Don’t do it. (Virtual Staging is where fake furnishings are digitally placed in a vacant house to make it look appealing in case you didn’t know!)

The purpose of the pictures in a listing are to “Sell” a showing. The goal is to get a buyer interested enough to come see the place in person. Many realtors think it is to sell the house. This isn’t eBay or Amazon. Nobody is buying a house without somebody coming to see it IRL.

Let me back up a bit. The real estate industry has always had gimmicky services provided by people who are not in the real estate industry. These businesses exist to make money off of realtors. They tell us stuff like “You will have something other realtors won’t. You will win more listing appointments. You will make more money.”

When I was a new agent, there was a company that would give a talking tour of a home by calling a phone number. It was sort of like Apple CarPlay reading your texts. It came and went. It did not directly sell any houses. Then we had QR codes. Came and went. Now we have drone photography. I think there is a place for drone photography. Like if you have a lot of land that won’t all fit in one picture. Let’s face it, showing home buyers what their potential house looks like from a landing plane is pointless, especially in a neighborhood where the picture shows every roof top of every house. Who cares?

Virtual staging is the latest gimmick. I’m ready for it to fade into history. The thought is that it makes a house look better online. Yes, it does. But remember, somebody is going to come see that vacant house. It is not going to look or feel at all like what the buyer saw online. And that is where the problem lies. The goal is not to just get showings, the ultimate goal is to sell the house. Having been in real estate for 20 years, I can 100% tell you that people do not buy a home if they are disappointed when seeing it in person. I have had so many buyers get excited about a house due to what they saw online and then be disappointed after seeing it in person. I have also had listings that photographed much better than they looked in real life. I once had a listing that looked amazing in pictures, but was sort of worn out and tired looking in reality. The stream of feedback I received from showings was that it did not look like it did in the pictures. Some realtors even accused me of using older pictures of the house when it looked better.

Virtual Staging does the same thing. It excites a buyer enough to come see a house that will not be anything like what they expected.

If you’ve got a house that is tough to sell due to a variety of reasons, go with real staging. That way the pictures look great online and the house will match the expectations when the buyer comes to see it in real life.