How Virtual Staging Works To Sell Your Home

These days, the majority of home searches begin on the internet. Buyers scroll through hundreds of online listings in search of one that feels like home. While your house may be just what they’re looking for, a buyer won’t stop to consider it if your listing photos don’t present it in its best light.

Virtual staging elevates listing photos to ensure that buyers take notice. So, instead of taking a chance or spending money to redecorate a home you plan on selling anyway, learn how virtual staging can help you sell your home.

What Is Virtual Staging?

Virtual staging is the process of home staging digitally, without adding any actual decor to an empty space. This process uses photo editing software to add new furnishings to any room. The technology enables potential buyers to see beyond the home’s current state. By either adding furniture to empty rooms or refurbishing outdated areas, staged photos provide a lens through which buyers can see the home’s possibilities.

How Virtual Staging Can Help Sell Your Home

The reason virtual staging helps to sell your home is that it can help the photos of your home to have the kind of character and style you’d find in a magazine, without having to spend money or energy bringing in actual decor. The process can elevate your home by taking a dated or blank interior and showing buyers what it could look like after renovating.

Virtual staging neutralizes and depersonalizes rooms to make them appeal to everyone. It can remove bold colors and replace them with more universal choices that freshen up the room. It can take a room that’s currently vacant or one that’s packed with bulky furniture and add scaled furnishings that give buyers a better sense of the room’s scale.

If you want your property to sell faster and for a higher price, you need to ensure that potential buyers connect with your home on an emotional level and can see themselves living in it. Staged photos can remove the personal touches from your home and thus enable buyers to imagine what the space would look like if it were theirs.

How Does Virtual Staging Work?

Currently, to virtually stage a home, real estate agents begin by hiring a professional photographer to take high-resolution photos of each of the rooms they want to include in their listing. Once they get the images back from the photographer, they review them and determine how many rooms look like they need a bit of sprucing.

Agents choose the stagers they want to work with and upload the images of the rooms they want to be staged using the company’s virtual staging software. The virtual staging company makes the discussed changes and returns the images to the agents. The agents upload the virtually staged images to their listing.

To avoid misleading potential buyers, agents must:

Show the before and after: By including two photographs of each staged room, agents can illustrate how the altered photos differ from reality. This option is often chosen for vacant homes, as it helps buyers gain a better understanding of the space with and without furnishings.

Disclose the virtual staging: Agents can label photos and specify that they are virtually simulated to illustrate the home’s design possibilities.

In the future, as virtual reality in real estate becomes a larger part of the real estate industry, fully immersive staged video may become widespread. Currently, it is most common to use virtual staging for still photographs.

Here are some of the most common updates that are done with virtual staging.

Remove Furniture

As part of the process, stagers can virtually remove furniture and decor that’s currently in the room. If a room contains bulky, dated or poor-quality furniture, agents can ask that it be taken out of the photo to create a blank slate or include furniture that fits better.

Create A Design Style

Virtual staging can help create a modern design style in real estate listing photos, even if a home doesn’t feel modern in person. Stagers will virtually design rooms according to the style agents request.

Typically, the virtual staging software will provide agents with a list of styles from which they can choose, such as contemporary, traditional or midcentury modern. Choosing a specific style can help to stage the home to attract specific types of home buyers.

Choose A Color Scheme

Virtual staging provides the ability to choose a suitable color scheme for real estate listing photos. Stagers choose a specific color palette and agents may also specify whether they’d like light or dark wood featured in the design. This can be a great way to make a room feel current and trendy.

Include Special Instructions

Agents can include special instructions or request additional features for virtually staged real estate listing photos. This can be adjusted based on your local real estate market and what home buyers are looking for, or feedback received from buyers who have already seen the home.

Mistakes To Avoid When Virtually Staging A Home

There are a few common mistakes sellers make when virtually staging a home that may hurt the sale. These include:

• Choosing bold colors and finishes: The main goal of virtually staging is to help potential buyers see themselves in the home. Making bold choices with virtual staging can put off certain buyers. In general, it is best to use virtual staging to make homes appear more neutral and modern.
• Mixing patterns: Too many patterns can be visually overwhelming and it can be really hard to mix multiple patterns in a space. When it comes to virtually staging a home to sell, skip patterns and stick to solid colors.
• Overstaging the space: Adding too many virtual details can be overwhelming to buyers – especially when they realize that those details do not exist in real life.

