Forum
Service
Home Staging
Happening Now

Buying two furniture sets instead of renting, 22k up front against 14,400 a year of rental

Consider four flips a year in a fairly narrow band, 180k to 260k, mostly 1,300 to 1,700 sq ft. Staging quotes typically land between 3,200 and 3,900 all in, so call it 14,400 a year at four jobs. The alternative worth pricing: buy two full house sets around 22k, climate controlled storage at 350 a month, and either rent a box truck at 180 a day or buy a used one. Labor runs two people, two days per install and one day per pull. The part that deserves scrutiny is timing. Four flips a year is not four staging jobs a year in the calendar sense, since two will overlap and one will run 90 days, so two sets can end up one set short at exactly the wrong moment. There's also the labor cost of moving furniture personally, when that time could be spent on something with a higher return. On paper, the buy pays back in about 18 months ignoring labor. Include labor at any honest rate and the case stops looking obvious. The open question for anyone running this math is usually whether storage and logistics are underpriced, or personal hours are overpriced.

devon_pierce SS4APRO 15

Answer

renee_dubois PS1APRO 12

The economics of owning inventory work when the sets stay busy. A stager with twelve sets running forty jobs a year has each set out maybe eight or nine months of the twelve. Two sets at four jobs a year, average 60 to 90 days each, are out maybe five or six months combined out of twenty four set months available. That is under 25 percent of the time in use. You would be paying storage on furniture that sits still three quarters of the time, and that is before @hannah_west29's replacement number. The better move is to go back to the three stagers who quoted you and ask for a repeat client rate on four jobs a year with scheduling committed in advance. Stagers care a lot about keeping sets working for the same reason you should, and a client who books four installs and does not haggle is worth a discount to them. Expect somewhere between 10 and 20 percent off the walk in number, which closes a good chunk of the gap without you owning a truck. Revisit owning at ten or twelve jobs a year, when the sets would actually be out most of the time. At four, the rental price is buying flexibility you would otherwise pay for in idle inventory and your own weekends.

renee_dubois PS1APRO 12

2 replies

hannah_west29 SS2APRO 16

The 18 month payback is missing a few things. Furniture wears, and staging furniture wears fast because it gets carried by hand up stairs eight times a year. Budget replacement on the soft goods every two to three years, so call it 15 to 20 percent of the 22k annually as a real cost rather than a footnote. Add damage and the odd piece that gets scratched into unusable. Style also dates. A set bought this year photographs fine for maybe three years and then buyers can tell. Rental inventory rotates because the stager amortizes it across many more jobs than four a year. The truck is the other soft spot. 180 a day times three days per job times four jobs is 2,160, and that assumes it is never needed on a day it's unavailable. Buying a used box truck adds insurance and registration, plus something breaking. Run it again with 3,500 of annual replacement, 4,200 of storage, 2,160 of truck and your labor at whatever you'd pay someone else to do it. The payback most likely goes past three years, at which point the question becomes whether you want to be in the furniture business.

hannah_west29 SS2APRO 16

Reply Anonymous