90% of my listings over the last 3 years have sold in less than 10 days... 1 took as long as 19! ALL were staged professionally, most closed at full price or over.
Let me clarify one thing: a professional stager's purpose is very different from an interior designer's usual work. The typical designer wants to make a home livable for the residents. A stager's goal, on the other hand, is to emphasize home's assets, minimize its less desirable facets, and make everything look big, light, bright, and open in the photographs that all buyers today see online before they decide to spend time on a personal visit.

Staging-savvy designers can work wonders with dark rooms, spaces that are too small or too large, furniture that's out-of-scale for the setting, too much furniture, strange floor plans, poor color choices, and dowdy design features. Whether what they do is comfortable to live in is almost immaterial. So, usually it's uncomfortable! But if the goal is a shorter time on the market and more money in the bank at closing, isn't a short term inconvenience worth it?!

I believe in this value to the seller SO much, that I pay for it!