It’s been almost a decade since I started hearing about “virtual staging” – technology that allows you to take digital photos of empty rooms and insert furniture, rugs and furnishings into the images instead of actually physically staging with real improvements and furnishings.
According to the National Association of REALTORS®, 90 percent of buyers use the Internet to search for a home, and 97 percent find the photographs to be the most useful features on brokers’ sites. So with virtual staging, you can quickly and inexpensively stage an empty property online to help attract more potential buyers without the time and trouble of traditional staging.
A recent report from American Home Shield points out that based on the growing popularity of technology available to real estate professionals, it appears that both buyers and sellers have embraced virtual staging.
If you’ve decided to try virtual staging, Flatworld, an outsourcing solutions company, offers some tips on how to virtually present your home and make sure that you property makes a good impression on prospective buyers:
1. Replace old furniture and décor with new and visually appealing design elements that would appeal to a younger generation of homebuyers, or tone things down to match the taste of buyers who prefer a traditional style.
2. List out several impressive photographs of the house for sale – the more internal and external photographs of the house that you provide, the better.
3. Virtually do up all the main rooms of a house, like, the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, the master bedroom and the master bathroom. These rooms will be considered by a buyer before a purchase is made.
4. Highlight the external amenities of an apartment/condo like the gym, pool, play area or the deck.
5. Virtually create relevant outdoor pictures. Depending on the season, you can virtually stage the landscape. A garden in full bloom will be definitely more appealing than a barren autumn tree.
6. Post photographs with adequate lighting. For indoor pictures, make sure that the lights in the room are on. For outdoor shots, take the images during the middle of the day in order to make maximum use of the sunlight
