Have You Seen “Virtual Home Staging”?

We’ve all heard about staging a home to prepare it for a faster and higher priced sale by transforming the home into a more welcoming, attractive and visually appealing offering that anyone might want. Traditionally you would either declutter your home and rearrange your furniture to the best of your ability, or you would hire a professional staging company to sort everything out and truck in other furniture, art, lights, carpets and greenery to make your home more photogenic. There’s lots of online information about how to go about staging a home. For example, here’s a great article from Herd: The Houlihan Lawrence Blog​ entitled “21 Home Staging Tips and Tricks to Sell Your Home Fast”:
          http://www.houlihanlawrence.com/blog/21-home-staging-tips.html 

​But its 2019, so technology has now started to edge its way in to the home staging business with “Virtual Home Staging”. After all, why spend time and effort decluttering knick knacks, repainting walls and rearranging furniture when you can do it all digitally? The photo editing technology has gotten so good that you can start with an empty room and fill it with whatever furniture you desire. You can show how a room would look if it was repainted or remodeled. You can even make the grass greener, the sky bluer and the time of day sunset. It’s easy; all you need to get started is to take a photo and upload it so that it can be edited.

If you really want to see the state of the technology, and what can currently be done with today’s software, here are the websites for the 12 market leaders in Virtual Home Staging:

• Virtual Staging Solutions:  ​https://virtualstagingsolutions.com/
• Visual Stager:  http://visualstager.com/
• VHT Studios:  https://vht.com/
• VRX Staging:  https://vrxstaging.com/
• Real Tour Vision:  https://www.realtourvision.com/virtual-home-staging.html
• Virtually Staging Properties:  https://virtuallystagingproperties.com/
• Virtual Staging Lab:  https://virtualstaginglab.com/
• IBD:  https://bariondesign.com/
• Spotless Agency:  https://www.spotlessagency.com/
• Padstyler:  https://www.padstyler.com/index.php?page=home
• Box Brownie:  https://www.boxbrownie.com
• Rooomy:  https://rooomy.com/

I can see how virtual staging can be a very cost effective and useful tool for realtors and home sellers – but like most technology it can be abused. Here’s a great Wall Street Journal article that highlights the disappointment some buyers are having when they finally visit the properties that have been virtually staged – only to find out that the photoshopped images don’t match the actual home -  “Buyer Beware: Hollywood Special Effects Now Permeate Property Listings”:
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/home-sellers-doctored-photos-challenge-buyers-bots-11551708001

​So, if you’re looking to sell your home, you might want to look into virtual home staging as an option to help speed up your sale and increase your price. Just remember that real buyers are actually going to eventually visit your home so the difference between the online photos and the reality can’t be so far apart that the buyers think they are visiting a totally different property – so perhaps what you really need is an Interior Designer to assist you (hint, hint….).