Cost Of Virtual Staging Vs. Traditional Home Staging

Virtual staging is becoming increasingly popular because it’s far more cost-effective than traditionally staging a home. Virtual staging services typically charge agents $75 – $100 for each staged photo. However, the cost is dependent upon the amount of work required and the intricacy involved.

For example, if the virtual stagers must remove furniture from a photo, they’ll often charge agents another $75 – $100. If asked to virtually stage a kitchen, the cost is usually $100 – $300 because it’s a more complex process.

If these prices seem high to you, hold onto your seat. Home staging is far more expensive due to the process. While virtual staging merely uses software to enhance the look of listing photos, traditional home staging requires agents to rent furniture and accessories to decorate the room while the home is photographed and shown.

With traditional home staging, agents must pay a much larger upfront fee. The cost, which can run anywhere from $2,500 – $30,000 or more, typically covers:

• Moving services
• Curating fees
• Furniture and accessory rental
• Installation and breakdown
• Business expenses

The pricing varies from one stager to another but is usually based on the size and number of rooms staged, the number of months in which the rentals will be required and even the price point of the home. The upfront cost is for 3 – 6 months. Agents are charged a set fee for each month thereafter.

Who Pays For Virtual Staging?

There is no hard written rule saying who pays for virtual staging costs during the sale of a home. Some brokerages cover the cost, while some real estate agents pay it themselves. Finally, the cost could be presented to the sellers with an option for the sellers to pay for it in addition to any other upgrades or updates they might make before listing their home for sale.

Should You Use Virtual Staging?

Virtually staging your home can make your listing more appealing to buyers and help get more people in the door to look at your home. This could potentially lead to selling your house fast and for the most possible amount of money. Sellers and agents should discuss the local real estate market to decide if virtual staging is a good option.

Virtual Home Staging FAQs

There’s no question that virtual staging can be an extremely beneficial part of marketing your home. But that doesn’t mean you don’t still have questions about it. So, let’s go over some.

What if you plan to sell your house without an agent?

Real estate agents may be the ones who most commonly use them, but virtual staging services are available to everyone. If you’re selling your home without an agent, it’s even more important to put your best foot forward when marketing your house.

Keep in mind that the key to getting high-quality staged photos is taking high-quality photographs. Real estate agents never take listing photos themselves, and if you can help it, neither should you. Assuming your budget allows for it, you should always hire a professional photographer to take your listing photos, regardless of whether you plan to have them virtually staged.

Is it ethical to use staged photos?

While doctoring photos to include space or views not actually present is unethical, there’s nothing wrong with using staged photos. Marketing your home necessitates that you present it in the best possible light, and sometimes your furnishings just don’t cut it. Virtually staged photos allow you to show off your rooms’ potential without having to spend a fortune.

However, if you’re using staged photos to change more than just the furnishings, you must clearly label them. Staged photos can certainly help you show buyers the types of renovations that can be completed to elevate your home, but you must make it clear that those “renovations” are virtually completed.

Is it better to use traditional staging or virtual staging to market your home?

Traditional staging can make a considerable difference for buyers who come to see the property during open houses or showings, but many agents now weigh the costs against the rewards. Nothing will ever beat having a professionally staged home ready for buyers to see in person, but most sellers don’t want thousands of dollars taken out of their profit.

Although buyers may have a harder time visualizing themselves living in the space, the virtually staged listing photos are enough to convince them to walk through the door. Meanwhile, buyers can always reference the staged photos again during or after their visit to remind themselves of the home’s possibilities.

The Bottom Line: Reveal Your Property's Full Potential With Virtual Staging

If you’re ready to put your home on the market, you need to make sure it’s looking its best. Instead of spending thousands of dollars renovating or buying new furniture, you can use virtual staging to show off your home’s potential. By adding staged photos to your listing, you can get more buyers interested, receive more offers and close on your home faster, so you can start planning your next adventure.

If you are ready to list your home for sale, speak with one of our Rocket Homes℠ Verified Partner Agents to get started.