Here's my anecdotal staging story...
A family member and I owned houses on the same street in the burbs. His house was appraised at about $20K higher due to a finished basement and a corner large lot.
Our realtor includes staging as part of her fee, so we didn't pay for it directly. Our place was furnished, so the stager came in and just told us the best way to set up our furniture and then added a few of her own touches. All in all, it took a few hours of her telling is what to do, 10-12 hours of cleaning and decluttering and maybe $200 of total materials.
My family member didn't want to use a stager and ended up spending about $5000 and 3 weeks to get their house ready for listing.
Our house sold in 5 days and their house sold in 21 days (sales were 30 days apart, so same market). He did end up getting the $20K higher sales price, but he also sunk in way more money and effort.
I was not a big believer in stagers before our experience, but ours really did an amazing job and made our house look way bigger and more modern. I definitely believe it made a difference. Also, she made listing way less work as she gave us a very detailed list of what was a top priority and then little things that didn't really matter.
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