Staging a home nearly always has an effect on buyers, and their response is typically a positive one. This was one finding in a recent National Association of Realtors survey, which also determined that staging typically leads to higher offers and a shorter time on the market.

Sellers are usually advised to remove personal items such as family photos from a home when putting it on the market. This helps potential buyers to envision themselves in the property. Staging also aims to give buyers a sense of the property, setting up furniture arrangements and other touches to show a room's scale and hint at how it might be used.

Only 4 percent of the buyer's agents in the survey said they did not think staging had any effect on buyers. Forty-nine percent said they believe staging has an effect on all of their buyers, while 48 percent said at least some were influenced by staging.

Thirty-eight percent of listing agents said they stage all homes they sell, while 10 percent said they never used staging. A smaller share of Realtors said they only used staging for difficult to sell homes (14 percent), homes in a high price bracket (7 percent), homes they considered easy to sell, or low price bracket homes (1 percent each).

Thirty-seven percent of listing agents said that while they do not use staging, they encourage a seller to clean up the property and fix any obvious flaws. The most commonly recommended improvements included decluttering (93 percent), cleaning the entire home (89 percent), cleaning the carpets (81 percent), and removing pets during showings (80 percent).

The living room was the most popular candidate for staging, with 83 percent of listing agents saying they use the method in this room. Seventy-six percent said they staged the kitchen, while 69 percent staged the master bedroom. Realtors were least likely to stage the guest bedroom (21 percent) or children's bedroom (25 percent).

Buyer's agents were most likely to say that staging made it easier for buyers to visualize the property as their future residence, with 77 percent agreeing with this statement. Forty percent said staging made buyers more likely to visit a home in person after viewing the listing. Twenty-seven percent considered that buyers were more willing to overlook a property's faults if a home was staged, but 4 percent believed that the process would make buyers more likely to suspect the property to be flawed.

Thirty-eight percent of buyer's agents said they think staging positively influences the home's value if it was decorated to the buyer's tastes. Nine percent felt it could negatively impact the perceived value if the buyer did not like the décor.

However, only 1 percent of buyer's agents considered that staging had a negative impact on offers. While more than half of the buyer's agents polled were either uncertain about the effect of staging or believed it had no impact on the dollar value of the offers, 31 percent estimated that staging increased the value of offers by 1 to 5 percent. Thirteen percent said it brought the dollar value up by 6 to 10 percent.

The listing agents in the survey had similar perceptions, although they were slightly more likely to consider that staging had a positive effect. Twenty-nine percent associated the process with a 1 to 5 percent increase in the dollar value of offers on the property, while 21 percent believed it boosted offers by 6 to 10 percent. Twenty-seven percent were not sure of the impact of staging, and 14 percent felt it had no effect.

Sixty-two percent of listing agents said they believe staging decreases a home's time on the market, including 39 percent who said it greatly decreases the listing time and 23 percent who said it slightly decreases it. Sixteen percent said staging increased the time on the market, 14 percent were not sure of the effect, and 8 percent did not think it had an impact.

Listing agents frequently took on the expense of staging, with 43 percent saying they did so. This included 21 percent who said they personally offered to stage the home, 14 percent who offered a staging service, and 8 percent who hired a professional staging service. One in four said the seller typically paid for staging, while 4 percent said the seller covered the cost after the home was sold.

The National Association of Realtors' 2017 Profile of Home Staging is based on 1,894 responses to a survey issued in March.