Real Estate Pictures: The Role of Furniture Preferences in Subjective Valuation

In real estate pictures, home staging, which is the temporary display of high-end furniture, is meant to positively impact the sales process for the involved parties: the broker, the seller and also the buyer. In this article we focus on the impact of home staging on the price aspect in this process. In our experimental design to isolate the effect of furniture on valuation, we show pictures with furniture to one group and those without furniture to the other group. The main task for both groups of students is to estimate the market value of an empty apartment. Additionally, they must state their preferences for furniture in an apartment. On aggregate, we do not find significant differences in market value estimates between the two conditions, which is in line with the recent literature. At subsets based on individually indicated preferences for furniture, we find two main differences: those in the group with lower indicated preferences for furniture do not adjust their value estimates in a second estimation task, where the presence of furniture is changed, while those in the second group adjust their value estimates in the second estimate, where the adjustments are significant with a magnitude of approximately 11% based on their preferred condition. We conclude that if a client indicates a high preference for furniture, then the presented furniture affects his or her perception of the property. Additionally, we monitor the dwell time, which is significantly longer for the furnished condition and is an indication of information reception.