Transform Your Listing With a Real Estate Virtual Staging

Virtual staging is a technique where editors digitally alter your home for real estate listings. Discover the benefits of working with virtual stagers.

Home staging is one of the main methods of advertising your home to buyers. Staging your home allows you to display your home in the most appealing way, increasing the chances of appealing to buyers. Virtual staging is different from traditional home staging. Virtual staging involves taking images of a home and filling in the space with digital tools. Previously, virtual staging was primarily utilized in empty homes, but as photo-editing software advanced, it became possible to virtually stage a home even if it is already filled with furniture.

Virtual staging allows you to present the best image of your home, which makes your real estate listing stand out. While some companies allow you to submit your own images, many virtual stagers prefer to go to your home and take their own images whenever possible. This gives them greater control over the base image and makes it easier to create a virtual staging.

Limits of Virtual Staging

The purpose of virtual staging is to make your home more appealing by showing off possible styles. While there are many ways to edit your home, there are some areas you cannot change with virtual staging. Virtual staging primarily focuses on changing the interior décor and showing how much potential your home has. You cannot use virtual staging to artificially change the size of your home or hide existing damage. However, you can use virtual staging to remove clutter from your images and emphasize how much space is available in a room.

Quicker Sales

One of the primary benefits of staging your home is greatly decreasing how long your home is on the market. Many homes are listed for months before finally selling. For some sellers this is not an issue, but if you are trying to sell your home before moving out of state, you want to complete the sale as quickly as possible. You may also need the funds from selling your house before you are able to purchase a new property. Instead of making their house more appealing, many sellers are forced to lower the price to find a buyer in time, resulting in a significant profit loss. Virtual staging allows you to quickly sell your home without having to devalue your property.

Staging Your Home

There are many factors to consider when staging a home. Because no house is the same, virtual staging companies utilize different techniques based on the home. When staging a home, it is not only about making the house look appealing, but also showing off the most important parts of the house. Most buyers only look at the first couple of images before deciding whether to move on to a new listing. With the majority of homes, there are three specific areas staging companies want to show off in the first set of images.

The first area staging companies emphasize is the living room. Most buyers look at the living room first because it sets the stage for the rest of the house. A good living room is comfortable, but also emphasizes how much space is available.

The next area stagers emphasize is the bedroom. Setting a bedroom is much easier than a living room because most buyers share the same expectation for the bedroom. Space is still important, but showing a warm, relaxing space makes the biggest impact. If your bedroom has a good view of the outdoors, stagers may attempt to work this into the images. The third portion of the house is the kitchen or dining area. This area is often the hardest to stage because you want to make the room appear both comfortable and practical.

Cost of Virtual Staging

One of the biggest differences between virtual and traditional staging is cost. With traditional staging, you commonly buy new furniture and make minor renovations to your home. This process often costs hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars. Because virtual staging is done entirely with software, the price is much lower. Most companies charge either per image, or per room. On average, the cost is $25 to $50. Another difference from traditional staging is you only pay this cost once, while traditional staging typically has a monthly fee until your house sells.

Top Virtual Staging Companies

Another benefit of virtual staging is you are not limited solely to stagers in your area. Working with local stagers makes taking images easier, but you can always take your own images to send to a staging company. One of the top virtual stagers is Padstyler. As of writing, Padstyler has successfully styled over 50,000 homes. The company focuses not only on interior decorating and fashion trends, but also lighting and shadows to make your virtual home appear as realistic as possible.

BoxBrownie is one of the most affordable virtual stagers currently on the market. Previously, the company took stock photos and provided digital editing for magazines. As a result, they employ some of the most experienced editors.

VRX Staging, which is part of VRX Media Group, is another top virtual staging company. The company previously worked with real estate agencies for traditional home staging. VRX primarily specializes in apartments and condos, as well as single story homes. They also offer some of the quickest turnaround times for virtual staging.