Staging properties has been a selling tactic for ages, but now virtual staging is changing the real estate game.
Out with the old, and in with the new. Staging properties has been a selling tactic for ages, but now virtual staging is changing the real estate game. Let’s talk about how!
The current market conditions are brutal for buyers, causing sellers to have a slight upper hand. But this does not mean that you should take the easy way out and neglect effectively marketing your properties. Regardless of the market conditions, virtual staging and virtual tours are up-and-coming ways to improve the way you market properties.
What is Virtual Staging?
Essentially, virtual staging is like traditional staging but … virtual. What this means is that 3D modeling software is used to turn a photo of an empty room into a photo of a beautifully furnished room. The styling options are endless. This tactic is often used to market a property.
Why Branding is Essential as a Realtor
Despite the market conditions, it is important to stay on brand and put your best foot forward. At the end of the day, what you put out there reflects who you are as a realtor. The way you choose to market and present your listings affects your reputation and business.
With the emergence of social media in marketing, it makes it very easy for potential clients to see your work and compare it to others. It was reported that 44% of realtors received new clients through social media, and 33% through online advertising. Social media has been a way to the future.
The Better the Photos, the Better the Outcomes
One way that you can improve your online presence and grow your clientele is through enticing photos of your listings. As a viewer, there is nothing worse than looking at photos of a property that are blurry, dark, and lackluster. Not only is it unprofessional, but how likely is it that someone will want to schedule a tour of that property? Chances are, not many. A great picture is worth a thousand views.
Properties with professional images get 61% more views and they sell quicker even with just several days on the market. In fact, 72.2% of realtors admit that high quality photography gets them more listings and helps with branding.
Adding Staging to the Mix
A survey from the National Association of Realtors shows that staging a property raised the dollar amount offered between 1%-5%, compared to other similar listings on the market that were not staged. Not only does the value increase but the average days on the market decreases. Properties that are not staged spend an average of 184 days on the market, but once the property was staged it was sold in, on average, 41 days.
However, traditional staging is not always your best friend when it comes to marketing your property. Not only is it time-consuming and laborious but it is very costly. On average, staging a property can cost roughly $600 to $2000, plus many additional costs and setbacks which make it difficult to endure. This can easily decrease profits and earnings, especially when considering the ease of more viable, digital options.
Why you Should Implement Virtual Staging in your Marketing Plan
One of the most attractive benefits of using virtual staging is its cost-effectiveness. Typically, a customer is charged per each room they want staged. Although it varies tremendously based on experience and scope, you can expect anywhere from $40 to $65 per photo to be virtually staged (. When compared to traditional staging, this is an extremely cost-effective way to make your property stand out. Because of the affordability, it is possible to even stage multiple areas of the property, which in turn makes your listing look more attractive.
This is great for a realtor because if the realtor wants to highlight the best areas of the home, such as the living room and the master bedroom and the kitchen, then the realtor or the seller is able to do so without breaking the bank.
Another benefit of virtual staging is that it is time efficient when compared to traditional staging. With traditional staging you can expect about one or two weeks of work until the final product is completed. This ultimately delays putting the property on the market and therefore delays the selling time. Whereas with virtual staging, depending on which virtual staging company you use, can be completed in a couple of days, sometimes even 24 hours. The quicker the staging is completed, the quicker the listing will be up, and the quicker you can make a sale.
With traditional staging, you pretty much have one chance to get your vision right. With all the time and money it takes into making it happen, there is very little room for alterations. With virtual staging, you have endless options in terms of design. A huge plus is that you can create multiple versions of the same room and pick the most favorable one. This would not be possible at all with traditional staging. And in the end, who doesn’t like to save money?
Virtual Tours
Virtual tours are a fragment of virtual staging. This is another wonderful tool that can be used by realtors to market properties and sell faster. As the name presumes, a virtual tour uses photos that are compiled together through photo editing in order to create a seamless tour of a property.
During times of COVID-19, this is extremely useful because sellers are still able to showcase their property without physical interaction, and buyers are able to look at properties at the comfort of their own space.
This is also a great marketing tool when catering to potential buyers who are currently far away from the property, such as from a different country or state. As a realtor, you would still be able to promote the property and allow potential buyers to still get a feel for the property even if they are hundreds of miles away. In other words, you will make a sale faster, even under the conditions that COVID-19 (or any other circumstance) has brought upon us all.
Where to go From Here
There is no doubt that virtual staging brings tons of benefits when trying to sell a property. The best part is, it really does not take much effort to incorporate virtual staging into your marketing plan. And an even bigger plus is its affordability. Traditional staging has been proven to work, and now with virtual staging we can take it a step further through its efficiency and cost-effectiveness. It is truly a great way to not only improve your marketing strategies but to also improve your branding as a realtor and to bring in more sales. Allow us to help YOU, send a free quote request when you have a property in mind!