eleven listings on my staging comp sheet, which decides nothing

You can't separate them with 11 rows, and I say that as someone who would have built the same sheet. But the fact that the two highest volume agents in your submarket stage every listing is itself information. They're doing it on their own money or their sellers' money, repeatedly, in a market they know better than you do. That's a revealed preference from people with a lot of reps.

I stage everything under 400k and stopped measuring two years ago. Not because I proved it works, I just got tired of the question. 4,100 on a 289k list is 1.4 percent of the price and about two months of your carry. If it moves the price one percent it's nearly free.

The thing that actually kills me on these is the day 61 problem, so buy the longer term up front if the stager will sell it.

@windlass your 99.1 versus 96.4 percent of list has a hidden variable in it, which is how the two groups were priced going in. High volume agents tend to price closer to the market, estate sales tend to be priced by heirs. Percent of list is measuring pricing discipline as much as presentation.

If you can get price per square foot at close instead, that at least strips out the list price choice. Depending on your state you might not be able to, since some states don't make sale prices public and the MLS field is all you get.

Something not in your sheet, the stager's schedule. I had one back out four days before photos because a bigger job ran long, and the listing went up vacant with phone pictures because my photographer was booked. Cost me more than the 4,100 would have.

Ask who's actually on your install date and what happens contractually if they miss it.

The selection problem you named is the whole problem and it doesn't go away at 100 data points either, it just gets prettier. Houses that get staged are houses whose sellers had the cash and the intent to optimize. Those sellers do other things right too.

What you'd actually need is the same house listed twice, which doesn't exist. So you're left estimating the size of the effect rather than proving it, and at 1.4 percent of price the effect only has to be small to clear.

@flint's framing is the practical one even though it skips the measurement question entirely.

Just to make sure I have this right, days to contract runs from listing date to accepted offer, and days on market can mean something different depending on the MLS? I want to be sure I'm reading the 21 versus 44 the way you meant it.

@juniper yes, and some MLS systems reset days on market if a listing is withdrawn and relisted, which is a thing people do on purpose. So a vacant listing that sat 90 days can show as 12.

Which means @windlass your vacant group might be worse than 44, or the number might be junk in both directions. I have no idea how you'd tell without pulling listing history on each one.

Pull the listing history on all 11. It's eleven, that's an hour. If any of them relisted, your medians move and you'll at least know which direction the noise runs.

I'd also ask the stager for a 90 day term at the 4,100 rather than 60, since your stated worry is time and that's the version of the contract that matches the worry.