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The DMCC Act 2024 provisions that apply from 6 April 2025 prohibit misleading actions where the average consumer is likely to take a different decision as a result. The CMA's guidance identifies several forms: giving false or misleading information, presenting an overall deceptive picture, marketing that creates confusion with another trader or their product, and failing to comply with a requirement in a code of conduct the trader claims to follow.

Applied to a house sale, the safe ground is broad. Tidying, neutral decoration, furniture hire, better lighting and careful photography are all presentation, and buyers expect them. The risk sits with anything that conceals rather than presents: a wardrobe positioned to cover damp staining, a rug laid over a failed floor, a photograph taken at an angle that removes a structure from the frame, or a description that asserts something about the property that nobody can evidence.

The requirement that factual claims be supported by evidence is the practical test. If the marketing material says the boiler is new, the roof was redone or the extension has approval, somebody needs the paperwork. A stager does not usually write the particulars, but they often supply the images and the room descriptions that end up in them, so it is worth agreeing with the seller and the agent who is responsible for what is said.

GOV.UK is explicit that you must have an energy performance certificate when selling a property, renting one out or building a new one, and that you must order an EPC for potential buyers and tenants before you market your property to sell or rent. This catches sellers out regularly, because the instinct is to treat the EPC as conveyancing paperwork rather than as a pre-marketing requirement.

An EPC is valid for ten years, so a certificate from a previous sale or letting may still be current — worth checking before paying for another. Several categories are exempt, including temporary buildings intended to be used for two years or less, standalone buildings under 50 square metres, some industrial sites, holiday accommodation rented out for less than four months a year, places of worship, and listed buildings where compliance would unacceptably alter their character. GOV.UK states that you can be fined if you do not get an EPC when you need one.

For a stager, the EPC is relevant for two reasons. It is one of the few documents that has to exist before the photographs go live, so it belongs on the pre-marketing checklist alongside the staging schedule. And it is a factual claim about the property in exactly the sense the CMA guidance describes, so the rating in the listing has to match the certificate.

Staging is priced from three things: how many rooms are being treated, whether furniture is being hired and for how long, and how much physical work — clearing, storage, redecoration, small repairs — comes with it. A vacant house furnished throughout for a three-month marketing period is a different commitment from a styling visit before a photographer. Ask for the hire period, the extension rate and the collection cost to be stated separately from the design fee, because the extension rate is what determines the real cost if the sale is slow.

LokalMatch simply connects the two sides. Describe what you need once, include your postcode, and stagers covering your area get in touch with you. There is no cost to homeowners; the professionals pay for the enquiries they receive. LokalMatch does not stage properties, does not set prices and does not vet, rank or recommend anyone, so compare the hire terms as carefully as the headline fee.