The Empty House Tax

Real insights from 20 years staging homes professionally. Skip staging to save a buck, pay for it at settlement.

Call it the empty house tax: the extra weeks on market, the price drops to renew interest, and the holding costs that quietly stack up - while a bare property waits for a buyer to use their imagination. It's a cost not visible on any invoice, but it's real money. And it's the sellers who skip staging who end up paying it.

Selling a house unstaged is a roll of the dice with one of your biggest assets. In a market where every buyer has a dozen other open homes to choose from, why make it harder than it needs to be?

Staged homes sell in half the time

We've tracked every home we staged between October 2025 and July 2026 against the REINZ median for the Manawatu-Whanganui region. Our staged homes sold in a median of 20 to 26 days each month, while the regional median ranged from 36 to 52 days.

Median days on market: homes staged by us vs REINZ Manawatu-Whanganui median, Oct 2025 – Jul 2026.

Across those ten months, homes we staged sold 50.5% faster than the regional median. That's no coincidence. Without the right furniture, buyers can't tell whether a room is a bedroom or an office, or whether the lounge will work for their family. Blank walls don't answer those questions, so buyers move on to the next listing that does. We're watching several un-staged homes locally sit for months, with sellers are dropping their price just to attract interest.

Well-presented homes attract stronger offers

Staging doesn't just help a home sell faster; it helps it sell for more. In the National Association of Realtors' 2025 Profile of Home Staging, 83% of buyers' agents said staging made it easier for buyers to visualise a property as their future home, and 29% of sellers' agents reported staging lifted the dollar value offered by 1% to 10%. The Real Estate Staging Association's Q1 2025 data tells the same story: staged homes in its sample sold at 107% of list price.

We see it locally too. Agents regularly tell us our staging added tens of thousands of dollars to the final sale price. One agent recently liked a staged property so much they revised their own estimate upward and secured that higher price for their vendor.

More buyers through the door

A well-staged home gets more people through it at open homes, and at auction that matters even more. More eyes mean more competition, and competition is what drives a strong result on the day. In a buyer's market, a polished, move-in-ready home stands out immediately against the empty and half-furnished homes competing for the same buyers.

The bottom line

Staging isn't a cost you incur; it's how you avoid the empty house tax altogether. Our numbers show staged homes selling in half the time, and the wider research shows them selling for more.

Get in touch before your next listing goes live. The difference is worth seeing for yourself.

Sources

•      Beautiful Living data vs REINZ Manawatu-Whanganui median days to sell, October 2025 – July 2026.

•      National Association of Realtors, 2025 Profile of Home Staging (May 2025): NAR press release

•      Real Estate Staging Association, Q1 2025 Market Insights: Home Staging Newswire summary