Why Sellers Are Choosing Virtual Staging Over Traditional Home Staging

What’s so great about virtual staging and why is it on the rise? Find out why more sellers are choosing virtual staging over traditional home staging.

If you’ve bought or sold a home in the last few years, you’ve felt the winds of change in the real estate market. It’s not only about fluctuations in home inventory, or ups and downs in interest rates.

Real estate is going virtual! And the transformation from traditional to virtual didn’t just begin yesterday.

We’ve exchanged print marketing for digital marketing. Most shoppers get their first look at homes for sale by clicking a mouse instead of poring over the real estate section in the Sunday newspaper. Sellers (and buyers) are even using virtual real estate brokers.

Many sellers love a popular marketing tool known as virtual staging.

If you haven’t heard of it, here’s your chance to learn about why sellers are choosing virtual over traditional home staging. Keep reading and see if you don’t get excited about this intriguing sales and marketing tool!

Virtual Staging

When a real estate agent suggests staging your home, what comes to mind?

Moving all the furniture around? Giving your home a deep clean? Maybe you grab your brush and go for the latest trendy paint colors.

It’s one thing to refresh a home with a coat of paint and professional cleaning. Then you can stage with your furniture and a few tasteful accents. Traditional staging works if you own a houseful of high-end furnishings.

But if your décor is a little blah, or if you’ve already moved out of your home, traditional staging isn’t as effective.

Empty homes offer little in the way of curb appeal. Remember, before most buyers ever see the yard and front entryway, they’ve seen inside through an online real estate website. Those empty rooms look like boring boxes.

Welcome to virtual staging!

A professional photographer takes real photos and then uses software to change the furnishings and other décor. Sellers like the way virtual home staging creates the wow factor.

And while virtual home staging may be new to you, it’s not new to the real estate field. Remember the last recession? People lost homes and many abandoned them altogether.

Back then, virtual staging helped both homeowners and banks make abandoned properties look better in one or two clicks.

Stand Out in the Crowd

Sellers also like this method of home staging because it can make a property stand out.

A well-staged listing shows a home with high-quality furniture and professionally decorated rooms. Stage virtually and help buyers fall in love with the home they want rather than the one they see in person.

Virtual staging can connect buyers emotionally to your home. No buyer can resist seeing a home in person when they’ve already formed a connection virtually.

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PadStyler Virtual Furniture Replacement

Let’s admit it, a lot of the homes are furnished poorly and you wish you had a magic wand to replace the furnishings before listing them for sale. Well, now you do. Our designers can virtually replace the existing furniture with beautiful new furniture, helping your buyers visualize the space to its full potential. 

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We get to stage some pretty run down houses.
Here’s what came our way recently


PadStyler Curb Appeal Enhancement

Online buyers look at a listing for only 3 seconds before deciding to click on it for details. This makes the cover picture of the listing a very powerful asset to draw them in. Our designers can enhance the landscaping, weather and curb appeal virtually so your online listing looks its best.

Is it harder to sell a home that looks bad from the outside or from inside?
Tell us on Facebook


PadStyler Carpet Replacement

It is amazing how just updating the carpet and paint can bring a house back to life. Yet most sellers don’t make an effort to do so before putting a house on the market. But we have you covered. Our designers can virtually change the flooring and paint to show your buyers the true potential of the house. 

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Is it a smart investment for sellers to replace carpet before putting a house on the market? 
Tell us on Facebook


PadStyler Backyard Staging

Backyards sell lifestyles sell homes. Backyards are the big reason apartment dwellers move up to single family homes. Our designers help your buyers visualize this lifestyle by staging the backyard with some nice patio furniture, cocktails, barbecue grill and may be even a swimming pool.  

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8 Virtual Staging Myths That Agents Believe But Aren’t True

Virtual Home Staging is often misunderstood as being deceptive and we dispel the myths

Virtual Staging is now part of mainstream Real Estate Marketing strategy where Listing Agents and Homeowners choose to digitally furnish photos of vacant or poorly furnished listings instead of renting real furniture. Despite being proven to work, some agents still refuse to see the value of Virtual Staging and argue that it should not be part of an effective Real Estate Marketing plan

What follows is our response to the common concerns and questions raised by Real Estate Agents, most of whom have later turned into our customers and believers of Virtual Staging. 

