Our team is made up of graphic designers, interior deign experts and project managers to help you every step of your virtual staging experience. Every order is carefully put together, and quality checked by our staff. 

A distinct advantage of WhyNotHomes.com is our interior design specialist on staff. Michelle is our current design lead. She is committed to approving every design that goes through our graphic design team. 

Our management staff looks through the fine details of every photo, to make sure we catch anything missing or add additional features to make your photos pop of the page.

Finally, our the finished photos is quality checked by you. To make sure you get exactly what you want from the virtual staging experience. 

This is why we can 100% guarantee you will love every photo that comes through us. Or like we always say, "If you don't love it, don't pay."
"We promise to delivery 100% satisfaction, or your money back"Our team is dedicated to delivering an incredible experience. Trust us with your photos, we will keep upgrading your photos, until you are perfectly happy. 

To Get Started - Click Here 

Smart Realtor Staging starts here at WhyNotHomes.com
Our process is simple. 

1. You submit your photos to our team. 
   
2. Include exact instructions for the output you would like to see. [Feel free to give us some creative freedom.]
3. We return your photos with incredible interior design and virtual furniture in each room. 

That is it. Its as simple as a few clicks. You just submit your photos, and we take care of the rest.

To Get Started - Click Here

From Realtors to bloggers to HGTV, sellers hear about the need to get creative to attract prospective buyers to their homes. Suggestions include filling the rooms with warm and inviting scents, providing the perfect lighting, or playing up fun and interesting features.

Another popular option is home staging, which involves arranging and decorating the home in a way that appeals to a wide range of buyers. In the National Association of Realtors’ new 2015 Profile of Home Staging, 96 percent of Realtors who have experience assisting buyers thought that staging had an impact on buyers at least some of the time (49 percent reported staging had an impact on buyers most of the time, while 47 percent believe that staging impacts buyers some of the time).

In my experience, this is a difficult task for most many homeowners. From a professional point of view, it doesn’t matter if the dining room is staged with a beautifully set table when the walls show flowered wallpaper from the 1980s, for example! The living room or a bedroom might have a professional home stager’s touch, yet if the carpet is worn and wall color is anything but neutral, it will still lose appeal. Have you ever seen a car for sale that was freshly washed and waxed with that new car smell, but the tires were worn out and it leaked oil? You see my point.

My first advice to a homeowner looking to put a home on the market is to start the staging process by removing clutter and depersonalizing the home. The buyer has to feel like it is home for them, not someone else!

For example, I recommend that sellers take photos off the mantle and refrigerator. I always encourage sellers to look at their home with the same eye they use to scan photos of their next home. If it distracts the eye, remove it! Furniture in rooms or traffic patterns that detract from the look of the house also need to be removed.

I walked into a master bedroom the other day that had two walls lined with bedroom and office furniture! The owners need to remove anything that doesn’t fit the utility of the room in order to maximize a buyer’s ability to see the potential in the space.

I have seen homes that moved quickly merely due to where the structure was located. I have seen homes sell quickly because of the school district — it was very clear that no professional stager had ever darkened the threshold of the house, yet the home sold and sold for list price. In the practical reality of everyday life, most sellers don’t get a home inspection prior to listing (even though they should), and most don’t stage a home. Yet the homes sell.

The home stagers will disagree with me, I am sure, but I find that the photo session prior to listing is more important than staging. I took over one listing that was listed in just one of the two major multiple listing services (MLSs) in our market. It had had 14 low-resolution photos that looked small and narrow online. We got 40 gorgeous photos of the home up on both MLSs, and it sold in two weeks.

Recently, I closed a house for a buyer client of mine. The photos on the MLS and around the Internet showed the home from last summer when everything was in bloom. It looked like a French chateau priced around $130,000. When she went to see it in person, in the dead of winter, it wasn’t so glorious — yet even though it was vacant, dirty and cold (the seller turned the heat off), that house still became her next home. The seller had done everything wrong in terms of having a house “show-ready,” and there had been no attempt to stage the space, but the buyer had seen the potential. She fell in love with what the photos showed her, not with how the house looked on the day of the showing.

So what should we take from this information? Always encourage a client to declutter and depersonalize a home prior to listing. Get the bad smells out! Remove anything that limits traffic patterns. Paint the walls with neutral colors and replace the carpet if it looks worn out. These tasks should be completed well before any attempt is made to stage a home. People can see through the nice décor to the frayed carpet underneath!

In the end, make it shine online, and as long as the home feels well-maintained, it will sell — and sell for top dollar. Even the vacant listing that was 40 degrees sold because of summertime flowers!

