But those days are gone.

In today's super-heated market, sellers are spending anywhere from $1,000 to $40,000 to prepare their homes to bring top dollar.

"The latest strategy in home sales is to give the house a 'model home' look," says Shar Hellinge, who with her partner, Cynthia Souders, owns SharCyn Design and Staging in Sunnyvale.

Cupertino-based Realtor Roberta Murai says, "It really is a gift to improve a home for maximum appeal. I've seen it happen so many times now," she says. "At first, some sellers are resistant, but the cost of staging reaps the maximum price for their property."

When Rose Garden resident Scott Lefaver first built subdivisions in Monterey and Gilroy in the late 1980s, he was introduced to the idea of furnishing his model homes. "There is a correlation to furnishing a home—making it look livable—and selling it faster. Even the simplest flower arrangement, a table and a few chairs will give a sense of how to place things and will result in faster sales," he says.

For the past six years, Hellinge and Souders have been staging model homes for independent builders and private, individual home sellers. In addition to selling amazingly quickly, the homes are selling above asking prices.

When Lefaver and his wife, Liz, were planning to buy their present home, their agent, Dee Cowan of Coldwell Banker in Los Gatos, suggested staging their old home.

"We looked at the portfolios of two different staging companies and picked Shar/Cyn," Liz recalls. "We removed everything from the house, and they staged it completely."

Their 100-year-old house sold in five days for $150,000 over the asking price.

"We had several interested parties and two serious offers," Scott says.

With a vacant house, the cost for staging begins at about $1,800 and goes up, with the cost depending on the size of the house and how much furniture and how many accessories Hellinge and Souders need to put into it.

For the Lefavers' two-story, three-bedroom, two-bath house, the cost of staging was about $2,700, with an additional $1,900 for one month's rental of the furniture and accessories.

The payback? "A staged home will average 6.3 percent above listing and be on the market for 25 days, while an non-staged home will be there for 49 days," Hellinge says.

Souders has photos in her portfolio of a house near Montalvo that was on the market for two years but sold quickly for $3.15 million after they staged it.

"We come in with appropriate paint colors and carpeting for the type of house it is and make sure it is clean," Hellinge says. "There is a little camouflage, too. We use furniture that is the proper scale, so the house seems larger. And we make sure there are good traffic patterns, so people can move around easily. We want the home to appeal to every potential buyer. If staging is done right, there will be something to appeal to everyone. In more expensive houses, we put in good, leather-bound books. And if there's room, we always add a grand piano."

Liz Lefaver was charmed by Hellinge and Souders' treatment of the laundry room by their back door: "They placed some gardening tools and one red boot. It was so whimsical," she says.

"We rely on our design expertise to create an appropriate feel for each house, so that potential buyers can easily see themselves living there," says Souders.

Mary Allan, a Realtor with Intero Real Estate Services in Saratoga, says, "It is possible to work with what is already there, but you want people interested in the house, not distracted by the previous owner's furniture. With too much old furniture and personal stuff around, potential buyers don't emotionally go from 'their house' to 'my house.'"

One of Hellinge and Souders' three additional team members is floral designer Paull Sherry, a longtime area florist. "His arrangements contribute greatly to a home's appeal," Souders says.

Allan adds that a home's "curb appeal" is important—how it looks from the street.

"Staging the outside as well as the inside is very important, like a backyard with chairs that have new cushions next to a small table with a glass of iced tea and a folded newspaper. And adding flowers to spruce up the front yard," she says.

Los Gatos Realtor Lucy Wedemeyer has also found that staging with landscaping is becoming more important. "I recently removed a front yard of prostrate juniper and replaced it with a beautiful lawn. And when I was finished, the owners said, 'For 30 years, we never liked those plants.'"

Wedemeyer says she's been staging for more than 20 years but has always called it "enhancing," because she likes to use the owners' furniture and, for the most part, simply rearranges it, paints and adds accents. For the homes in Cupertino, she makes sure to use the principles of feng shui, an ancient Chinese art of arranging living spaces for harmony, because there is such a large Asian population there.

Before the recent home-sales boom began, Cupertino Realtor Murai took over a home that hadn't sold after three months on the market in Cupertino, a surprisingly long time, even at a slower time. "It was in a bad location, facing oncoming traffic at a 'T' intersection, so I consulted a feng shui expert from San Francisco. He visited the property and made several recommendations."

At his suggestion, a pot of red flowers was placed on the front porch, the couch in front of the fireplace was realigned, lighting was adjusted and a frog was placed in the backyard with a gold coin in its mouth.

"The house sold in two weeks to a Chinese man," Murai says.

Elea Raiswell, a Realtor with Coldwell Banker on Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road in Saratoga, does her own staging and offers her real estate services through Insightfulrealestate. com.

"I've a garage full of furniture," she says. "I've found little pieces in garage sales or consignment centers over the years that improve the look of a house for sale because the way we live is not the way we sell a house.

"Just changing the angle of a piece of furniture can make a boring square room into an inviting, more charming space that attracts real interest," she says.

Raiswell sometimes advises her clients to make substantial changes to improve the salability of their homes.

"New carpeting, baths, even roofs. These are the changes that will make a home more appealing," she says. "If they use a home equity line of credit, they don't owe anything until they draw from it, and they can easily repay the loan from the added value to their home."

Raiswell is currently working with homeowners in Willow Glen who will be spending about $40,000 on improvements. She expects the house will sell for $100,000 more than it would have before the changes.

Big homebuilders have done model homes for years, highlighting the architectural elements of their homes. "They recognize that shoppers will spend 10 to 15 seconds scanning a room. The effect must be immediate," says Hellinge.

Knowing this, the team will make a space into something the seller may not have used it for: an exercise room, office or children's play area.

With between 15 and 30 houses staged at any given time, the partners have a home decorator's dream: a 7,000-square-foot warehouse loaded from floor to ceiling with furniture, paintings and accessories to fill every possible need.

In the center of the warehouse is a computer that contains pictures of every room they currently have staged. "It's the way we keep track of inventory," Souders says. "I'm the queen of quality control."

Although cookies and cider are not so popular as they once where, there are two definite smells that Hellinge and Souders identify as immediate turnoffs: stale cigarettes and pets. "We prefer not to work in a house that has pets—there are too many potential problems," Hellinge says.

But the seller they can't work with at all is an unmotivated one who "won't clean up and be ready to sell the house," Souders says.

From the Realtor's side, Raiswell agrees. "The seller needs to pack first. The home should be inviting, charming and warm, which is what model homes are. The homeowners need to believe they'll be moving and get their stuff out, so the new owners can see themselves there."

Wedemeyer says that the people who tend to resist staging are the ones who've lived in their homes for 20 or 30 years. She says that "selling your home is a very emotional thing," and some people are afraid that if they don't sell, they will not be able to live with the changes.

But she says staging a home can actually help a longtime owner let go of the house. "It's really a win-win thing, because the buyer is happy to get a house that doesn't need to be fixed up, and the seller gets a much better price."