Virtual staging technology is just now beginning to become feasible and look as natural we’d like it to be. Perfect timing too, because virtual staging and virtual home tours have become the best way to tour a home for sale during the Coronavirus pandemic. Here is a short list of pros and cons for virtually staging your home.
Pros of virtual home staging
Quick Setup
Rather than having to move heavy physical furniture and spend a couple days making everything look showroom ready, virtual staging can be done in a few hours. Once the program has the room picture, furniture and colors can be placed and rendered. In addition, virtual staging is heling everyone sell their homes during the COVID-19 outbreak. Rather than having your agent or a hired home stager and their movers touch and move everything in the house, your agent’s photographer only has to stay for a few minutes to take pictures. From there, all of the staging is done with a computer program.
Style Choices
Thanks to virtual staging, a room can be rendered to suit a variety of needs. An extra bedroom or bonus room can be styled like a home office, or home gym; and a detached shop or garage can be outfitted with tools and cars to fill the space. Whatever the stager thinks will appeal to the most buyers, they can make it happen.
For example, the real estate company that is selling Shaquille O’Neal’s massive mansion in Florida is using virtual staging to help sell it. Not everyone has Shaq’s personal style of everything being oversized, and basketball courts, so the agents use virtual staging to give the rooms a modern look to show what the space could look like. Check it out here. This is a great example of the power of virtual staging to transform a space.
Vacancy revival
Vacant homes make it a little easier for buyers to envision their lives in the home, but a completely empty house may not provide enough reference to work from. Virtually inserting tables, couches, or beds can give buyers a better idea of what the home could look like. During COVID lockdowns, buyers were finding this helpful since they couldn’t physically tour homes.
Cons of virtual home staging
Picture perfect
We are just now getting to the point where virtual staging can look natural. Part of this comes from the graphic designer’s skill with photoshop or other rendering software. Talk to your agent about the abilities and skills of a graphic designer they work with or hire for this kind of work. Online listing pictures are what buyers see first, so you want to make sure that your home will look amazing—even if it is virtually staged.
Potentially misinformed clients
The converse of the vacancy revival point above, is that the buyer’s agent should inform their clients that the photos are virtually staged. There have been stories of clients believing that the house look like the photos, but in reality, the home is vacant. Luckily this situation doesn’t happen very often.
This is by no means an all-inclusive list. Talk to your agent about your home’s individual needs to sell for the most amount of money in the shortest time.
