At first glance, home staging— or decorating your home to entice buyers—may seem counterintuitive. However, it can increase the sale price of your home. So who wouldn’t want it?
If your real estate agent has recommended staging, it’s because staging real estate is usually worth the effort. Staged properties sell 88% faster, and homeowners get 20% more cash during the sale than unstaged homes of the same type.
If you only have a fraction of the budget required for the physical staging of your home, then your best option is virtual real estate staging.
What is Virtual Real Estate Staging?
In recent years, virtual real estate staging has become more familiar to the real estate market because of its great benefits. Virtual staging is a process where a graphic design expert arranges furniture and other elements in rooms to present homes for sale in the best light. The end goal of virtual staging is to entice property buyers to seal the deal and ink the papers.
Virtual staging, now made possible by many technological advances within reach of graphic designers and similar professionals, eliminates the need to move heavy furniture around a property.
Home stagers use photo editing software to add lovely furnishings, tables, couches, and other elements to poorly furnished rooms. Furthermore, virtual staging can also help present a home’s exterior in a better light.
Virtual staging services can create the illusion of a staged room even if it is empty, thanks to the clever use of shading, shadows, the strategic manipulation of light, and the placement of objects in the space.
By opting for virtual staging, you won’t have to lift a finger, and you get excellent results that will speed up the sale of your property. No property seller wants his property to languish as a listing for weeks or months. A fast sale at a better price is always the goal.
Why Are Virtual Staging Services So Popular?
Virtual staging helped financial institutions, real estate agents, and individual home sellers make seemingly dull and under-furnished houses look presentable enough during the recession half a decade ago. Because virtual staging gave such good results, it became even more popular. It became an acceptable alternative to more expensive and time-consuming physical home staging.
Virtual staging costs less per room than physical staging. As a result, customers will have the most comprehensive array of options with virtual staging. In addition, unlike traditional staging services, a virtual stager can create various looks for a room to appeal to a wide range of property buyers.
A virtual stager is not limited by what he physically possesses or can rent for a staging project. As a result, it’s far easier to obtain graphic elements required in virtual staging than to problematize not having a couch elegant enough to make an old living room look acceptable to potential home buyers.
Think about it – any room in the house for sale can be transformed into a completely different room with the help of virtual staging.
Let’s say that your two-bedroom home has a small room that you use as a guest room. It’s musty and primarily empty since the pandemic. It doesn’t look presentable. No one would know that it would be a fantastic child’s room if only it had the proper lighting, fixtures, and bed. Tell a virtual stager your creative vision for this room, and he will help you transform that room into a spectacular child’s room.
What Else Can a Virtual Stager Do?
The virtual stager can also help remove off-putting items and old furnishings. So, for example, if you have a walk-in closet that’s filled with musty, vintage vinyl that’s very niche, you can have those ‘moved out’ and replaced with something more appealing to your intended home buyer.
Another growing area of virtual staging is virtual exterior staging, which shows how a house looks day and night.
Home sellers can have their homes surrounded by lush vegetation and expensive shrubs that look like they’re trimmed weekly by the most skilled lawn maintenance companies – at a fraction of the cost!
Virtual staging is practically unlimited, so you can also ask the designer to create photos of your home during winter and the summer. Again, the goal is to make the home as appealing as possible. We want to encourage the home buyers to imagine themselves living in the new place, so they won’t hesitate to buy.
Suppose a buyer is hesitant to put their house on the market because they haven’t painted the house or cleared out their garage. In that case, a virtual staging company can help them overcome this specific financial hurdle so they can get their property on the market. In addition, it is a boon to buyers and sellers because imagining oneself in a new place can be pretty tricky.
Another angle that home sellers love is that virtual staging can help protect their privacy. For example, your family photos or other items that might reveal personal information (like college pennants) can remain where they were placed or installed. Still, you have the option of asking the designer to remove them. All in all, it’s a lot less stressful than having strangers come into your home, lugging in new furniture, and pulling out what you already have.
What is Ethical Virtual Real Estate Staging?
Virtual staging periodically does raise concerns about false advertising. As a property owner or real estate agent, it’s helpful to be aware of certain ethical boundaries.
While virtual stagers can swap out picture frames and take care of garbage cans for better interior and exterior shots, most designers agree that they will never remove something permanent from a photo, such as electrical towers or water towers. But unfortunately, those features are permanent, and removing them is like deceiving home property buyers.
Removing structures like a water tower in the home’s background crosses a line. Still, reasonable parameters during the virtual staging process remain acceptable to many real estate agents, home buyers, and property sellers. For example, greening up shrubbery and grass or improving the appearance of a fireplace are all acceptable ‘staging hacks’ that work to benefit both sellers and buyers.
