Q: We are about to put our house up for sale. Our sales agent suggested that we consider hiring a “home-staging” expert to make our house more attractive to potential buyers, but we’re not sure whether hiring such a person would be worth the extra $1,000 charge. What do you think?

A: A small but growing number of sellers are hiring home-staging professionals. Their basic job is to make a property appeal to as many potential buyers as possible, either through basic redecorating (like moving furniture around and suggesting new color schemes) or by initiating more elaborate home makeovers.

Some realty agents I know say that hiring a home stager usually isn’t necessary, and that sellers who simply eliminate the clutter from their home and add some fresh paint can make their property more attractive to buyers without paying the typical $500 to $2,000 that many professional stagers charge.

Other agents, however, can tell countless stories of how properties that sat for weeks on the market quickly sold after a home stager became involved, or how sellers who hired a stager before the house was listed wound up getting several thousand dollars above their original listing price.

Good home-staging professionals can be worth every penny they charge, especially in areas where sales are beginning to slow and buyers are becoming more choosy. But it’s important to remember that the key to a quick sale isn’t a property’s appearance: It’s the seller’s offering price.

Even the nicest-looking home in a neighborhood is destined to sit unsold if it’s overpriced. So, sellers who are thinking of hiring a professional stager – whether they’re about to list their property for sale or have already spent weeks looking for a buyer – need to first work with their realty agents to ensure that their asking price is realistic.

Q: We have a new 30-year mortgage for exactly $200,000, with an interest rate of 5.5 percent and monthly payments for principal and interest of $1,136. If we add a $50 “principal-only” payment each month, how much faster would we pay the loan off and how much interest would we save? What would happen if we stretched our budget a little farther to $100 per month?

A: You will pay $208,808 in finance charges (in addition to the $200,000 you originally borrowed) if you simply keep the 30-year repayment schedule that the bank provided. Adding an extra $50 each month would allow you to pay the loan off in 27 years and one month, reducing your total finance charges to $184,646.

In other words, adding a relatively modest $50 monthly would slice nearly three full years off the life of the mortgage and save more than $24,000 in future finance charges.

If you instead decided to add $100, you would cut your loan term to 24 years, eight months and thereby reduce your future finance charges to $165,951. You would own your home free-and-clear more than a half-decade sooner and save a hefty $42,857 in interest.

Q: My partner and I are gay. We made an offer on a home owned by a married couple, but it was rejected without explanation. Can we sue the sellers for discrimination under the federal Fair Housing Act?

A: No. The Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 makes it illegal to discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. It was amended in 1988 to expand the special protection to families with children and to people with disabilities.

Several groups have lobbied Congress through the years to add homosexuals to the seven current categories of “protected classes” under the federal law, but so far those efforts have failed.

Separately, however, several cities and a handful of states have adopted their own laws that prevent such discrimination. Contact your local fair-housing agency for details if you really feel that the sellers’ rejection of your offer was based solely on your sexual orientation.

– David W. Myers is a 20-year veteran of the newspaper and magazine business, having previously covered real estate for the Los Angeles Times and Investor’s Business Daily.