Menu

Leave a Message

Thank you for your message. We will be in touch with you shortly.

Selling

What is virtual staging?

01/30/20  |  Liz and Ellie Local

If staging your home for sale with real furnishings is too expensive or disruptive, Liz and Ellie will use virtual staging to show off your home's potential in online listings and marketing materials.

 
What if you could stage your home without actually putting any furniture in it?
Great staging of a home for sale doesn’t just look inviting, it allows buyers to envision how they might use the home’s different spaces and rooms. Tasteful and creative staging sells a home faster, and for more money, than an unstaged or even an empty one.
 
We love helping homeowners stage their properties.
We write blogs about it, we include it in our handouts with potential clients and at seminars, and we spend time working with stagers at each property we list. Yes, staging is great, but we have to be honest: it can be disruptive to the seller, and it certainly can get pricey. To help defray the cost, Compass offers a service called Concierge, which pays for updates and staging up front and is repaid at the closing. But what if you don’t want to give back any of that money at the closing? Or, what if you’ve moved out of your home, it’s all clean, and you just can’t imagine putting stuff back into it?
 
That’s where virtual staging comes in. Here’s how it works:
  • We get your empty home in tip-top shape.
  • We use a talented photographer to take pictures of your rooms.
  • We send those photos to a virtual staging company (we’re happy to recommend some excellent ones). At this point you can cross this task off your list and forget about it.
  • We'll receive sets of new photographs that have each room staged for maximum effect.
  • These staged photos will make your listing stand out online and in all marketing materials.
Since we’ve started using virtual staging, we've noted that buyers aren't fazed at all when the actual house is empty when they tour it. They can still refer to our virtual staging photographs to see how a given room can be laid out. And the best part of all? Virtual staging is much less expensive. As in, less expensive by a factor of ten.
 
Why doesn’t everyone skip the staging company warehouse and go with virtual design?
There's something special about sitting in a cozy chair and imagining the quiet winter nights you’ll be there, reading a favorite novel, when it’s your home. If a lovely sprig of flowers placed just so on the mantelpiece turns an interested person into a viable buyer, we owe it to you as your agents to offer it.
 
In a nutshell, yes, we do encourage sellers to go with actual staging if it’s possible (and our Concierge program makes it very possible). However, if virtual staging is the best choice for you and your home, we know how to use it to attract the best buyers.
 
Do you have questions, or are you ready to get started? Contact us. We’re here to help.

Read More Articles

View All

Work With Us

With their complementary communication styles, responsiveness, competence, and ability to truly listen, Ellie and Liz enable their clients to feel at ease throughout any real estate transaction. They would welcome the opportunity to be your next real estate advisors.

Let's Connect

Follow Us on Instagram