Hank Bailey is an associate broker with Re/Max Legends and a Realtor for more than a decade who provides buyer’s agent representation and seller listing services related to residential real estate.


original post: http://www.inman.com/2015/02/27/does-staging-add-value-to-the-home-selling-process/

Realtors already use the Web to showcase their listings online, where buyers peruse them before hitting the home tours. Now comes virtual staging.

Here's how it works: A real estate agent e-mails photos of a vacant home to a stager, who digitally adds tables, chairs, lamps, art work and other items to make the space look more inviting. The agent uses the enhanced photos for his Web site, the Multiple Listing Service, flyers and other advertising.

Virtual staging is gaining ground in today's distressed economy and real estate market. Many for-sale homes are vacant because they're in foreclosure or because the owners have had to move before being able to sell them.

Meanwhile, falling prices mean less or no profit for sellers, who might not be inclined to spend money on traditional staging. Realtors earn less, too, because their income is derived from the sales price.

With so many vacant houses on the market, it also can catch a buyer's attention, said Jay Bell, manager of Virtually Staging Properties in Atlanta.


Bell and his wife, Krisztina, are traditional stagers who expanded into the virtual realm last year.

His company charges $225 to enhance three photos - say of the kitchen, living room and dining room. Four photos cost $280; five, $325. Each additional photo is $60.

If the Bells were to traditionally stage a vacant home's kitchen, living room and dining room, they would charge $2,200 to $2,400, including their service and a minimum three months' rental of the furnishings. After that, the rental would be $550 to $600 a month.


Mike King, a Realtor with Sotheby's International Realty Inc. in Brentwood (Los Angeles County), paid the Bells about $300 to virtually stage a vacant 2,400-square-foot home last year. Actual staging in his area would have cost $3,000 to $4,500 for three months, he said.

After King added the staged photos to his Web site, the number of hits increased about 40 percent, he said.

Kirk Lebowe, owner-broker of PreVue Properties in El Segundo (Los Angeles County), used the Bells to virtually stage a vacant two-bedroom, two-bath condo in Santa Monica. Cost was a major factor in his decision, but when a home is vacant, he said, "people have a hard time visualizing things."

Another virtual stager, Dennis Miller, co-owner of Virtual Staging Solutions in Cranford, N.J., agreed. "Four bare walls don't give a true picture of the potential of a home," he said.

He charges $197 to virtually stage three photos, usually of the living room, dining room and master bedroom. Additional photos are $47 each.

His business differs slightly from others' because you also can buy the furniture in the photos through a partnership with Ashley Furniture.

It takes about three to five days to add images to digital photos. "This is a service that takes time," Miller said. "It's not plop, plop, plop. We're designers."

Sellers also can use virtual staging for furnished homes. In this scenario, a real estate agent e-mails several views of the rooms to a stager for advice on how to make them more inviting.

Cindy Lin, owner of Staged4More Staging & Redesigns in South San Francisco, provided such suggestions for a house in San Jose. The wife felt she could stage it herself, but Lin was consulted for her professional opinion on "how to tweak it to make the space look bigger," she said.

She charged $250. If she had done a full staging on the three-bedroom house, her fee would have been $1,500 to $2,500 for the consultation and two months' rental of furnishings.

The home's listing agent, Pat Kapowich, co-owner of Kapowich Real Estate in Sunnyvale, said virtual staging advice has helped take his listings from an average of about 19 days on the market to five to seven, he said. "It has been a real boost to my business."

Kellie Frooninckx, owner of Virtual Enriching Homes in Phoenix, also analyzes photographs and offers advice for making a home more attractive by adding, subtracting or rearranging items. Sometimes it's as basic as telling the homeowner to put the toilet seat down or add throw pillows or lamps.

When virtually staging a vacant home, agents might wonder whether to tell clients that what they see on the Web is not what they'll see in the house. Some stagers put a small watermark on their photos. For $49 each, Virtually Staging Properties will provide an 8 x 10-inch mounted photo to place in the vacant room to help buyers remember what they saw on the Web.

Realtor Lebowe said he doesn't disclose that the home was virtually staged. He sees it as a way to give the buyers decorating ideas. After all, he said, "You're not selling (the home) with the furniture."

Virtual Staging – Selling a House is not the Time to Air Brush for Perfection

by Jennie Norris, ASPM®, IAHSP®-Premier, President & CEO, Stagedhomes.com®

In the world of fashion, models, Hollywood, and the media – much of what we see is not real. Lighting, clever stylists, and make-up can drastically alter the appearance of the model or subject. Then add in the common practice used in print media of air-brushing out flaws, and the person that is featured in the photo spread often does not resemble that at all in real life. In recent years, we have all read or seen actresses criticizing magazines for doing everything from altering their size, elongating their legs, deleting scars or cellulite, and adding things like abs and muscles.

