"They always tell you to take a bunch of cookie dough and shove it in the oven, so long as it doesn't burn, " says Adorna Occhialini Carroll, a real-estate agent in Berlin, Conn.

WSJ: Using Smell to Make a Sale

Indeed, one real-estate agent told me that the main reason that he used them wasn't because of their expertise but to keep clients from getting mad at him: When sellers needed to be told that their drapes were dated and their rugs ratty, his stagers delivered the bad news, not him.

WSJ: How Much Staging Is Too Much?--WSJ House Talk

"We can't really see any evidence of a housing boom, " said Yolande Barnes, head of residential research at real-estate agent Savills.

WSJ: London Developers Hope for Olympic-Size Boom