Agent Myth #1: Virtual staging is misrepresenting the property

Virtual home staging involves staging pictures of rooms with virtual furniture and accessories. Just like traditional staging, it is a visual tool to help buyers imagine and visualize their future homes. With virtual staging we never make structural changes to the house like changing floors, walls or lighting. We are only inserting furniture and accessories into the photos to show the rooms as furnished. So there is no misrepresentation since the house has not been modified in any way. 

Agent Myth #2: Virtual staging is against MLS rules and regulations

After having staged over 50000 homes for 90% of the MLS’s in the country, we have seen that MLS organizations have no objections with Virtual Staging as long as it is properly disclosed in the listing that the property has been virtually staged to showcase the future to potential buyers. It is also a good idea to include both before and after Virtually Staged photos for clarity. 

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Drew Scott From Property Brothers Chooses PadStyler

Drew Scott, the beloved TV host from HGTV hit show Property Brothers, chooses PadStyler for 3D Renderings and Virtual Staging. Drew’s social media followers submitted photos of their outdated homes. Drew used PadStyler to showcase how these rooms could be renovated and refurnished into attractive living spaces.

 

Drew’s Advice
No storage. Create a space that shows maximum function with ample storage.

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Drew’s Advice
Keeping original Character or adding Character that ties into era of home.

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Drew’s Advice
Be careful not to over-renovate. You will most likely be competing with new builds in your neighborhood. Create flow and more open concept feel.

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Drew’s Advice
Utilize the space. Update with new cabinets new countertops new lighting and new flooring.

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6 Killer Marketing Ideas For New Construction

Virtual Staging, 3D Walkthroughs & Interactive Sales Kiosks Are The New Age Of New Home Marketing

New Home Construction has been booming across the country. According to a survey by Trulia, twice as many people prefer a newly built home over an older home. The biggest reasons cited are modern amenities and the ability to customize the home to their preferences during the construction process. This also means that buyers expect more from their pre-sales and builder consulting experience than ever before.

In a cut throat environment of increased competition from big players, combined with lofty buyer expectations, real estate developers have been turning to innovative digital marketing tactics to stand out from the pack.

How do you attract new construction buyers?

New construction buyers are attracted to homes that have the potential for a stable and long-lasting investment. They want their money spent wisely on building materials with lasting value, so they look out especially for new builds in areas where there’s plenty of growth coming soon or already happening right now!

If you want these customers as part of your list too it will take more than just listing your house – though this does help–you’ll also need some minor renovations like fresh paint jobs here along with w/ updates throughout; putting together packages tailored specifically around what each buyer wants from his home purchase experience can really pay off when trying to get him into one particular week.

Here are some New Construction Marketing ideas that are sure to delight your customers and help you build a Tech-Savvy Construction Company.

Virtual Staging

Virtual staging is the new wave in home staging where you stage the pictures of homes using 3D furniture and décor, instead of bringing in actual physical furniture into the house. According to NAR (National Association of Realtors), 90% of buyers cannot visualize a vacant property effectively. Virtual home staging is a cost effective way to show the potential of the property to future buyers without renting expensive furniture or hiring movers.

Virtual Staging can also allow you to stage the same space in multiple different ways tailored to each demographic. In the age of Pinterest and Instagram, the power of Virtual Interior Design as a New Home Marketing Tool cannot be underestimated.

 

3D Walkthrough

Most Home Builders are not marketing their properties early enough. The smartest property developers understand the power of 3D Architectural Renderings as a pre-construction marketing tool. 3D renderings give you the ability to start marketing homes as soon as the architectural plans are submitted, well before you break ground.

3D Walkthrough is a video tour of the property where the customer can virtually walk through the house before it’s built. This type of rendering goes a step further from still 3D renderings in helping convey a sense of space to potential buyers. 3D Walkthrough also takes the guesswork out of the construction process by showing the clients exactly what to expect from the final finished space.

