By Jessica Flint
Six months into living in their new home, Susan Lin and Victor Lin had no plans to sell it. The interior designer and hedge-fund trader had devoted four-and-a-half years to finding, renovating and furnishing the Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-area property, which they purchased for $1.27 million in 2019.
Then a real-estate agent friend asked to show the modern Tudor to a buyer, a recently relocated professional athlete looking to understand the local market. Besotted with the house, the buyer offered -- twice -- to purchase it. Both times, the answer was no.
Then came a third offer, and not just for the 5,000-square-foot residence -- but for everything inside. "The dishes, the pans, the utensils, the mattresses, the sheets," Lin says. "Everything."
Finally, Susan, 51, and Victor, 52, agreed. They sold the house for $4.35 million. They charged an additional $175,000 for the contents, which excluded everyday items like toilet paper and paper towels, but Susan stocked them for the buyer. Given three days to vacate after closing, the couple and their three children moved with only their clothes and a few prearranged items, including two artworks and the Lins's prized china. "We even parted with sentimental antiques," Lin says. "I just put a price tag on them."
Home sellers are seeing a demand for fully furnished luxury real estate. While buyers with deep pockets and busy lives have long sought the simplicity of a turnkey home -- one that's move-in ready, requiring little to no additional work -- more buyers today are looking for homes that are move-in ready and fully outfitted, down to the last household item. The trend reflects just how much the expectation of instant gratification has become the norm.
The pandemic intensified the shift, says Steven Weisz, a real-estate broker with William Pitt Sotheby's International Realty in the Berkshires region of Massachusetts. Between fighting supply-chain delays, ordering fast deliveries and getting pickier about home design while spending more time working there, a lot of people are becoming more impatient. "Buyers want to use their house right away," Weisz says. "They don't want to wait to sit on a couch."
More than 50% of luxury sales in his area are now offered fully furnished, up from about 25% pre-Covid, says Weisz, who currently has a fully furnished 10,429-square-foot estate listed for $13.5 million in Alford, Mass. Weisz himself bought a fully furnished residence in 2010.
These deals are more common for secondary residences, where convenience is paramount and sellers are less emotionally invested in the furnishings, says Melissa Jennings, a Dallas-based real-estate agent with Briggs Freeman Sotheby's International Realty.
Jennings cites her recent sale of a roughly 2,760-square-foot penthouse at the W Residences Dallas. Her sellers purchased the professionally styled condo fully furnished and used the unit infrequently, primarily for attending sporting events. They listed it for $1.919 million in February 2024, according to public records, with all its contents, down to the kitchen knickknacks and office pens. The listing dropped to $1.65 million before selling in May 2024. (Texas is a nondisclosure state, so sale prices aren't public.) The belongings were a separate sale. The sellers weren't attached to their possessions, and they were downsizing into a turnkey condo nearby.
Over the years, New York and Virginia-based interior designer Charlotte Moss has sold two of her own personal residences fully furnished in Aspen. She recently completed a roughly 5,000-square-foot spec home in Keswick, Va., east of downtown Charlottesville. It's listed at $5.595 million. All its contents are available for an additional $800,000.
To create a lived-in feel, Moss designed each room around an imaginary family she invented: a dad who is a sportsman and a bibliophile; a mom who loves her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and vintage clothes; a 12-year-old daughter who makes collages and quilts; a 16-year-old son who is a Ferrari aficionado.
The result is a house that is less a staged showcase and more a curated dream life that captures the Virginia spirit through pieces that feel gathered over time, including a hunt scene painting in the library, a mahogany china cabinet in the dining room and antique Bergerè chairs in a modernist patchwork fabric in the living room.
A buyer isn't obligated to keep the books that "dad" collected in the library or the china that "mom" displayed on the kitchen's plate rails. They can pick and choose. "This isn't an all or nothing proposition," Moss says.
A high-design aesthetic can expand the buyer pool, says Miami Beach-based Douglas Elliman real-estate agents Bill Hernandez and Bryan Sereny. This holds especially true when the look matches a region's particular style or is so distinct that the contents become inseparable from the architecture.
The latter was the case when Hernandez and Sereny recently handled the $18.8 million sale of the late Broadway producer Luigi Caiola's Miami condo. The 3,717-square-foot unit, designed by New York -based Joe Nahem, of Fox-Nahem Associates, was offered with most of the art and all the furniture, which were integral to the space's unusual geometry: a 50-foot-long living and dining room, a trapezoidal kitchen and a dramatic blue-and-white resin entrance tunnel.
Sometimes the contents of a house doesn't help sell it. The agents recall a $30 million Miami house decorated by a Los Angeles firm in a California style that didn't speak to Miami's market. "It was not helpful," Sereny says. They also had a Russian client whose interior designer decorated a condo -- walls, accents, even a piano -- in all red. The aptly named Ruby Red property proved difficult to sell.
A fully furnished sale is often an advantage for both parties. Sellers may benefit from a quicker sale; a furnished property typically spends 25% to 30% less time on the market than an empty one, Hernandez says. Buyers can settle in right away. Both sides avoid moving hassles.
This kind of sale is quite complicated, says Los Angeles-based Compass agent David Kramer, who stresses that a lawyer should be involved. Real-estate law governs the house, but furniture is personal property, which creates distinct tax implications, liabilities and valuation issues. He says a lawyer should also ensure the home and furniture closings are mutually conditional to prevent disputes. Staged furniture sales can be simpler because the stager is a separate seller.
Friction is common. Bryan Sereny in Miami has seen multimillion-dollar closings nearly collapse over last-minute content changes, such as a buyer of a $10 million property demanding a $10,000 jet ski be included. Weisz recounts a deal that nearly unraveled over handmade love seat pillows.
For Susan Lin, her sale went smoothly, even leading to the buyer hiring her as his family's interior designer. After moving into a rental, she and her husband rebuilt a house two streets away. Then an interested buyer approached Lin about a sale even before the new house was finished. This time she said no.
Write to Jessica Flint at Jessica.Flint@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 11, 2025 20:00 ET (01:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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