All this is done with the magic of the computer, software and clever person with the mouse.

We know when we look at a person in a magazine that 99% of the time they don’t really look like that in person. We love to see the tabloids actually catch these models or actors in real life with their messy hair, real bodies and flaws. It reminds us that there are many clever things that can be done with a computer and software specifically designed to alter photographic images.

Although we accept this action in the world of fashion and Hollywood, we should not accept this as an acceptable trend for Real Estate and Home Staging.

Virtual Staging. This is where vacant rooms are “Staged” using images of furnishings and décor that are not real. The rooms are not truly Staged – as they are done by a person at a computer, not by a trained expert in the house. For some they may feel this is an alternative to having to invest in real Home Staging. However, the savings they get may actually end up costing them far more in legal fees or reputation than if they Staged it properly in the first place.

Photos do help sell a house, but how do we know that the images and dimensions in a “virtually Staged room” are accurate? How can we be sure that certain flaws have not been removed? Since Buyers are not imaginative, can we trust that they can translate what is in a little photo to a large empty room? Most importantly, editing out flaws or altering the appearance of rooms in houses for the sole purpose of  selling the house is bordering on deception. In the opinion of professional Stagers everywhere, the photos of the house should be of the real house  – not a virtual representation of the house.

Another problem is that Buyers will eventually go and see the house in person, and imagine their disappointment when the photo they saw online is not the representation of what they see in person. Their energy will drop, and they will not be able to translate the excitement of nice furnishings found in a virtual photo to a droll, empty room that echoes. Buyers need to experience a real Staged house with real furnishings and décor to not only know if their own furnishings will fit, but they need it in order to have a real emotional connection. That connection is what  sells the house and makes it a home.

The National Association of Realtors® (NAR®) Magazine came out with an article (July 30, 2009) admonishing agents and Sellers to not give credence to the idea of virtual Staging. It is a risky proposition that could find itself being worked out in a court of law with disgruntled Buyers who felt deceived by a clever computer tech with some slick software.  That same caution rings true today.

The link below contains the full article and there is an excerpt below.http://www.realtor.org/RMODaily.nsf/pages/News2009073002?OpenDocument

“However, there are some potential pitfalls to virtual staging, including liability issues. There is the chance, for example, that a buyer will challenge whether the digitally altered photos provided an accurate rendering of the space. After moving in, the new owner could make a case for misrepresentation of the property against the real estate practitioner.

Another problem is the lack of control that sellers and practitioners experience in terms of color schemes and accessories. Virtually staged properties tend toward neutral tones and commonplace art and window treatments that could turn off some prospective buyers.”

(Virtual Staging: Brilliant but Maybe Dangerous? Daily Real Estate News -July 30, 2009)

The moral of the story is virtually clear. With Home Staging, ensure an honest and accurate representation by entrusting your house or listing to a trained professional ASP® Home Stager, and not the clever skills of a computer jockey equipped with a mouse. That mousetrap could prove fatal to the purchase, the Seller, and even a Realtor’s career.


Original article: https://www.stagedhomes.com/blog/?p=3646

With 9 out of 10 homebuyers using the Internet in their search, according to the National Association of Realtors, home

Buyers flip through countless photos of available homes before deciding if one is worth meeting face to face. A photo gallery of empty rooms with white walls is the kiss of death.

"You have to catch their attention," said Ilaria Barion, a Chicago-based home staging professional. "The higher the traffic, the faster you will sell at a higher price. If it sits online it becomes a stale product."

After years of staging homes physically, Barion now creates realistic-looking dream interiors by staging homes digitally. Her business, Virtual Staging by Ilaria Barion, takes photos of empty rooms and adds furniture, accessories and color the way an interior designer would create a rendering. The eye-popping before and afters take a homely home to va-va-voom.

"The goal of virtual staging is to help potential buyers envision how the property could be," Barion said.

Virtual staging caught on in New York several years ago and is slowly gaining traction here.

Low-cost alternative

Barion said real estate agents and clients like digital decorating because it is faster, more flexible and far less expensive than physical staging. Turnaround time can be as short as a day or two. Styles are easily changed. The price amounts to hundreds (Barion's pricing starts at $65 per room), rather than the thousands it can cost to fill an empty home with rented furniture for a multiple-month contract.

