accordingly.
For example, a suburb targeting young professionals will be better suited to having a second bedroom set up as a home office rather than a nursery.
Is staging worthwhile for a rental?
Essentially, the end game will be the same as someone who is selling their property. That is, to get a higher price.
It may be harder to justify spending the money for a professional stager but consider the options available and the benefits it may bring before writing off the idea entirely.
The main purpose of staging is to get a higher price; in this case, a higher weekly rent.
A rental property serves the same purpose of being someone’s home after all, so the fundamentals of staging still apply.
Staging can help to maximise your rental income in a competitive market, can help your property appeal to more tenants in a slow market or a suburb experiencing a high vacancy rate and it may help to reduce vacancy times between tenants.
Ideally, staging a property to suit the target tenants you’re looking for may also have the long-term effect of finding the ’right’ tenants who are likely to stay longer.
Take a look at some of the prices professional stagers are offering before writing this option off as too expensive.
You may be able to negotiate a better price with them if you have multiple properties, your agent may be willing to recommend them to other clients if the results are evident or you may ask them to focus on key areas of the property only which will make the biggest impact.
Areas to focus on
The key areas of focus for any home are the kitchen, living areas and the master bedroom.
With these in place, the other rooms would simply need to follow the same design features to tie in which you could easily complete with some low cost hired furniture once the overall theme is in place.
For advertising purposes
Another option would be to simply have the property staged for your advertising photos to be taken.
These could be reused any time that the property is vacant and would likely lead to lower costs as you wouldn’t need to hire the furniture for a long period of time.
Speak to your property manager
Be sure to speak to your property manager regarding the type of tenants you’re likely to attract in your area as well as suburb profiles and data before deciding on whether staging is the way to go.
If your property is in a low-income area and the rental price you’ll be able to achieve is low, staging may not be a viable option since no matter how great the property looks, prospective tenants simply can’t afford to pay more than a low weekly rental price.
This is why knowing your target audience and the suburb in which your property is located is key to helping decide whether or not staging your property will bring you a higher rental price.
For higher end rental properties, staging will almost certainly help you to achieve a higher price point and help you to attract the type of tenants you want in your property.
