Making the decision to buy furniture or rent furniture for your home staging job is really a challenge for home stagers. But for many, they buy new furniture when they organize empty houses and only rent furniture for already furnished houses. One of my previous articles discussed the pros and cons of buying furniture for home staging, so this one will talk about the pros and cons of renting furniture based on what I’ve observed in my long career in the real estate business.
There are clear advantages to renting furniture. One is that you don’t need a large initial investment to be able to rent furniture. Also, you don’t have to transport it to the house yourself and this is a plus for you because it gives you more time to do the real work – the house prep work. However, although there are these clear advantages, many home staging experts do not prefer furniture rental. They often said that he is not “attractive”.
Disadvantages of renting furniture according to a large number of professionals and home stager experts:
1. Furniture rentals tend to be neutral, often blandly contemporary, and it’s not a good way to find the great pieces of furniture you’ve envisioned to make the house look amazing, because more often than not, the ones you’re looking for are not available from rental companies.
2. When it comes to the cost, it is expensive because most of the companies that offer furniture rental require a minimum period of 3 months. This means that after you reach the 3-month period, you will have to pay again for each piece of furniture you have rented.
If we are going to compare buying furniture and renting furniture, buying somehow stands out for the time it can give owners (your clients) and save them money by not restricting them to the minimum three-month contract. However, buying is expensive, but at least you can keep the pieces that you will buy for your home staging job. It’s a one-time payment so it will save you money.
Also, when buying furniture, you can choose each piece. You can choose the designs and styles that appeal to you and keep them. No more paying rent!
3. Limited options. Like I said before, you can’t find everything you like in furniture rentals. This is because your options are limited. Just one example, you have an assembly job in a modern, empty house and decided to rent furniture from a rental company. Unfortunately, when you arrive at the rental company, there is no more modern furniture to match the modern house, you will have no choice but to rent furniture that does not match the style of the house you will be staging.