The No. 1 question Barion gets is "does it work?"

Gold Coast broker Linda Shaughnessy of the Baird & Warner real estate agency thinks digital furnishing does. She has used virtual staging on four properties.

"It clearly generates more showings than a vacant apartment, reducing market selling time," she said.

She noted it is excellent for luxury properties that would cost a fortune to fill with appropriate furniture and accessories. It also worked for a client who didn't want the wear and tear of moving furniture in and out of a new home.

"Virtual staging can put vacant properties on a competitive level with professionally decorated listings — sometimes even more competitive — as the virtual-staged rooms are staged for selling, not living, so there is less clutter and more neutral colors," Shaughnessy said.

Evelyn Fred, broker associate at Jameson Sotheby's International Realty, has used virtual staging to market three properties.

Fred said she was getting quotes of $1,500 to $3,500 per month to rent furniture for physical staging at one home, and her sellers weren't willing to shell out the money.

"Virtual staging is a lot less headache," Fred said. "It's quick, with more bang for the buck. It's a no-brainer for clients to invest the extra three or four hundred bucks." Fred said virtual staging works because "many buyers lack vision. They much prefer to see what can be done with a room."

What happens when a buyer walks into an empty home at the showing?

"In our company survey of 100 clients, all of them said seeing the virtual staging in the brochure helped during showings of new listings, and 77 percent said it helped with an old listing," Barion said.

Shaughnessy said she usually calls buyers' agents ahead of time to alert them, and she's never had a complaint. She also uses the phrase "virtually staged for design inspiration."

Fred said she has posted the empty photos and the virtually staged ones side-by-side to show the before and after.

Not everyone is sold. The two largest home-staging associations eschew virtual staging.

"The term virtual staging is not staging," said Shell Brodnax, president and chief executive of the Real Estate Staging Association.

"RESA views this as an artistic rendering of what a property could look like," she said. "Staging is actually staging a property physically."

Brodnax said digitally enhancing empty homes is unethical unless there is a disclaimer. "If not, it's a bait and switch. You're not representing the property as it is," she said.

Barb Schwarz, a well-known figure in home staging and founder of the International Association of Home Staging Professionals, believes sellers are better off hiring a certified stager. She cites industry statistics showing staged homes sell more quickly and for more money than vacant homes.

"The cost of staging is nothing compared with the average price reduction, which is usually 15 percent or more," Schwarz said.

Disclaimer policies

Midwest Real Estate Data, which provides the Multiple Listing Service for the Chicago area, allows virtually staged photos, as long as they are mentioned in the consumer remarks, said compliance department manager Sarah Burke.

Barion noted her company's photos are stamped in the corner indicating they are virtually staged. She has her own preferences, as well.

For example, she does not change the structure of a home, such as add a fireplace. Yet she and other virtual stagers might digitally repaint walls, install light fixtures or swap flooring — changes that would not be included in the selling price.

Agents point out that in the real world homes are often occupied when the marketing photos are taken. The family might later move out, but the photos remain. Buyers are not buying the furniture, so it is not considered misrepresentation.

Home stager Chris DeBoo of Simply-Staging in Naperville summed it up. "Homeowners know that in this market you have to do everything you can to make sure your house looks the absolute best. Staging alone will not sell your house; it must be priced right and marketed right."

Empty properties just don’t move.

Take real estate broker associate Cynthia Eisen ’s listing in North Falmouth . The (vacant) four-bedroom, cedar-shingle home is light and airy with a cathedral ceiling, hardwood floors, and new heating and electrical systems. There was little interest when she put it on the market in June 2013 , and when buyers did come through, they were thrown by the open floor plan, unsure how they could arrange the furniture.


Eisen and her partner, Sally Duffy , who work for Kinlin Grover Real Living in Falmouth , looked into staging the space using rented furniture, but the cost was prohibitive in this case. Frustrated, Eisen thought, there must be some way, in this day and age, to stage it on the computer. A quick search on “virtual staging” proved her right. The home is now under contract, less than three months after posting the virtually staged photographs and dropping the price a little bit.

To virtually stage a property is to populate its rooms with lifelike digital renderings of furniture and accessories. There are many companies that offer the service, which is actually quite straightforward. You (or your broker) upload high-quality photographs of empty rooms to the virtual staging company’s website, and about three or four days later, photographs of well-appointed rooms arrive in your in box. The cost can run under $100 per room, or about $325 to “transform” five . That’s thousands less than traditional staging.

