As a real estate agent, you want and need to show your clients' properties in the most attractive light possible. Selling real estate is generally about selling a “lifestyle,” and virtual staging can help you show potential buyers how they might use and live in the property.
Of course, like with anything else, there are some proponents of using virtual staging during the selling process. However, home staging is one of the best methods to market your home. It is a tested technique that offers homes faster and for more cash. Since it helps them to visualize your home as their home, top quality home staging appeals to buyers resulting in a faster sale.
It’s no secret that in the digital age, over 90% of home buyers start their home search online. While it is true that a picture is worth a thousand words, as it pertains to real estate, a photo can be worth thousands of dollars on the internet, if it persuades potential buyers to come to visit your home and subsequently put in an offer. There's a good chance that buyers won’t come to see your property in person if they don’t like what they see online. When you’re competing against other homes in your neighborhood, staging can also help your home stand out from your next-door neighbors'. If your home is older and is competing against brand-new buildings, staging becomes even more important to distinguish your property from newer and modern properties.
What Is Staging
There are lots of pros to both virtual and physical staging a property. It's no secret that physical staging is costly. As a result, virtual staging is quickly becoming a commonly used tool by real estate agents to enhance and advertise empty spaces
Virtual staging increases the appeal of a property and gives it a polished appearance. It requires less time than physically staging a property. Virtually staging a room for a photo is much faster than physically moving or including furnishings.
Virtual staging creates a great first impression. These very first impressions that you, as a real estate agent, will wish to produce and then harness.
Virtually staging a home could be the contributing aspect in that. If there are specific parts of the property you want to emphasize, virtual staging can be the tool to utilize to achieve this goal.
Top Benefits of Virtual Staging
1. Increased home sales
Homebuyers are more attracted to real estate images with well-furnished interiors rather than images of an empty home. Images of spaces filled with bookshelves, comfy sofas, and modern decor give off a feeling of life, making potential buyers envision themselves living in the home. It's frequently these emotions that frequently trigger purchasers to submit an offer on your home.
It's difficult to persuade a buyer to purchase a home if they can't envision themselves actually living in the space. And in today's day and age, over 90% of home sales start online. As such, you must do everything you can to get buyers excited about your listing.
By virtually staging your home, you are giving a prospective home buyer a sneak peek into what their life be like in their new home. With virtual staging, you can digitally put terrific furnishings, decor, and accessories right in an empty room. You can select in advance what furnishings you want to be put in each room, or you can just give the virtual staging editor an empty image and let them work their digital magic.
2. Saves you cash
Overall, virtual staging comes out to be approximately 90% less costly than physical staging. Physical staging can cost a lot of money, sometimes thousands of dollars. Not to mention the time it requires to hire a stager, get furniture in the home, and after that, take pictures of the staged property, You might be on the hook for considerable staging costs on top of not selling the home if the home is not sold quickly. Virtual staging is a lot more convenient and cost-effective alternative.
3. Conserves time and effort
Photographers and realtors can conserve a lot of time and effort by utilizing virtual staging. If you decide to have a home virtually staged, you can have the room designed in just 4 to 8 hours or have the whole homed digitally staged, decluttered and enhanced with marketing images in less than 24 hours.
4. Target specific markets
There is no issue that a virtual staging team can’t tackle. The virtual staging designers can edit and design the space with precisely what you or your customers are trying to find. By virtually staging your property, you can really customize the rooms depending on the design and preference of the realtor, buyer, or local real estate market. Does the home look more rustic or modern-day? Does your agent want to market to wealthy individuals who prefer modern homes?
Simply put, virtual staging enables you to directly target the requirements and desires of your market. Virtual Staging makes listings on the MLS more appealing to the specific buyers that you wish to reach.
5. Declutter space and refurnish
Virtual staging allows you to customize the space. You can remove that old couch or outdated appliance and other awful features that may hinder the property's sale.
Overall, clutter is bad. Pictures of packed, cluttered spaces are not what potential buyers want to see.
6. Virtual Staging Creates Powerful Online Marketing
Over 90 percent of prospective home buyers start their search online, and of those people consistently mention that photos are the most important feature of the home's listing. With a lot of homes listed online, setting your listing apart by publishing professional, top quality photographs can result in more interest from home buyers.
By utilizing virtual staging services, you can publish photographs that emphasize a room and its best features. Rather than vacant areas with no sense of scale or meaning, a staged location offers that scale and meaning. Plus, staging permits you to utilize contemporary, trendy home furnishings and decoration that work with area and produce warm, inviting rooms rather than extremely impersonal, cold spaces.
7. Staging Maximizes Space
Virtual Staging shows the measurements of space better. Virtually staged rooms must fit with the measurements of space. Doing so produces the right first impression for prospective buyers. A picture of empty space in the property pamphlet can make space appear much smaller sized than it is. Virtual staging fills the area. This gives people an idea of the shape and size of a room and how it might work for them.
Professional stagers know how to design each room in a way to emphasize the best feature. If your property is on the smaller side, staging can open up the property and help potential buyers see what all they can do with the rooms and space, even if it’s small. Staging can offer every space a clear function, taking the uncertainty out of things for buyers. Thus, making it easier for homebuyers to visualize the space.
An excellent stager will be able to stroll through your home and make sure it flows in a way that is beneficial to many possible home buyers. When purchasers can see how space is used, they're less likely to get hung up on an unusual design or a small floorplan, which increases the odds that they will consider purchasing your property.
The cons of Virtual Staging
Virtual staging might potentially allow you to provide the absolute best of both worlds to potential buyers. A skilled staging understands that virtual staging requires to be finished well, and properly too.
As with anything, there are some cons to virtual staging. Some critics state that exaggerated virtual staging may give a false impression to buyers.
However, you can avoid this scenario by hiring a professional and experienced company. A professional and experienced stager understands how to stage a home so that it is both beautiful and not misleading.
Nevertheless, the response depends on how virtual staging is utilized. This means hiring the best company with a professional design team is key. They can produce virtually staged pictures of properties that produce interest without falsely advertising it.
Done right, virtual staging is the ideal tool for showing potential buyers how the home fits with their way of life. This is why our design team creates a virtual phase room by space. They ensure it fits with the area and style of the property.
Overall, virtual staging is a tool that is used by other types of real estate professionals as well. Interior designers use virtual staging to show their customers what a room might appear like in a specific shade or with furnishings included.
While it is true that traditional home staging produces both excellent photos for MLS listings as well as a lovely space for open houses and home tours, many sellers still find that virtual staging has more advantages when compared with physical staging.
At VirtualStaging.com we can assist you in developing the narrative of a property that potential purchasers need. Why not reveal your buyers what a property could offer them with our virtual staging service?