Recently, two of its listings went under contract in just four days. One was a 4,200-square-foot home in Cary on Roland Glen Drive listed at $410,000 and the other a 2,000-square-foot home listed for $200,000 on Creek Haven Drive in Holly Springs. Both got rave reviews after showings, and both are currently pending closing. The common denominator of these two listings may surprise you: staging.

Staging a home is not a new idea. HGTV dedicates an entire show, “The Stagers,” to the subject. But in a market such as this one — with tons of inventory, fewer buyers, tougher lending and builders eager to get out from under mortgages — more sellers are realizing staging is a good way to reel in buyers.

“I’m busier now than I was two years ago,” says Laurie Preston, a home stager and owner of Preston Interiors LLC. Preston often stages homes for Sue Montpetit, a real estate stager and consultant for Town & Country Realty. Like many real estate agents, instead of trying to convince sellers to pay for staging, Town & Country includes it as part of their service.

“Price gets the buyers in the door and condition sells it,” Montpetit says. “Time is not our friend in a declining market; this is where staging is critical. The better the first impression, the quicker it will sell.”

Mike Montpetit, Sue’s husband and broker-in-charge at Town & Country, helped the sellers of the Cary home understand the current market. “He showed the owners the specifics of what was going on in the past 60 days in their price range and what the competition was doing, not only with re-sale but also new construction since most buyers consider both options. Knowing what we had to compete against, we then knew how to correctly position the house, which included prepping and pricing,” Montpetit says.

The sellers’ flexibility was critical. “They were great clients,” Preston says. “They did whatever we asked them to do. Some people take offense when you suggest staging, but when you put your house on the market, it’s no longer your home; it’s a house for sale. It’s a product. If you were going to sell your car, you would clean it and detail it and make it look the best you can. That’s pretty much what we do with a house.”

Preston and Montpetit don’t rent furniture to stage homes. Instead, they use the homeowner’s items. They also have an arsenal of accessories, including wall hangings, occasional tables and furniture, three carloads of which they brought in for the Roland Glen home. They repainted rooms, re-arranged furniture, upgraded light fixtures and repurposed some rooms.

“The third floor was their prayer room and that’s a very sensitive area,” Preston says. “They cleared everything out, and we ended up making it a game room. We found a bookcase and some games, and put a table in the corner. You just have to get people’s imaginations going.”

Preston seems to have the golden touch. Soon after the Roland Glen home went under contract, she arrived at the Creek Haven Drive home in Holly Springs to work a little magic. Sellers Kim and Brian Walker were eager to see what she would do.

“It was incredibly important that I be open-minded to her changes,” Kim Walker says. “Many people are so attached to the way they have things that I can see how they’d be offended, but I was certainly not.”

Preston got to work rearranging furniture, hanging pictures and organizing — right down to the closets, cabinets and pantries (which people do look in, she says). After doing a fair share of work, Preston recommended the couple paint the banisters black to go with the coloring and décor of the home, and stain the deck, among other things.

“It was a fun house; they had great stuff,” Preston says. “We told them to spray-paint some of their chandeliers. Gold and brass is so ’70s, ’80s and ’90s; it really says ‘dated.’ Spray paint is just a wonderful thing.” The Walker home sold for $3,000 less than the listing price, and now the couple is free to move back home to Louisiana. Walker credits staging with the quick turnaround. “In addition to the hours of hard work and preparation Brian and I did, the staging, I believe, played a major role in the quick sale of our home,” she says. “Laurie arranged items in our home so that when buyers entered, it may have felt like home to them. That’s how the house sold so fast, I believe, because Laurie made it feel like home to everyone.”

And, really, that’s what staging is all about — creating an environment that feels like home to the buyer. “Buying a house is an emotional process. You have to fall in love with the house,” Preston says. “It’s a psychological game with prospective buyers because you want them to walk in and feel peace and calmness. They might not be able to articulate why they feel that in a house, but it could be because everything is in its place and it just looks appealing.”

Many real estate agents might be reluctant to take on the added expense of staging in the current market, but Montpetit says it’s a no-brainer. “Most sellers see it as added value and understand that it helps sell their homes faster and for more money. Staging has contributed to both our clients and our company reaching set goals, despite the declining economy.”

The reason Preston is so busy lately is that buyers understand now that staging is not just for million-dollar homes, but homes in all price ranges. “They get that the cost of staging is nothing,” Preston says. “It’s like pennies in a bucket compared to the first price reduction a client’s going to have to take, or the longer your house stays on the market.”