Selling your home? Here’s what you need to know about virtual home staging.
What is virtual home staging?
Research shows that 9 out of 10 buyers start their search online, which is why agents recommend professional home staging and real estate photography to help market your home.
Moreover, a percentage of Realtors believe that staging increases the sale price of the home anywhere from 1% to 15%, according to a 2017 National Association of Realtors (NAR survey).
Home staging is the practice of bringing in furniture, décor, and artwork to highlight a property’s finest qualities with the aim of getting higher offers and selling the home as quickly as possible.
Virtual staging has the same goal as traditional home staging, although the process behind it is different – it is the practice of enhancing and digitally adding stock furnishings into photos of each room using advanced graphic design software.
As with traditional staging, software users can add anything from bed frames to rugs depending on which items are available in their image inventory. This helps buyers visualize the property as if they’d decorated it themselves.
Although virtual staging isn’t a substitute for getting a home ready for a sale (which typically entails basic repairs and other improvements), it can be an effective way of getting more views for your listing, and hopefully, better offers on the negotiating table.
Images Should Look Realistic
According to Virtually Staging Properties, 85% of buyers consider virtually staged photos to be the most important factor in their decision to view a home when browsing listings online. But you’ll need to do more than making a lot of high-quality renditions – you have to make sure they look realistic as well.
Poor execution, where visually staged photos have disproportionate, weirdly oriented, or just plain fake-looking décor and furnishings can be off-putting for online viewers. The same goes for listings that share the same stock furnishings.
Poor execution is often the result of low quality graphic design and rendition.
Unrealistic images will make online viewers dismiss the idea of visiting a property, much less consider living in it. Worse, they might think that you’re purposely trying to mislead buyers.
Effective and high-quality virtual staging services make use of an extensive inventory of contemporary and on-trend furnishings that look realistic and demonstrate attention to detail.
Give Online Viewers a “Before” and “After” Look at the Space
When photographed empty, living spaces can either appear larger or smaller than they really are, giving online viewers an inaccurate representation of the home and affecting their decision to visit the property.
Virtual home staging gives sellers and agent the opportunity to give viewers a “before” and “after” image of each room, with the “before” image being an empty and unstaged shot of the room, allowing buyers to examine each aspect of the living space, from light switches and windows to flooring and air vents.
Just make sure that the room is clean – visible dust or debris in an empty room can be a turn-off and make the property seem neglected.
Virtual home staging, or the “after shot”, helps viewers discover the potential of each room once stocked with décor and furnishings. It gives them an idea of what they can do with space once they move in and how they may style the property themselves.
Virtual staging also gives homes a “lived-in feel” as opposed to empty rooms that may seem desolate and unappealing to buyers.
Want to know more about virtual home staging? Interested to learn about the Little Silver, NJ real estate market? Local real estate agents like Colleen Meyler can answer your questions and supply you with the information you need to make the right decisions moving forward. Contact her at 732.995.5102 or ColleenMeyler(at)gmail(dotted)com