Could you walk into a room and, in 2 hours, working with what’s there, make it more attractive to buyers? Taking a cue from “Iron Chef,” REALTOR® Magazine posed this test to 3 practitioners earlier this year.

We dispatched each one, along with a camera crew, two professional stagers (who provided only commentary), and some helping hands, to a Chicago-area home. The practitioners staged a home office, a bedroom, and a living room, respectively. Each had a $250 budget and one opportunity to see the room before the big day.

Our stagers demonstrated how creativity combined with a few accessories, a little reorganization, and ruthless paring can make a property stand out in today’s slower markets.

Even in a fast-paced market, staging can pay off. A survey of 2,000 practitioners conducted by HomeGain in 2003, at the height of the boom, found that staging could increase the sales price by $2,275 to $2,841. Cleaning and decluttering could add $2,093 to $2,378 to the final price. Likewise, a 2005 survey of owners by training company StagedHomes.com found that staged homes sold for 6.9 percent more than homes that weren’t staged.

As our makeovers show, staging doesn’t have to cost a lot or take much time. One of our stagers, Bobbi Williams, relied on items she already had. Professional stager and trainer Lori Matzke looks around sellers’ homes for staging props and stages only key rooms— the entryway and any room visible from it (first impressions count), the main living area, the kitchen, the master bedroom, and one extra room, such as a den or deck. “Those are what buyers usually base their decision on anyway,” she says. She also encourages sellers to “tuck away anything smaller than a football.

Sometimes, convincing sellers that their beloved home needs a makeover takes finesse. To illustrate staging’s value, Bobbi Williams tells sellers what she learned from her staging mentor, StagedHomes.com’s Barb Schwarz: “A car depreciates the minute you drive it off the lot. But what’s the first thing you do if you sell it? Detail it. Your home is an asset, so now it’s time to detail it.”

Even getting sellers to recognize the need to declutter isn’t always a cinch. “They’ve been living with clutter for years and just don’t see it anymore,” says Dede Banks. To help home owners see their houses as buyers would, Banks takes photos of rooms. When she shows them to sellers, the problem areas become more apparent.