We live in a visual world where seeing is believing and believing is seeing imagery that excites each person’s tastes. Nowhere more is this true than with the staging of a home to sell.
81 percent of buyers argue that staging a house helps in visualizing a property as a future home. The keyword there is home. A place that looks polished but is lived in, laughed in and loved.
Staging plays a vital role in prepping a house for the market. While the practice can be time-consuming and costly to sellers, virtual staging has changed that by transforming how buyers can envision the home of their dreams. Let’s take a look at some key differences between physical and virtual staging.
Cost
The physical staging of a home will typically involve the clearing of clutter, furniture rearrangement, and occasionally, replacement. If a home is empty, to begin with, a design expert will sometimes be hired to gauge the feel of the house with decor to match. All in all, this process can be extremely costly to the seller, ranging anywhere from $350 per room on the low end to over $200,000 for luxury homes.However, virtual staging is a fraction of the cost. Most rooms can be fully furnished—virtually, that is—for about $100 per room.
Time and Flexibility
The coordination it takes to physically stage a home far outweighs that of a virtual stage based on the convenience factor alone. For a physical stage, clients must consult with a designer, clear out and move decor around accordingly, have new items moved in, and then capture the look with a photography session.Virtual staging, on the other hand, is done without much contact at all between consultant and seller. With the exchange of some photos and guided direction, stagers can arrange and rearrange virtual furniture throughout a room many times over within a matter of a few short hours.
Seeing is Believing
It can certainly be argued that seeing is believing, and when potential buyers view images online that don’t sync with the views in real life, it can be a bit jolting. On the other hand, walking into a space (or one with opposite design taste aesthetics) can be difficult to imagine as anything other than that. As Danielle Schlisser of the Corcoran Group in New York City says, “In a space, people can’t understand how big a couch or bed is. They’ll come in and think they’ll never fit their furniture in there because they don’t have an understanding of scale.”Whether looking to cut costs or re-envision your home decor with ease, virtual staging has opened the door to new possibilities for sellers and buyers alike. Choosing the best option comes down to understanding what works best for your goals, timeline and overall asking price.
Need help deciding on whether to opt for physical or virtual staging when it comes to selling your home? Contact Janet McAfee Real Estate today for three decades' worth of home buying and selling insights you can count on.
