House hunters who visit homes that look like they belong in Architectural Digest need to take a closer look. Those places have been staged to accent their positives -- and hide their flaws.

Staging to make houses look like model homes is a big business. Collectively, sellers spend millions to stage their properties, and buyers usually end up paying the freight -- and then some.

On the median, according to research from the National Association of Realtors, sellers who hire professional stagers spend $1,500 to dress their houses for sale. Some spend less, but some pay much more -- especially if the place is likely to be difficult to sell.

In the NAR survey, 19% of sellers' agents said staging resulted in a 1% to 5% increase in the price offered by buyers, compared to similar, unstaged homes. In monetary terms, a 5% increase in the price of a staged house that's priced at $500,000 works out to $25,000.

There’s nothing wrong with a seller putting their best foot forward. It’s called marketing. Homebuilders do it -- outfitting their model homes, inside and out, to lure in buyers -- and homeowners should do the same.

But buyers would be wise to take a sharp eye to any house that looks like a model home. The perfect furniture, the pristine floors -- who lives like that? Very few of us. Remember that you’ll be buying empty space, not the decked-out rooms you see before you.

Unfortunately, NAR’s sample of around 1,200 active agents seems to indicate many buyers are not terribly discerning. Around 86% of buyers' agents said staging had at least some impact on buyers. Staging, they said, made it easier for buyers to visualize the place as their own. More telling, perhaps, is that some agents said that when a house is staged, buyers are more willing to overlook the property’s flaws.

Spotting a staged house is relatively easy: It looks like it hasn’t been lived in. According to the NAR survey, the living room is the most important spot for staging, so let’s start there.

The furniture has likely been pushed back to make the room look more spacious. Alternatively, it might be grouped into small, conversational settings. Nice pillows sit on either end of the couch, perhaps with a blanket draped over the back. The curtains are open wide to let in the sunshine, and fresh-cut flowers sit on the coffee table. The place has been stripped bare of any personal items, like family pictures, so visitors won’t be distracted.

In an empty house, where the seller has already moved out, stagers will bring in key pieces of furniture. But beware: The furniture will likely be smaller, apartment-sized pieces to make the rooms appear larger. Another technique: using tables with glass tops, so that your eyes go right through them.

The primary bedroom is the second-most important room to stage. Here, the bed is always made, and big, fluffy pillows make it look inviting. Maybe a couple of houseplants sit in the corners, and a nice bouquet rests on the dresser. Again, there’s nothing personal to distract buyers.

Kitchens come next. Look for empty countertops -- another tactic to make the room seem larger. But whose counters are actually empty? Don’t we all keep small appliances there, along with canisters and such? Another telltale sign of staging: The dishes are put away, nice and neat, and there’s absolutely no clutter. Maybe there’s even a bowl of fresh fruit on the kitchen table.

Stagers don’t ignore the exterior, either. With the latest emphasis on outdoor living, stagers put up shutters where there weren’t any (or replace existing ones). They’ll stick a fancy gas grill on the patio, perhaps a hammock, and a table-and-chair set.

They’re all props designed to accentuate the positive, fool the eye and get potential buyers emotionally invested.

As Curtis Seltzer, a Virginia author and land consultant, wrote on RealtyTimes.com last year, “It’s not dishonest ... But it is intentionally manipulative.”

One way to avoid all this is to refuse to look at staged properties. But that would defeat your purpose. If you're on the hunt for a new place, you want to see as many houses as possible, staged or not, before making up your mind.

Besides, more and more sellers are resorting to staging, and 58% of buyers' agents told NAR their clients were disappointed when the houses they visited did not look like those on TV.

A better way, as Seltzer suggests, is to become familiar with how stagers work their magic and learn how to ignore their props. Read up on the staging process before you go house-hunting.

A few more things to look for: super-clean places; rooms painted in warm, neutral colors; sets of pictures arranged in odd numbers, which have the most visual appeal; clearly unused rooms set up as home offices or workout spaces.

If it looks like extra lighting has been added, that, too, is likely due to staging. If you buy the place, make sure the lights come with it.

Remember, what you see is not always what you get.

The beginning of hurricane season should serve as a reminder to homeowners in affected areas -- all roughly 33 million of them, according to data from Cotality -- to make sure their homeowners insurance is up to date. But it should also be a reminder for everyone to review their policies once a year.

For starters, shop the market to be certain you aren’t paying too much for coverage. The premiums for nearly identical policies can vary by hundreds of dollars, depending on the carrier. You don’t want to skimp on coverage, but you still want to pay a good price.

Ask friends and relatives for recommendations, and do your due diligence on the ones they suggest. That means checking the financial health of each one by comparing information from independent rating agencies, and asking your state insurance department for each company's consumer complaint ratios.

Once you settle on, say, three companies, call each one for a price quote, making sure you are able to compare the policies line for line. Your state insurance agency may also provide price comparisons, but only from major insurers.

In comparing estimates, look at the policies’ limits: These represent the largest amounts the insurer will pay for covered damages or a full loss. Not only do you want to be certain the amounts match, but also that they are large enough that you won’t be underinsured.

Most insurance companies go by the 80% rule, meaning that customers must purchase coverage equal to at least 80% of the property’s value. Otherwise, homeowners run the risk that their insurance company will only pay 80% (at most) of their claim.

The issue is that house values and their replacement costs have been marching ever higher, even as sales have slowed in the face of high mortgage rates and economic uncertainty.

Most insurers calculate policy limits by taking into account the size of a property and the local replacement costs. And according to the Insurance Information Institute, replacement costs rose 55% between 2020 and 2022. With tariffs setting an uncertain picture for 2026 and beyond, it’s important to sit down with an agent to calculate the right amount of coverage for your property.

