How To Use Virtual Staging To Sell Your Home

Is Virtual Staging for You?

I’ll let you decide for yourself. Here’s my Story: I was putting my Mom’s five bedroom home on Hawthorn Street in New Bedford on the market for the first time in more than Forty Years!

It was a house that was well cared for but in need of some updating. We cleaned it spotless and had the exterior painted. My family spent months on the first and third floors stripping wallpaper and painting it in very trendy colors. We left the wallpaper on the bedroom walls on the second floor, and then we were ready to go.

We knew we wanted to move the furniture out of the house but didn’t want to have a vacant house plastered all over the Internet, and couldn’t decide how to stage an empty house for sale, so we kept the dated furniture for our pictures.

Showings were consistent in the first few months, but no satisfactory offer. How could we get a buyer to see beyond the dated kitchen and baths? There were no granite counter tops or stainless steel appliances. It did have beautiful hardwood floors and the house was filled with lots of wonderful memories.

I needed to think outside the box as the Summer months wore on, so it was time to do some research on the Internet and that’s where I saw something about Virtual Staging. I had never heard of this but was pretty amazed at what I found. The pictures looked pretty realistic and boy, did it change the look of the rooms being staged! They don’t change the features of your home or the colors on the walls. I found a company that would do the staging for a very reasonable $40 per picture.

There are virtual staging software & apps out there that will let you virtually stage your own properties, but I left it to the virtual staging professionals.

*It should be noted that these photos & videos were created back in 2014 so keep in mind technology has gotten even better!

Before & After Home Staging of the Living Room

As you can see, with a little wall-art and changing the floors to hardwood instead of carpet, the virtual home staging
made a giant difference.

Before & After Photos of the Bedroom

Because the wallpaper is patterned, a solid color with no pattern for the comforter on the bed was used. Amazing what a little furniture can do to an empty room!

Before & After Photos of the Entry Foyer

What a transformation virtual staging did in this room.

Someday, I’ll get my home staging certification but I’m not the expert on that now. The results were exactly what we wanted. Showings picked up right away and the house was SOLD. The buyers coming in were amazed. It’s a great tool available to stage your vacant home for very little money. I would highly recommend it as a Realtor and a recent home seller.