Florida Mortgage Lender Blog & Real Estate News

Home staging has long been a way to sell Florida homes for sale. In short, stagers come into your home, look the place over and start packing (if it’s not already empty). They bring furniture, draperies and other things to make the home look warm, beautiful and inviting to buyers.

The trick is to make the Florida homes for sale inviting in a way that doesn’t overwhelm the buyer’s personal tastes. It’s worked, selling thousands of homes that might not have sold otherwise, and selling them faster than non-staged homes.

For the past year or two, however, virtual (or conceptual) staging has come into the real estate world. Somewhat like traditional home staging, the virtual stager spruces up your home for sale. The differences are where the work is done and what the live house looks like. They may not sound like much, but these two differences have people asking, “Sales method or a snake oil scam?”

Virtual Staging
Home staging came about because the real estate industry realized that most buyers have a tough time visualizing what a place will look like with their unique touch on it. With more tech savvy buyers, however, some may not even visit the home to enjoy the staged view. Many buyers find their potential home online and, once they’ve viewed the online pictures, contact the REALTOR® listing the home.

Virtual staging provides beautiful images for buyers to look at online using digital enhancement. You may have a home staging team doing the computer work, or it may just be one person with fantastic design software.

Here are the benefits to virtual staging:
• It may pull in more potential buyers than non-virtually staged homes.
• It can be cheaper than having a home stager come to your home.
• If you’re worried about vandalism and theft (some sellers have had the staging furniture stolen), it may solve this problem.

But there are potential pitfalls you need to be aware of before you try virtual staging:
• The first and most obvious is not to use virtual staging to deceptively hide imperfections in your home. The purpose of these images is to enhance, yes, but if you hide issues it’s not only unethical, but, in some states, illegal.
• The second is to be sure to let the potential buyer know that the home is either vacant or has different furniture than what’s shown. You must be transparent and upfront that the images are computer generated. Otherwise, they will feel confused - or even scammed - when they get to the home to see and buy it. This may seem a deal “killer,” but it all depends on how this information is presented.

Home stagers have written in favor of real life home staging (putting down virtual staging, of course). Virtual stagers have written the opposite. So which one is better? If you have one of the Florida homes for sale, consider your budget, your options and what you want to accomplish. As long as you’re willing to be upfront about the images, virtual staging may be the right option for you.

Need help preparing your home for sale? We can help. Give us a call today at 407-876-5771.

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