As every smart real estate agent knows, the best way to sell a home is to make it look as attractive as possible to the most amount of potential buyers.

In a day and age when the vast majority of people begin their home search online, it’s becoming more important to showcase properties on the Internet as a way of generating initial interest. As such, many agents are turning to “virtual staging” to add a cosmetic touch to homes of all shapes and sizes, including empty houses, poorly decorated homes, those that need repairs, and those that are unusually sized or spaced.

Virtual staging involves using software to recreate the look and décor of a home. The idea is to showcase the home’s potential, and to help create more of a bond between the buyer and the home. In some cases, buyers are even able to model the home the way they would want it to look, if they decided to buy it.

One neat trick that virtual stagers use is to provide a “before and after” comparison of the property. This means contrasting the empty room with the virtually staged room, and helps give buyers a sense of how much space their own furniture may occupy, and where they intend to place things such as the television, patio furniture, appliances and so on.

Virtual staging is a far more cost-effective option than traditional staging, which means actually buying new furniture and physically decorating the property, then hiring a photographer to take some professional photos.

However there is a caveat for agents, who’re required by law to make it clear that the images only represent the home’s potential, and are not an actual image of the property “as-is”.

Virtual staging is becoming a popular real estate marketing technique. It offers potential buyers a view of a property’s possibilities without a time-consuming and expensive traditional staging.

How Virtual Staging Helps to Showcase A Home by Mike Wheatley | Realty Biz News