My thinking is that moving the furniture into storage is a necessary part of the staging, but keeping the furniture in storage (because you had no where else to put it and your other house wasn't ready yet) is on you. Moving the furniture out of storage and into the new house would not be an expense of selling the old house.
However, if your new house was ready, would it be a selling expense to move your old furniture out if you moved it directly to the new house? That seems wrong, even if moving the furniture helped you clean and stage. Why would storage be an ordinary and necessary part of advertising? Whether you store the furniture, give it away, or sell it and buy new, is a personal decision, and not really an advertising expense.
The more I think about it, it seems to me that nothing about moving or storing your personal belongings is an advertising expense.
(Sometimes the answer is in black and white and 10 experts will give the same answer. This isn't one of those cases, I guess. I seem to recall a tax court case that discussed staging, and found that staging was an acceptable selling expense to apply to the cost basis calculation provided that no permanent changes were made to the home. Any permanent changes would be repairs or improvements. Improvements like new carpet also add to the cost basis, but repairs are not allowable. Everyone has the obligation to keep their property in good condition, and repairs made at the time of sale are no more allowable as basis adjustments than repairs made in the middle of your occupancy. However, I don't know of any tax court case that discusses whether the necessity to move old furniture out can be considered a selling expense rather than ordinary non-deductible moving expenses.)
