The internet has altered society. It has made our lives easier, improving its quality. Real estate used to be a process where home buyers had to visit many homes in their target neighborhood to finally find their ideal home. However, that has changed. These days home buyers can decide if they want to buy a home using online research. The internet offers images, videos, and virtual media. Virtual tours have been around for a while but there is another virtual technology that has only just started getting the attention it deserves: virtual staging for real estate.
Virtual staging provides very valuable insight for home buyers: how the home will look (or can look) once they are settled in. A bare home with no furniture is not going to provide home buyers with a clear picture. People are less likely to purchase without that clear picture. However, providing such visuals may be the final push. Turning prospects into buyers. In this article, we will define virtual staging for real estate and see why real estate agents should use it for their listings to make them more appealing.
What Is Virtual Staging in Real Estate
Virtual staging in real estate is a new and advanced practice of staging a property in a realistic way using computer software. It aims at helping home buyers discover a property’s potential. It’s an opportunity to see how it may actually look once they have bought it. This helps home buyers decide if the property is what they want.
Without staging the bare and vacant look of the property may leave them in the dark about aspects of the property. Staging helps them imagine themselves living in the house. It helps them picture it as their home. Of course, this is not real, but it is a realistic visualization of a property’s potential. It is one of the greatest tools agents can use to make home buyers connect with the property emotionally.
Why Agents Should Use Virtual Staging
According to a study by homestaginresources.com over 85% of around 4,200 staged homes sold for at least 6-25% more than the home in the same market that were not staged. Apart from this fact, there are more reasons why real estate agents should try virtual staging:
Added Value
These days real estate agents almost always use great photos to promote their listings. Therefore, using great photos is not necessarily something to stand out with. In fact, not using them will harm your business. In order to offer something new and different, however, virtual staging can be used. This goes beyond high-quality photography of the property and adds visual elements to help the home buyers imagine their dream home.
This helps clients imagine living in the property. It brings the property to life and helps homebuyers emotionally engage. Such engagement increases the chances of them making a purchase.
Cost Efficiency
The actual staging of a property can be quite expensive and time-consuming. You need furniture and time to properly stage the property. But virtual staging does not require any furniture or physical labor. The only thing you need is a couple of photos of the vacant home. Regarding the cost, virtual staging is much cheaper. Depending on the agency, you will pay around a tenth of what you would pay for actual staging.
Power of Imagination
When people pay for something, they are trying to answer a certain need in their life. The more and better products and services tailor to the needs of customers, the higher chance they have to convince the customers to make the purchase. What virtual staging does is to create that image where the needs of customers are met by using the product or service before the buying process. It allows the customer to see the different possibilities in design and decorative styles. It helps them visualize if they will be happy in the home. This is what plays an important role in triggering emotions in home buyers and makes them more willing to make a buying decision.
When the property is empty, it is hard for the homebuyers to see what the final product will look like. They have to rely on their own imagination. Sometimes people are not that interested in pushing their imagination and simply fail at realizing the true potential of a property. Either way, they are lost as home buyers unless home photography and videos do a great job of convincing them.
Virtual Staging Has No Limits
Traditional home staging can be quite expensive, and costs can add up too quickly. But that is not the only problem with the traditional staging. How the final photos end up depends greatly on the furniture and props available and there usually is only one version of the staging due to the costs. On the other hand, virtual staging benefits from unlimited elements that can be used to stage the home using different graphical furniture and decorations. Due to the low costs compared to the actual staging, virtual staging can provide many different versions.
While You Are at It
One of the greatest advantages of virtual staging is that you can use it while there are still personal belongings in the home which can negatively affect photos. Virtual staging can easily remove those items and make the home look tidy and clean without a trace of people still in it.
How Does Virtual Staging Work
Virtual staging uses the actual images of the property that are retouched and then other elements like furniture and interior elements are virtually added to create a vision of the property. In other words, in this type of staging, virtually designed furniture is added to a photo of an empty room. This trend has taken the real estate market by storm and is getting more and more popular.
Virtual staging can be done by using apps or asking professional photo editors to do the job. There are many free apps available you can use to virtually stage homes, but the problem is the quality is inconsistent and the result may not be as realistic as you would want. Furthermore, these apps offer limited elements to stage the home so you do not have many options. If you serious as a real estate agent, we recommend that you hire some professionals to take care of the task.
Virtual Staging Tips
Virtual staging works, there is no doubt about that. But it only works if it is done properly. There are many staging mistakes you can make. Here we have some tips to bear in mind:
Stage According to Design
Homes can be in different shapes and sizes and from different styles. The way you virtually stage a luxurious home can not be the same for a typical condo. As you will be using professional virtual stagers for this, remember that the more luxurious the property, the more you will have to pay. If you are going to go cheap on virtual staging regardless of how much the property is worth, there is no point.
The graphical nature of this staging option does not mean that anyone who is a graphist can do the job. Virtual stagers should have been professionally trained and must have the knowledge of decoration, design, and real estate business along with skills of graphic design.
Virtual Staging Should Look Real
It is true that virtual staging is not real but what’s the point of doing it if it doesn’t LOOK real. Lousy designs will fail at attracting any home buyers and may even deter those who would have bought the property had it not been for the poor virtual staging. Make sure you leave it to professionals with experience and a great portfolio. The final product should look realistic, as if the property were actually staged.
Inform Home Buyers About Virtual Staging
Virtual staging looks great and it should look real too. People who look at properly virtually staged photos have no idea that the listing has been virtually staged. Therefore, in order to keep it honest, you need to mention that they have been in the listings description. If you fail to do that people might think those images are real which can lead to disappointment when seeing the listing in person. Inform the audience that the property is vacant and the photos are staged to show the potential of the listing.
Final Words
Virtual staging is one of the best ways to make your listings stand out. Almost all listings out there are already using professional photographs. In order to make your listings more appealing, you can stage them. But staging the home can be time-consuming and expensive. Going virtual allows many different designs for a much lower price and has almost the same result. However, in order to get the best out of this option, make sure you do not go cheap on the service, forget about the free apps available. Virtual offers great ROI and results in faster sales.
Roomvu also offers virtual staging services for real estate agents with the highest quality in a very short time. Contact us and book your virtual staging today to bring life into your listings!