Plants can help brighten indoor spaces and may offer other mental and physical health benefits. As such, it’s no surprise indoor plants are one of the favorite accessories of home stagers.

Research has linked indoor plants with reduced stress, increased productivity, and improved quality for the home’s air. Some of the most effective house plants to improve the air quality are areca palms, Boston ferns, rubber trees, spider plants, and ficus tree, studies show.

What are some hardy plants to consider using to spice up your listings with more green? A recent article by Kathryn Jackson Fallon at juniperunltd.com highlights some of the following indoor plants:

• Norfolk Island pine
• Cast iron plant
• Snake plant (known as a nearly indestructible houseplant)
• Cacti
• Boxwood

Indoor plants can also be in a tabletop garden or terrarium. Get more ideas for weaving in more indoor plants:

Why Staging With Plants Draws More Buyers

Add Greenery to Reduce Stress, Studies Show

Use Plants to Showcase a Healthier Home

Hot Home Trend: Vertical Gardens

Interest in apartments in big cities has waned during the COVID-19 pandemic, while apartments in less dense areas have surged in demand. A new report from realtor.com® shows that major urban markets, such as San Francisco and New York, are posting double-digit price declines for one- and two-bedroom units compared to a year earlier. On the other hand, apartment rents are increasing in less dense areas.

San Francisco has seen the largest decrease in rental rates in the nation. Over the last year, monthly rents in the city have dropped nearly 34%, 26%, and 23% for studio, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom units, respectively, according to realtor.com®. Rents in New York, Boston, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., also are among the metros seeing some of the largest declines in year-over-year prices.

“Right now is a great time for renters in major cities to lock in a low price for 2021,” says Danielle Hale, realtor.com®’s chief economist. “But renters in some other areas are seeing a very different trend. With more flexibility and more time at home, renters have sought out extra space, driving up rents in the suburbs and less dense markets. As vaccines are being rolled out nationwide, the question is: How much longer will these trends continue? What’s clear is that the mantra of real estate being local very much applies to rents, not just home prices.”

Nationally, the median rent for studio units was $1,309; $1,483 for one-bedroom units; and $1,861 for two-bedroom units, realtor.com® reports.

The markets leading the country with the largest rent increases are: Sacramento, Calif. (up 20.3% annually for studios; 12.4% for one-bedroom units; and 9.1% for two-bedroom units), followed by New Haven County, Conn.; Essex County, N.J.; and Monroe County, N.Y.

Facing an upsurge in housing demand across the country, many home buyers are finding themselves in bidding wars for the limited inventory on the market. To win, buyers are trying to find ways to entice sellers beyond price—and at times are taking it too far, real estate professionals say.

Mary Lou Wertz of Maison Real Estate in Charleston, S.C., talked to The Wall Street Journal about one couple relocating from New York who fell in love with a $1.2 million, four-bedroom home online. The seller had already accepted another offer, however. The New York couple offered to pay $10,000 more than the other buyers as well as offer their competitors $25,000 to walk away from the home. They also told the seller that they would make a $30,000 donation toward a hospital for cancer research since the seller had recently lost his wife to cancer.

Ultimately, the New York couple’s offer was not accepted. The offer seemed “a little over the top” to the seller, Wertz told the Journal.

Another couple shared with the Journal how they toured 50 Los Angeles homes, submitted 16 offers—sometimes above the asking price—and were outbid every single time. But they weren’t about to lose out on a three-bedroom home listed for $735,000 in the Northridge area. “We were turning up at showings, and there would be a line of people who were there before us,” Andrea Kissling of Los Angeles told the Journal. “These houses were getting 30 or 40 offers and going $100,000 over asking.”

The buyers noticed memorabilia around the house of the Harry Potter films. So they produced a Harry Potter-themed video for the sellers (one of the buyers provides design services for Warner Bros.). The video fawned over the home and showed the couple reading Harry Potter books to their children. The couple also offered to buy the sellers VIP passes to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Hollywood.

Despite all the work, the couple still lost out to a higher offer for the home.

Chris Furstenberg of Nourmand & Associates in Los Angeles told the Journal that one of his clients—a filmmaker—once made an offer that came with the promise of tickets to the Academy Awards. Still, the seller went for a higher offer.

Furstenberg says such enticements often only work to settle a tie in a bidding war. But if there’s a higher price, that usually always wins out in the end—no matter how much buyers try to sweeten the deal with other offerings.

Buyers beware: It’s a seller’s market and homeowners are holding firm on the price. More than half—or 52%–of about 1,000 real estate professionals recently surveyed believe the biggest challenge that home sellers will face in 2021 is the temptation to overprice their homes due to the hot market conditions.

The homebuying frenzy since the pandemic, mixed with a low inventory of homes for sale, has placed sellers in the driver’s seat. Home prices have been rising by double-digit percentages annually.

HomeLight’s Top Agent Insights report, conducted in the fourth quarter of 2020, is an online poll reflecting more than 1,000 real estate professionals’ responses nationwide.

Nearly 15% of real estate pros surveyed also said they were concerned that bidding wars will drive more offers above appraised values in 2021.

Bidding wars remain high in many markets, an unseasonable trend for the housing industry. In December 2020, nearly half of real estate professionals with the brokerage Redfin reported facing a bidding war in submitting offers for their clients.

“The housing market is unseasonably hot—it’s behaving like it normally does in the spring, with plenty of demand from home buyers,” says Daryl Fairweather, Redfin’s chief economist. “Typically, the vast majority of homes for sale in December are homes that have been sitting on the market because they’re overpriced or there’s a problem with the property. This December, with so many Americans moving, scores of desirable homes hit the market—but not enough to satisfy insatiable demand from homebuyers. The result? Fierce bidding wars.”

Redfin’s survey showed bidding wars were most prevalent in the Salt Lake City metro (75.6% of Redfin offers faced competition there), followed by San Diego (at 74.5%); San Francisco/San Jose, Calif. (67.4%); Seattle (65.3%); and Denver (58.4).

Meanwhile, the biggest challenges likely to face home buyers in 2021 are the lack of housing options due to low inventories and the inability to find a home they like; 51.4% of agents expressed this as the chief concern among their clients. Nearly 19% of real estate pros also were concerned that their buyer clients will continue to lose out on multiple homes due to bidding wars. Eleven percent of agents also clients were challenged to find an affordable home due to rapid price growth.