Quality is Key For Luxury Virtual Staging
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A recent AD PRO article posed the question: Will virtual staging become the new norm? Just ask Compass Realtor Brad Ritz. He and wife/partner Kelli agree it’s extremely valuable in helping to sell expensive homes that are vacant, sparsely furnished, or in need of a refresh.
“Our strategy for some of our listings involves true, designer-level curated staging,” says Brad. “The idea is to create an exciting product in the marketplace that becomes a must-see by anyone shopping in those price bands.”
He’ll also tell you that not all virtual stagers are created equal. Who you work with matters.
Searching out the best of the best comes naturally for Brad and Kelli. The pair operated successful multi-line retail showrooms in Dallas and Los Angeles before switching to real estate in 2016. An unwavering, non-negotiable commitment to quality is the common denominator.
“There’s tremendous parity with the type of marketing and sales experience we’ve enjoyed for over 30 years. We look at each listing or client as if it were a start-up and think in terms of the investment needed to achieve the expected results,” says Brad.
Case in point: a half-acre, transitional, ’90s-style Plano estate located on a golf course. It had been with another major broker for more than 550 days when the Ritz Group received the listing.
The perfect blank canvas, Brad enlisted the talents of an acclaimed bespoke virtual design company to help fulfill his vision. It proved a worthwhile expenditure.
In less than 60 days, there were two competing offers.
For Ilaria Barion, owner of Barion Design, virtual staging allows home buyers to recognize a property’s potential. Since opening her design-centric business 10 years ago, the industry veteran has seen the cost of physical staging skyrocket.
“Virtual is much less,” she says. “You pay once and that’s it. It doesn’t matter whether the house is on the market six weeks or six months.”
Ilaria also points out that Barion Design isn’t a tech company. “Our focus is home styling. Every design is from scratch. It’s all done in-house.”
Aesthetics are crucial. It’s impossible to get upscale results hiring someone who’s never worked in the industry.
“It needs to look real to entice home buyers,” says Ilaria.
Virtual staging is not about rendering a sofa into a picture, she adds. It requires several different software programs, highly trained graphic designers, and, most importantly, home staging experts.
Compass Chief Evangelist Leonard Steinberg is another proponent, according to AD PRO. He calls virtual staging “an incredibly effective marketing tool in showcasing what could be.”
This past April, Compass rolled out new tools — including a 3D staging feature, videos of listings, and virtual neighborhood tours — to help its agents show properties online.
“The options are unlimited,” says Illaria. “We can do anything.” (Think painting the walls, refinishing the floors, replacing light fixtures, even changing the color of kitchen cabinets.)
And while the coronavirus may have brought more attention to virtual staging, it just highlighted something that was already there.
“More and homes are being sold sight, unseen — often without setting foot in the property,” says Ilaria. “Remember travel agents?”
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Interesting article. I agree there is a place for virtual staging and it is certainly less expensive than actual staging. But when comparing luxury virtual to luxury actual staging, the latter can’t be beat in my opinion. Virtual gets the job done online, but it can lose the buyer in person. Actual, “wow I love this home”, you can touch and feel that sofa staging will win a buyer every time. And saving three or six months expenses on a luxury property with a faster sale makes physical staging a winning option.
Virtual Staging is an option for those properties that may be purchased sight unseen, but feels like a bad online date when the photo and the real deal don’t quite line up when actually viewing an empty property. Empty for sale homes are a blank canvas to find faults, and hold no emotional value, the main ingredient for a quick sale. Too, changing wall paint color, cabinet finish or other same digital enhancements can lead to real estate legal issues if you aren’t careful.
It is a virtual “rendering” not truly staging and yes while it can help some clientele see what could be, people are still going into homes and seeing them in person and that’s where it can fall apart. We have personally traditionally staged homes here in Dallas that were originally virtually “rendered” without success. The home seller in one case was furious with their agent and themselves for allowing it and the home sat for many months unsold with multiple price reductions (those price reductions would have more than paid for 5 stagings I might add for this particular home because price reductions aren’t in the hundreds of dollars they are in the 10’s of thousands of dollars to get a stale property moving then the carrying costs of two homes for a seller – is the risk worth it?). We came in and staged with REAL furniture for real people who physically went to the home in person. Home was under contract, at a higher price (they were able to bring the price up again after real staging) within 30 days. Real estate can be bought and sold without a “traditional” Realtor too – would you want to risk that with your largest investment? I wouldn’t.
Good lord. There are so many “empty” articles published on this topic but this one it’s not one of them.
I see that home stagers have real issue and see virtual staging as a threat to their business; Can’t blame them when 95% of the companies doing virtual staging have bad workflow and majority of them are not even designers but random people who happen to do virtual staging.