Luxury home buyers now want move-in ready properties complete with furniture and decor — and it’s created a $4 billion ghost industry

At least 21% of realtors in the US now stage every listing they represent and staged homes make up somewhere around 19% of properties sold across the nation each year.

While it’s considered a marketing best practice across the industry, it is understandably especially popular in the luxury market, where prices and stakes are high and buyers are incredibly discerning. And since players are coming in with deep pockets, firms are levelling up their services to meet their every whim.

Staging-turned-full-service design

Beyond bringing in new furniture and textiles to transform a home for the sale process, some stagers have expanded to longer-term furnishing leasing solutions, or comprehensive interior design for buyers seeking move-in ready spaces complete with everything from couches to light fixtures — of which there is a growing proportion.

L.A.-based Vesta Home is among those companies leading the revolution, adding decor rentals and even custom furniture production to its existing staging offerings over recent years.

Founder and CEO Julian Buckner envisions the company — and the future of the industry — as filling a demand for a fully end-to-end real estate service that “blends interior design, merchandising, logistics, manufacturing and consumer psychology,” especially in the luxury segment.

“The person buying a $20 million home doesn’t want to spend the next nine to twelve months furnishing a house, sourcing designers, waiting for custom pieces, and managing installations,” Buckner tells Moneywise. Providers like his serve as a one-stop shop of sorts, acting as stagers, decorators, renters and manufacturers of thousands of products, cutting out the costs, time and overall friction of involving various retailers and wholesalers.

This streamlined process is exactly what luxury clients are looking for, both in the sense of what it offers, but also, how quickly it can offer it. “There’s been a pretty major shift toward immediacy. People want to walk in and start enjoying the home on day one,” explains Buckner.