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According to a 2012 study by the National Association of Realtors , nine out of 10 recent buyers used the Internet to search for a home. Furthermore, tech savvy millennials (also known as Generation Y), who make up 31 percent of home buyers, are entering the peak period in which people typically buy a first home. This means online photographs are more important than ever.

As William Brokhof , sales team leader at The Boston Home Team in Jamaica Plain, put it: “It’s about understanding the behavior of the modern buyer, who’s searching hundreds of properties online. I have to grab their attention with a one-inch-by-one-inch thumbnail.”

Empty rooms don’t dazzle, nor do they speak to the masses. With only floors, walls, and windows, there’s no sense of scale, and when viewing a property online, it can even be difficult to differentiate the dining room from a bedroom. Plus, many folks have trouble envisioning where they would place furniture, especially in large, multipurpose spaces.


Such was the case for the third-floor master suite of a large Victorian on the water in Hull. Sharon Norman , an agent with William Raveis in Hingham, noticed that when potential buyers came through, they wrestled with how they would organize the room. Realizing it would cost a fortune to get furniture up to the third floor, Norman turned to virtual staging. Now, one photo shows a four-poster bed with night stands on either side, while another features the other side of the room, with a desk in front of the window and a glimpse of the bed in the background. The room looks move-in ready.

The homeowner, Deborah Maher , who now lives in Plymouth, is pleased. Although she was vigilant about staying true to her home’s Victorian roots, she realized that not everyone can afford, or would even want, to use period furniture. “I like that they mixed in some modern pieces; it shows that the house looks good with other styles too,” she said.

But are buyers disappointed when they show up to an empty house after seeing tricked-out photos online? Realtors say no. Some realtors display framed prints of the virtually staged rooms or create handouts for interested buyers. They may even stage one room a few different ways to help buyers visualize, for example, how a space could serve as a study, an exercise room, or a guest room, depending on one’s needs. The room’s measurements are not taken; the realtors request the amount and style of furniture.

As for disclosing that rooms have been virtually staged, some do, some don’t. Since they’re not actually changing anything, just popping in furniture, a flat-screen television, and maybe some art, most see disclosure as a nonissue. Some brokers post empty “before” shots alongside the decorated “afters” in a now-you-don’t-see-it, now-you-do slideshow.

The technology exists to remove walls, update appliances, and swap out linoleum for hardwood in the images, though not all companies partake. Some firms will remove items as a virtual de-cluttering service. Others draw the line at changing what cannot actually be altered, such as the view out a window. Most advocate for transparency, though ultimately, it’s up to the brokers.

Obeo , a large real estate solutions company based in Bountiful , Utah, offers online products that allow users (rather than a realtor or a behind-the-scenes stager) to change the finishes in a room or drag and drop furniture and accessories into it. Real estate agents can purchase such functionality for online listings, enabling buyers to interact with the properties and explore on their own what could be.

Enrique Darer , an agent with Prudential Unlimited Realty in Brookline, finds virtual staging to be a great sales tool.

‘It’s about understanding the behavior of the modern buyer, who’s searching hundreds of properties online. I have to grab their attention with a one-inch-by-one-inch thumbnail.’


“We are in the midst of a high-tech revolution,” Darer said. “Every facet of our life is changing. This is yet another example.”

original article: https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2014/06/21/virtual-staging-draws-attention-home-buyers/23Et8eb7og223QWOYysgFP/story.html

Use these six staging strategies to get the best price in the shortest time without spending a fortune.

By ANNE KATES SMITH, Senior Editor  
September 30, 2009

Staging a home for sale is all about making it inviting to the largest number of potential buyers. If a home is vacant, a stager will haul in furniture and décor so buyers can imagine themselves living there. If it’s occupied, the stager will declutter, neutralize and decorate for the masses. (See the related slide show: Real-World Examples of Home Staging for Less Than $1,000.)

Staging won’t make a home sell for more than it’s worth. But it can set your home apart and boost the selling price to the top of the range for comparable homes. It can also cut the time on the market. Because nearly 90% of home buyers start their search on the Internet, staging is a good way to make sure online photos pop.

Home sellers spend an average of $1,800 to stage a home, but costs can range from a couple of hundred dollars to $5,000 or more. Here are six ways to stage your home for less than $1,000.

Virtually stage your vacant property. Virtual staging is aimed at online shoppers who may quickly lose interest in a slide show full of floors, ceilings and bare walls. Sellers or their real estate agents send pictures of the empty rooms — a 2- or 3-megapixel camera is all you need — to a virtual stager, who sends back images of the same rooms, tastefully furnished, for use online and in marketing materials.

