The Advantages and Disadvantages of Renting Furniture

Making the decision whether they should buy furniture or rent furniture for their home staging job, is really a challenge for home stagers. But for many, they buy new furniture when home-staging vacant homes and they just rent furniture for already furnished homes. One of my previous articles discussed the advantages and disadvantages of buying furniture for home staging, so this one will talk about the advantages and disadvantages of renting furniture based on what I have observed in my long career in the real estate business.

There are clear advantages of renting furniture. One is that you do not need a huge investment upfront to be able to rent furniture. Also, you do not have to transport it yourself to the home and this is an advantage for you because it gives you more time to do the real job-the home staging job. However, even there are these clear advantages, a lot of home staging experts do not prefer furniture rental. They often said that it is not “attractive.”

Disadvantages of furniture rental as according to a great number of home stager professionals and experts:

1. Furniture rental tends to be neutral, often blandly contemporary, and it is not a great way to find great furniture you have imagined to give the home an amazing look, because most of the time, the ones that you are looking for are not available from rental companies.

2. When it comes down to the cost, it is expensive because most companies who offer furniture rental require a 3-month minimum period. This means that after you reached the 3-month period, you will have to pay again for each furniture piece that you rented.

If we are going to compare buying furniture and furniture rental, buying somehow stands out because of the time it can give to homeowners (your clients) and it get to save them money by not restricting them to the three-month minimum contract. Buying though is expensive, but at least you get to keep the pieces you will buy for your home staging job. It is a one time payment so it will save you money.

In addition, when buying furniture, you get to choose each piece. You get to choose the designs and styles that appeal to you and keep them. No more paying for rent!

3. Limited choices. As I said earlier, you cannot find everything you like in furniture rental. This is because your choices are limited. Just an example, you have a home staging job in a modern empty home and you decided to just rent furniture from a rental company. Unfortunately, when you get to the rental company, there is no more modern furniture to match the modern home.You will have no other choice, but to rent furniture which don’t match the style of the home you will be staging.