Imagine for a moment that you are buying your first home, the biggest purchase of your life.

You walk into an open house and you see a pristine mid-century modern living room, the beautiful

leather couch, the set of Eames armchairs, the brass bar cart stocked with crystal glasses.

In the kitchen there's a bowl of perfect lemons. In the backyard a crocheted hammock

wafts in the breeze. This is it, you say, this is the life I want.

You have been sold on a dream, carefully curated by a home stager.

There's some sort of weird animosity towards stagers, like how we're basically faking homes. We are really trying to help

buyers to imagine okay how can I move in here and then really maximize my

return on investment. For the Freakonomics Radio Network,

this is the economics of everyday things.

I'm Zachary Crockett.

Today, home staging.

50 years ago, people Today, home staging.

50 years ago, people showing their homes to prospective buyers didn't do much more than tidy them up.

That changed with the Seattle realtor named Barb Shores.

She saw an empty home as an opportunity to set a scene,

to sell a potential buyer on a vision.

Shores registered a trademark on the term stage. on a

vision vision, on the term stage in a real estate context

and advertised her services to home sellers in Washington.

But it wasn't until 30 years later that staging really took off.

Before online listings existed, there wasn't really a need to stage a home so much.

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