If you clear out the furnishings, there's the hurdle of convincing a buyer that this echoing shell of a house or condo can actually serve as a comfortable living space. Leave the furnishings, and along with the crown molding, closet space and hardwood floors, your furniture, art, and accessories are going to he scrutinized.

It's one thing to be content with the objects you've accumulated over the years, the framed movie star poster you thought was dashing when you were in college, or the sofa with ruthlessly pounded cushions that over the years has become a dependable refuge. It's quite another to ask yourself if strangers would consider them appealing enough to make theni want to move in.

A recent solution being offered home sellers is professional "staging." A stager comes to a seller's home, assesses its possibilities, and makes it attractive for prospective buyers, a process that can involve anything from rearranging the existing furnishings to bringing in entirely new pieces.

Not surprisingly, stagers tend to be people with backgrounds in either interior design or real estate. "I started 20 years ago," says Arthur McLaughlin, a local pioneer in staging, whose father was in land development. "Nobody was doing it, or rather nobody was talking about it. They did models for tract homes and that was it. I started doing the single family residence."

Staging can pose a challenge to interior designers in that it's a balancing act between making a property appealing, yet still keeping it neutral enough to appeal to a wide range of buyers. While Arthur McLaughlin defines it as "creating an emotionally moving interior in a space," he also says, "You want nothing upsetting or too challenging. We want to pull the person's taste out of the house and market it for the seller."

How does one make a house "special" for prospective buyers? Many stagers keep a warehouse of furniture on hand, occasionally rotating the supply. McLaughlin, who estimates that he uses the clients' furniture "a third of the time," not only maintains two large warehouses of furniture just for stagings, but periodically travels to High Point, NC, in search of antiques for both his design and his staging business.

Arthur McLaughlin likes to use plants, which "bring life into the room, and add a lot of height." These are maintained by weekly visits to tile residence by his staff, or when the plants aren't being used, they're carefully tended in an outdoor warehouse.

All stagers agree on the absolute necessity of eliminating clutter. Clearing out clutter can involve a sort of personal archaeology that can be either unnerving or fascinating, depending on the seller's viewpoint.

Costs often depend on how large the space is and how much work needs to he done. The wide variety of properties in San Francisco means that the price can vary. Arthur McLaughlin works on properties valued anywhere from $450,000 to $24 million. "It's a wide variety. You can spend $5,000 for just plants and fluffing, or $100,000 for painting."

"What can sellers do to their own to make their property more appealing to prospective buyers? A longtime cliché from how-to books on selling property suggests filling the house with the comforting aroma of a freshly baked apple pie, though experts seem to differ on this point.

Selling a house is always going to he stressful. Quite apart from the logistics involved, the emotions connected with marketing a home where you've lived for years and perhaps even raised a family, can make the process exhausting and even painful. A professional stager, looking at the house with an objective eye, can provide a much needed buffer for many sellers, enabling them to concentrate on settling into their new home.

There's always the possibility, however, that the stager will do too good a job. Arthur McLaughlin once got what may be the ultimate compliment for a stager. "The owners liked the staging so much they changed their mind, and lived there for a good eight years afterwards," he says. "The staging became the permanent interior."