Destination Analysts Releases the Results of a New Survey of Bay Area Real Estate Agents

	Survey of Bay Area Realtors show tremendous value of professional home staging.
	SAN FRANCISCO, CA (October 5, 2005) — Professional staging greatly impacts residential property sales prices, according to a recently released survey of San Francisco Bay Area realtors. The survey, commissioned by San Francisco-based design firm Redefine (www.redefinestaging.com), collected sales information on recently sold residential properties, and shows that the difference between asking price and selling price for professionally staged properties was on average $54,382 greater than for unstaged properties.
	Staging is the process of redecorating a home to prepare it for sale. “In this market, over 85% of properties already sell at or above the asking price. Staged properties typically sell much further over asking price than do unstaged properties. We’ve suspected this, but now we know exactly how large the effect is,” says Helen Liu, founder of Redefine. “Staging is an outstanding investment. Our research shows that the average cost of staging a Bay Area property was $3,305, giving the homeowner an average return on investment of $16.45 per dollar spent on staging.”
	The research found that professionally staged homes not only sell at prices significantly above unstaged properties, they sell faster and receive more offers. According to the survey, the average professionally staged property was sold after only 19 days on the market, compared to over 24 days for the typical unstaged property, or 26% faster. Staged properties received on average 4.7 offers, compared with only 3.7 for unstaged properties. Staging is a widely-used real estate sales technique. In fact, 40 percent of realtors in the survey said that they had used a professional stager in the past 12 months. Over 76% said they would be to “Very Likely” to recommend staging to their clients if they believe the property is a good candidate for staging. Only 7.8 percent said that they would be “Unlikely” or “Very Unlikely” to recommend staging in these circumstances.
	The survey was conducted by Destination Analysts, Inc. (www.destinationanalysts.com), a San Francisco survey research and public opinion polling company. It sampled 312 Bay Area realtors about their opinions on staging and their recent residential property sales. The study makes comparisons based on 678 property sales (282 of these were professionally staged and 396 were not). A report summary is available online.
	About Destination Analysts: Based in San Francisco, California, Destination Analysts (www.destinationanalysts.com) is one of the travel industry’s premier boutique marketing and research consultancies. As a relatively new, but fast growing independent consulting firm, Destination Analysts work has served major travel industry players such as the San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau, DDB Seattle, the Fiji Visitors Bureau, the USDA Forest Service, and Mering & Associates. The needs of our clients are carefully analyzed and are the centerpiece of everything we do. David Bratton, founder of Destination Analysts, says it best, "Our entire reason for existing is to help our clients thrive, and our goal is always to provide them with affordable and innovative methods to make their marketing soar."