Ethical stagers won’t alter the color of floors or walls, improve the view, change light fixtures or fix imperfections. Nor will they work from photos of furnished rooms because they don’t know what lurks under the existing rug or behind the real-life sofa. Still, for buyers, it goes without saying that there’s no substitute for an in-person tour.

Virtually Staging Properties, in Atlanta, charges $225 for three virtually staged photos, $280 for four and $325 for five. Send in a high-quality photo (at least 5 megapixels) and for $50 you can get an 8-by-11-inch paper enlargement to mount on the wall so that open-house visitors can see an empty room’s potential.

Virtual Staging Solutions, in Cranford, N.J., recently offered three virtually staged photos for $197.

Pay for a plan, do the labor yourself. Many stagers work as consultants, touring your house and offering suggestions on how best to present it. Barb Schwarz, a longtime home stager and founder of the International Association of Home Staging Professionals, says the average fee for a consultation is $350 and often involves a tour of the property that lasts two hours or longer, photos and a 30- to 50-page report.

No Vacancy in Atlanta, Virtually Staging Properties’ sister company, charges $250 for a three- to four-hour consultation split over two days — the first to give you ideas and the second a couple of weeks later to suggest finishing touches. In Minneapolis, Lori Matzke, founder of Center Stage Home, charges $250 for a 90-minute walk-through. Customers are in charge of taking notes, so she encourages them to follow along with a video camera.

When working with a consultant, you do the cleaning, the decluttering and the trips to the dump, or rental of storage space. Load up an 8-by-8-by-12-foot or 8-by-8-by-16-foot portable storage unit from PODs, which will deliver the unit to your driveway for $75, transport it to a secure storage facility for another $75 and charge you a monthly storage fee of around $150, depending on where you live, the time of year and other factors.

Among the accoutrements of home you’ll need to jettison or stow: family photos, magazines, toys, cosmetics and other grooming supplies in the bathroom, and countertop appliances and cutting boards in the kitchen. “Pretend you’re camping,” says Schwarz. Leave only necessities, and store them in cabinets.

Paint rooms in light, neutral colors, which are widely appealing and make your rooms look bigger. “Different-colored bedrooms are like Ginsu knives that chop up space,” says Schwarz. Put a touch of greenery in every room — preferably harvested from the backyard.

Negotiate a vignette. A staged home calls for scenery—for example, a ficus tree, a beautiful chair and a side table with accessories. If you don’t need furniture brought into an otherwise empty space, you may be able to negotiate for décor only — call it a pizazz package. No Vacancy will bring in wall art, area rugs, lamps and other accessories to neutralize and update a customer’s existing furnishings. The service runs roughly $250 per month, with a three-month minimum, plus one month’s fee for setup and breakdown. Center Stage Home charges just $600 for three months; adding heavy pieces, such as a sofa, tacks another $300 to the tab.

Focus on just a few rooms. Spend your budget on the entryway, main living area, kitchen and master bedroom. Many stagers charge an hourly rate -- $75 to $125 is typical. Ignoring secondary rooms, or doing them yourself once you’ve seen how the pro works, can save hundreds of dollars.

Do tackle particularly challenging areas — say, an attic bedroom with odd angles and crannies or a pink-tiled bathroom in an older home. You needn’t go overboard. A soft, creamy paint color, such as a pale gold, on the attic walls and ceiling will downplay angles and make the ceiling seem higher. Tone down a Pepto-Bismol look in the bathroom with white and black — tie a white shower curtain on the rod with black-and-white ribbons, and hang black bath towels.

Shop at home. Scour the house, yard, garden shed and garage to carry out your home’s transformation. Schwarz recalls facing a challenging boy’s bedroom once, which had a broken curtain rod, torn drapes and a collection of disturbing posters. A tour of the shed, yard and garage yielded a trove of fishing equipment and—voilà—a new theme. A fishing pole replaced the broken curtain rod, and a sheet from the linen closet, tied back with rope, became the curtain. Atop the dresser: a tackle box, some fishing books and a lamp placed inside a cleaned-up fishing boot. The other boot became a planter for some alder branches from the backyard. The headboard was draped in a fishing net adorned with lures. Cost: virtually zero. And when the house sold, the buyers asked that the décor convey.

In the main living areas, though, themes are best avoided. “The whole idea is to appeal to as many buyers as possible,” says Matzke. “Themes can be distracting.” Think flexibly as you rearrange furniture: a nightstand can be an end table, a bureau can be a buffet, and a hutch can double as a bookcase. Cardboard moving boxes can stand in for a bed in an unfurnished bedroom. Cover with a gorgeous spread and pillows and no one will know. Still missing something? Shop Craigslist.org, or ask family and friends for a loan.

