Is it likely that most sellers who remove their furniture for a staging return their furniture to the house after an open house or two? Our realtor arranged for staging that would last until prospective buyers submitted a successful bid. In our case, that was a matter of weeks. Following your view, homeowners who wanted staging probably would realize a gain in sale price, but that would be offset by having to pay movers to do twice as much loading and unloading of furniture. Our experience was that loading and unloading each took four people most of a day.
And for the record, our furniture was stored at a facility that was in the opposite direction from the location of the house that we eventually bought. The move from that storage location to our new home cost somewhat more than the move directly from our existing residence would have cost.
