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.”
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.”
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