Step outside. Clean up debris and pull dead plants or shrubs. Trim remaining greenery, especially anything blocking a window. Banish planters, barbecue grills and toys from the deck. You can’t paint your home’s entire exterior for less than a grand, but you can refresh the front and garage doors with a coat or two; ditto for the shutters and trim, especially window ledges, and the mailbox. Clean up rust spots or streaks on downspouts while you’re at it, and repaint or restain the fence. Typical cost for exterior touch-up, including repairs to chimney, gutters, roof and porch: $660 to $940, according to HomeGain.com, a home-marketing Web site. 

source: http://www.kiplinger.com/article/real-estate/T029-C000-S001-6-ways-to-stage-your-home-for-less-than-1-000.html

ANY broker will tell you that selling an empty apartment is much harder than selling a beautifully furnished one.

But staging a home with rented furniture can cost thousands of dollars, and that’s money that most sellers aren’t willing to pay. So brokers at Halstead Property and Brown Harris Stevens are using a service that furnishes rooms virtually with the décor of the broker’s choice, adding color and life to photographs of otherwise bland and blank boxes.

To avoid having a potential buyer arrive at a listing and be surprised to find an empty apartment, both agencies label their online photos as “virtually staged” and pair them with photos of the unfurnished rooms.

“There’s full transparency,” said Diane M. Ramirez, the president of Halstead Property, “because this is not meant to be a trick, but a tool to help buyers see the potential of an apartment.”

Empty spaces often seem small, Ms. Ramirez said, “because there’s no scale in the room.” But with virtual staging, a photo can show whether a room is large enough for a king-size bed and a triple dresser, or can hold only a twin bed and a bedside table.

More than 90 percent of buyers nationally use the Internet to search for a home, according to the National Association of Realtors, and 97 percent of them think photographs are the most useful feature on brokerage Web sites. Because of those trends, listings with empty rooms are at a distinct disadvantage, said Matthew J. Leone, the director of Web marketing for Terra Holdings, the parent company of both Halstead and Brown Harris Stevens. “If you’re searching online and that first thumbnail image doesn’t draw you in,” he said, “you’re going to pass it off and move on.”

Mr. Leone said he believed that Halstead and Brown Harris were the first agencies in the city to use virtual staging and that virtually staged listings had drawn an average 20 percent increase in Web traffic in just a few weeks.

Photo
A bedroom in its actual and digitally furnished guises. Agents say they are careful to show both views in online ads. CreditHalstead PropertyTerra Holdings selected a vendor that can provide 50 different styles of furniture and dozens of angles for each piece.

With that much variety, Mr. Leone said, “they don’t manipulate the photo, and they don’t have to skew or stretch a piece of furniture, which would make it look unrealistic.”

Terra would not reveal its vendor, but services like Virtually Staging Properties and Virtually Staging Solutions charge about $200 for three staged photos. Physically staging a living room and two bedrooms with rented furniture could cost as much as $1,500 a month.

According to Walter Molony, a spokesman for the National Association of Realtors, virtual staging first appeared nationally about a year ago and is not yet widely used. Mr. Molony says the practice “raises some interesting ethical issues” in terms of truth in advertising; he added that “the safest course is to disclose in a clear and conspicuous way that a picture has been enhanced or altered.”

Lisa Rose, a senior vice president of Halstead, has gone to contract with a two-bedroom listing in Hell’s Kitchen that was virtually staged. She said informing interested buyers and brokers about the doctored photos had been a part of every initial conversation.

Her listing had been on the market since March with photos of empty rooms, because the owner had relocated. “I got maybe three showings a week,” Ms. Rose said. “And when people walked in, they just didn’t get how to decorate it, even when I explained how the seller had it set up.”

But after the listing was virtually staged, nine people showed up for an open house; she was negotiating a contract within two weeks.

“The virtual staging definitely helped sell it,” she said, “because people could get an idea of what they could do with the space.”

Virtual Staging Brings Empty Homes to Life on the Computer Screen
OCTOBER 2009 | BY KATHERINE TARBOX
Even vacant listings need to look their best. But what if neither you nor your client can foot the bill for staging? To professionally stage an occupied house can cost from a few hundred dollars to more than $1,000, says Barb Schwartz, a staging pioneer and founder of StagedHomes.com. The price tag is even higher for vacant properties; add rental furniture and the costs can skyrocket.

That’s why some salespeople are turning to virtual staging—using computer technology to add furniture and other décor to photos of their listings. Since many buyers today narrow their choices based on online photos, virtual staging is an economical way to show the potential of a vacant property.

