Figuring out the best strategy for showing a home can often be challenging, especially for a home you have already vacated. Should you stage your home for viewing, or is it best to leave it vacant and empty? Can leaving the home furnished and decorated make it more inviting to prospective buyers? Conversely, can leaving it vacant help buyers visualize their own furniture and/or decorating style in the home?
Until recently, the majority of experts would tell you to stage the home if at all possible. The evidence strongly suggests that staging your home gives you a sales advantage. Forbes reports that staged homes tend to sell for 17 percent more on average than comparable vacant homes, and they sell approximately 87 percent faster. That said, as with many other industries, recent technological advances have recently turned conventional thinking on its ear, adding fuel to the argument that sellers might prefer to save on staging costs and leave their homes empty.
Introducing Virtual Home Staging
The advent of augmented reality has opened up a whole new world of visualization options, including in the home sales market. Augmented Reality (AR) effectively superimposes one image over another on a computer or mobile screen and allows viewers to interact in real time. This has led to virtual home staging, in which selling agents and buyers can pre-visualize a variety of furnishings and design styles that are superimposed on an image or photo of an empty room (Sotheby’s International Realty® has a special app called Curate that serves this purpose). In this manner, buyers can view the same room staged in a variety of ways, helping them better visualize the space according to their preferences. As you can imagine, the move toward virtual staging is changing the notion that vacant homes need to be physically staged since the AR works best over a vacant room.
Pros and Cons
Is virtual home staging better than physical staging? It depends on whom you ask; each has its own advantages. Physical staging is still more visually appealing for visitors who view homes onsite, especially without the use of an app. However, staging can be expensive, not to mention tricky (staging a home incorrectly can actually weaken your sales position), and it limits the buyer’s ability to visualize the home to their own needs. On the other hand, virtual home staging is advantageous because it saves the seller money while saving the buyer time and energy — plus the buyer has more versatility in visualizing the home.
So, should you stage your home or leave it empty? While physical staging still carries some advantages, you now may be able to sell an empty home just as well using virtual staging. To learn more about your staging options with Curate, call Atlanta Fine Homes Sotheby’s International Realty at 404.948.4812.