The biggest reason two quotes differ is how much of the house is in them.

One might cover the living, dining, main bedroom, a second bedroom and the outdoor area. The other might cover the living and the main bedroom, because that is what was asked for, or because someone assumed a smaller job was what you wanted.

Write out what is in each quote, room by room, before you look at either total. Two lists sitting next to each other usually explain most of the gap on their own.

Both quotes can say “main bedroom” and mean very different things. One might be a bed made up properly, bedside tables, lamps, artwork and the styling that pulls it together. The other might be the bed and the linen, with bare walls either side of it.

The same goes for the parts of a house people forget to ask about. The entry, the hallway, the study nook, the deck or the patio. These are the spaces buyers walk through on the way to somewhere else, and they are also the first ones to quietly disappear from a quote to keep the price down.

Two quotes for a paint job, and only one of them includes the prep.

A number is only comparable once you know what sits inside it.

Hire periods are not the same everywhere, and the length of one rarely appears on the front page of a quote.

Ask both companies how long the furniture is in the house for, what happens if your campaign runs past that, and what an extension costs. A shorter period at a lower price is a real difference, and it only shows up if you ask.

This is the one you cannot see on a quote at all, and it decides what turns up at your house.

Furniture is finite. If most of a company’s good pieces are already out in other homes, what arrives at yours is what was left in the warehouse. Both quotes will describe a styled living room. Only one of them tells you whether the sofa was chosen for your room or was simply the sofa that was free that week.

Foxy owns more than $12 million of furniture, which is the reason a stylist can pick for your house rather than from what is spare.

Ask for an install date before you compare prices.

Styling is usually tied to photography day, and photography is tied to when the campaign goes live. A quote you cannot use in the week you need it is not the cheaper quote. It is the one that pushes your listing back.

A smaller team can only be in so many houses at once. We run our own team and our own trucks across Brisbane and the Gold Coast, and we have styled more than 8,000 homes, so the answer to “can you do Thursday” is usually yes.

Ask both companies what they do if you walk in after the install and something is off.

Sometimes a piece is wrong for the room, or a bed reads smaller than it should, or you look at a wall and know it needs something else. That happens. What matters is whether fixing it is a normal part of the job or an awkward conversation.

The answer depends on how the company is built. A company that hires its furniture in, or contracts its installs out, has to pay someone to go back to your house. A company that owns its furniture and sends its own team is just sending its own team again.

If your house genuinely needs the living area and the main bedroom done and nothing else, then a quote for the living area and the main bedroom is the correct quote. Paying for six rooms you did not need is not a better outcome.

The point of comparing is working out which quote matches the house you are trying to sell, and which one is smaller because something was left out.

Staging is one part of a sales campaign, and nobody can tell you what any single part of a campaign did to the final price. What you can decide is whether the home is ready for the buyers your agent is about to put in front of it.

A Foxy stylist meets you at the property, walks through what will make the strongest impression with buyers, and you get a plan and a full quote back within 24 hours. You will know which rooms are in it and what is going into each one, which makes it a straightforward thing to hold up against anything else you have been sent.