Practitioners have been hesitant in the past to use virtual staging solutions because the images looked computer-generated (similar to the virtual world of Second Life). But a new generation of these services allows you to create realistic images using photographs of actual furniture.

One option is Virtually Staging Properties, a program developed by professional stagers Krisztina and Jay Bell of Atlanta. The husband-and-wife team photographed more than 1,000 pieces of furniture, creating a virtual database that they use to lay out a room with images.

Cynthia Temple, a sales associate with First Weber Group Inc. in Middleton, Wis., used the service to create staged images of a vacant condo. Turnaround time: less than one week. Cost: less than $225. "The images are stunningly realistic," Temple says. "It’s hard to believe they’re computer-generated."

The company also provides its customers with high-resolution 8-by-10-inch images, which the Bells recommend leaving in each room of the house.

Before virtual staging, Temple’s condo listing had been on the market for more than two months without a showing. Within days of uploading the new photos, she says, traffic increased significantly and she quickly had six showings.

Virtually Staging isn’t the only show in town. whynothomes.com offers its lifelike photos through a partnership with Ashley Furniture. Obeo offers Obeo StyleDesigner, which enables you to change wall colors, countertop textures, and type of flooring, and Obeo SpaceDesigner lets you create drawings of a room with furnishings. Other do-it-yourself options include Home Design Studio and Live Interior 3D.

"While there will always be strong demand for traditional home staging," says Krisztina Bell, "this virtual technology is an affordable solution for cash-strapped sellers."

Keep it EthicalThe idea of virtual staging is not to deceive prospects but rather to help them envision what the house could look like and how each space could be used.

"We caution agents that they should be transparent about the images and explain that they are computer generated," says virtual stager Krisztina Bell.

In other words, where virtually staged photos appear, include a comment or comments in a readily and reasonably apparent manner that the property has been virtually staged and is actually vacant (or furnished differently), advises REALTOR® magazine’s ethics columnist Bruce Aydt. Otherwise, you risk violating Article 12 of the REALTOR® Code of Ethics, which requires that your marketing paint a "true picture."

 "As long as you set the expectations for prospective buyers," says Middleton, Wis., sales associate Cynthia Temple, "they won’t be surprised to walk into an unfurnished home."


source: http://realtormag.realtor.org/technology/feature/article/2009/10/staging-virtual-reality

Every real estate professional knows that vacant homes usually sit on the market longer because most clients can’t picture themselves in a property with bare walls and empty floors. By using Virtual Staging technology, you can help your clients see the full potential of a listing online before they visit it in person.

In today’s marketplace, it’s more important than ever to present your online listings in their best possible light. According to the National Association of Realtors, 90% of buyers use the Internet to search for a home, and 97% find the photographs to be the most useful features on brokers’ sites. With Virtual Staging, you can quickly and inexpensively stage an empty property online to help attract more potential buyers without the time and trouble of traditional staging.

What Is Virtual Staging?
Virtual Staging is technology that allows you to take digital photos of empty rooms and insert furniture, rugs and furnishings into the images. This helps clients visualize how a potential home might look and helps them connect with the property emotionally. Virtual Staging also allows you to change the color of the walls, upgrade kitchen appliances and alter flooring to show how the home might look when renovated.


How Do You Use It?
Numerous companies specialize in Virtual Staging. Once you’ve chosen one and have created an account, you simply download digital photos of your vacant listing to the company’s website and their designers will digitally add couches, tables, beds, artwork and other furnishings based on your direction, to bring the home to life. The company then emails the files back to you so you can post the photos on your site or on the MLS. Most of the large real estate firms are using Virtual Staging already, so if you want to stay competitive in the field, you need to get on the bandwagon and embrace it.

Is It Cost-Effective?
Virtual staging costs far less than traditional home staging. The latter runs, on average, between $2,000 to $3,000 to set up the property and anywhere from $500 to $1,000 to pay for additional rental fees each month. The average cost to digitally stage real estate is between $200 and $400, depending on the company and the number of photos. By using Virtual Staging, you can make more of your properties stand out online in a crowded and competitive marketplace.

How Do Clients Feel about It?
Based on the growing popularity of the technology among real estate professionals, it would appear that both buyers and sellers have embraced Virtual Staging. Just make sure that you clearly disclose on your company’s site and the MLS listing site that the property has been Virtually Staged. You don’t want a potential buyer to visit a vacant home and be caught by surprise.


source: http://rismedia.com/2016/01/17/what-you-should-know-about-virtual-staging/#close