There are a couple of things to keep in mind when doing an insurance checkup. One is the deductible, which is the amount you’ll have to kick in before the insurer pays a dime. Of course, the higher the deductible, the lower your monthly cost.

Consider how much of a deductible you can afford. If you've been in your home for a long time, you may have originally chosen the lowest deductible possible -- perhaps things were tight back then, and now your financial situation has improved. Insurance costs, meanwhile, have exploded, so it's a difficult balancing act.

According to LenderDock, if you currently have a $500 deductible, raising it to $1,000 could lower the cost of your policy by as much as 25%. Raising it higher could lead to even bigger savings.

Keep in mind that if you live in a natural-disaster-prone area, your policy may have separate deductibles for certain kinds of damage. If you live on the East Coast, for example, you may have a separate windstorm deductible. If you live in an area vulnerable to hailstorms or earthquakes, you may have separate deductibles for those.

There are other ways to save money on homeowners insurance: Buy your home and auto policies from the same insurer, for one. Update your home’s security by adding smoke detectors, burglar alarms and deadbolt locks. Maintain a good credit rating. Ask for a military or senior discount, if applicable.

Not every company offers these and other discounts, and those that do may vary the terms or amounts by state. But the savings can be considerable -- anywhere from 5% to 20%.

So far, we’ve discussed how to save money. But you might want to spend some extra cash to purchase flood insurance. Homeowners policies do not cover flood damage, so to protect yourself from that catastrophe, you’ll have to buy a separate policy.

Lenders require flood coverage in flood-prone areas. But even if you are not in one, and even if you don’t have a mortgage, at least consider buying coverage. According to Insurify, floods are the most common natural disaster in the country -- and the costliest.

"Just 1 inch of water can cause around $25,000 in damage to a home," reads a report from the company.

But non-weather-related water damage -- from leaks, ruptures and water heater failures, for example -- make up a large portion of flood losses. Overall, from 2016 to 2023, the average insurance payout for water damage through the National Flood Insurance Program was $66,000.

Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of condominium apartments are languishing on the market these days, and not just because high interest rates and high prices are combining to keep would-be buyers at bay.

Some buyers are being scared off by the possibility that once they take occupancy, they’ll be hit with a special assessment: an obligation to pay for repairing or replacing things that were neglected long before they ever moved in.

That’s the situation that confronted Laura Renaldo of TRD Property Group in Chicago when she listed an apartment in an older building. It had been poorly managed and was “light on reserves” to cover the cost of much-needed repairs, she said: “A special assessment was probably coming soon.”

So in the listing, Renaldo included a new warranty program that protects buyers against assessments for up to three years. “That sealed the deal,” she said. “It gave my seller the opportunity to make the buyer a lot more comfortable” knowing they wouldn't be on the hook for any repair costs that may be forthcoming.

Don Wilson of the Wilson Realty Group in Chicago was confronted with a similar situation when he listed an apartment in an older downtown high-rise. In his case, the building had been well-kept but still needed roof and facade work. “The possibility of a special assessment could have been substantial enough to stall a deal,” he said.

So he discussed the situation with his seller, and they agreed to add an assessment warranty to the listing as a way to “set the buyer’s mind at ease."

"It’s all about being flexible enough to find creative solutions" to real or perceived problems, said Wilson.

Offered by HOA Warranty, the product is the brainchild of Rhett Graves, a former Chicago agent. Now available in six states -- Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania -- he hopes to add more states in the next month or so.

Eventually, Graves anticipates the assessment warranty will be as regular a part of condominium sales transactions as home inspections and home warranties are in the sale of single-family houses.

He certainly has a big enough market. There are on the order of 369,000 homeowner associations nationwide, of which perhaps as many as 147,000 are condo groups, according to the Foundation for Community Association Research. And an estimated 70% of them are underfunded, with little or nothing in the tank to cover the cost of replacing an aging roof or fixing a leak in the community pool.

Enter HOA Warranty, which launched in March. For $380, it will protect condo buyers for one year against a one-time special assessment of up to $10,000. For $600, protection is extended for two years. And for $800, you’re covered for three years.

It should be noted that the policies don’t protect buyers against increases in their regular association dues, only special assessments.

Graves won’t say how many warranties he’s sold to date. But he’s set to make his very first payout this month -- $6,000 to cover the policyholder’s share of an assessment to replace the roof on his building. The money is coming from Graves’ savings. But he hopes to build his company to the point where investors are beating down his door.

The ex-agent says he came up with the idea after he saw several deals fall apart because buyers were worried about surprise assessments voted into effect by the condo boards.

“When buyers discover something during a transaction -- whether it’s a real issue or just a perception -- it often creates major friction,” Graves told Real Estate News. “Buyers usually expect the worst, while sellers naturally assume the best. The gap between these viewpoints can be so large that deals fall apart.”

Graves maintains that there's plenty of demand for the warranty, which can be offered as an inducement by sellers, purchased by buyers at closing as an added protection, or offered by agents to grease the skids and make a deal go more smoothly.

“When I was doing real estate," Graves said, "I would have paid for a warranty on maybe half my transactions.”

“There are lots of variables when buying and selling” apartments and condos, he explained. “Sometimes the home inspector doesn’t have access to the roof, for example. Or no one knows how old things are because management changes every few years and there are no records.”

The warranty is not insurance, Graves stresses. It doesn’t cover a random event like a fire. Rather, it covers common-area physical items that can be repaired or replaced: roofs, HVAC systems, balconies, pools and sidewalks, among others.

Buyers in self-managed properties with five or more units are eligible for one-year policies; those in professionally managed buildings can extend coverage for one or two more years. Townhouse properties also are eligible.

Graves says he wants to allow consumers to get out from under the vagaries of the often-confusing real estate market and “keep more money on their plates.”