 

Interactive Sales App

Modern home buyers expect more control and involvement with the home building process. The sales center experience has evolved where just having a physical office with paper brochures no longer cuts it. Innovative construction companies provide interactive lot selection and home design apps via mobile, tablets and in-office sales kiosks. Buyers can view fully furnished 3D floor plans and virtually configure their options in real-time. This level of interaction gives potential buyers a psychological ownership of the home they are configuring, helping boost sales and customer satisfaction.

 

Automated Drip Marketing

All of the above tactics help bring interested buyers through the door. What happens when they leave? That’s when automated drip email marketing comes into play. Drip marketing refers to pre-configured email marketing messages that go out to interested buyers at certain pre-set intervals from the time when they visited your website or sales center. You can use each email message in the chain to highlight certain aspects of the neighborhood, construction quality, available plans, options and more.

This type of marketing only needs to be designed and scheduled once. Once you set it and forget it, it pays dividends for as long as it runs. Most email marketing systems support some form of automated drip marketing. Our platform of choice is Mailchimp.

Large multifamily developers in major metropolitan markets have already been using these types of marketing strategies successfully. These are increasingly becoming accessible to smaller real estate developers as well. In a hyper-competitive business of New Home Sales, building beautiful homes and capturing buyers’ emotions using digital marketing techniques is a sure-fire recipe for success.

Free Estimates

Everyone likes free stuff better than the same thing that costs money. So offer free estimates. You can’t lose, and you may even get the business. Is your time worth nothing? If you think that, then send a free estimate to everyone who asks. You may get the business anyway.

If your time is indeed worth nothing, and I’m hoping this isn’t true, what will you say when someone calls for an estimate on a $5-10 million property? They call one guy and he says “I don’t do that.” They call another guy and he says “I’m too busy, here’s a free estimate.” You don’t have to be rude or unhelpful. Just tell them you don’t do estimates over the phone and offer something more worthwhile.

Create Content

You can stay in business by making it your goal to be an expert with content creation. The more you create and provide free valuable information about your industry with articles, videos, etc., the more you will be noticed. You may even attract new business partners or team members with your name recognition for being an industry expert. Everyone knows that the construction market is tough, but if you keep fighting then the results will speak for themselves when your business is thriving. Remember that content is king.

How do builders advertise?

So how do builders advertise? They use a variety of different strategies. Some may hire an agency to place their ads in various media, like magazines or online listings sites for instance; some might take out print ads while others are more likely to post messages on social networks with pictures from job sites if they’re active contractors that way too – Builders can use several methods to find new clients. The first and most common way is through word of mouth, where potential buyers tell their friends about what a great job they did building or buying from this company, in particular, .check them all!

How has New technology improved construction?

The use of drones and 3D printing are just two recent innovations that have changed construction in many ways. For one, they allow architects to see what their designs will look like before pouring any concrete or laying down steel beams; this is especially helpful when making complex mazes with narrow widths- something not possible without these new tools! As well as helping designers imagine structures much more efficiently than ever before (and even saving time), there is another significant advantage: reduced accidents rates because workers can work from distance instead of having close contact during installations.

New technology has revolutionized the way that construction projects are managed. Gone are the days where a builder could only work on one site at once; now they can monitor everything from anywhere with just their cell phone or laptop!

Conclusion:

If you could only hire one contractor to build your dream home, wouldn’t it make sense that you would use a subcontractor with the most experience and best reputation in the business? Why then, should homeowners entrust their biggest asset (their home) to a construction company without vetting their credentials ahead of time? Doing so could be a costly mistake. Skipping the due diligence process and hiring a construction company based solely on price can have dire consequences for your project.

In this article, we outline the steps homeowners should take before signing any construction contracts to ensure their dream home becomes a reality instead of a nightmare. Builders’ financial stability is the foundation upon which every successful construction project is built upon.

Builders who can afford to purchase enormous amounts of excess materials throughout the year are always in a better position than those who don’t. This allows for much higher profit margins and more negotiation power with subcontractors. A sound financial footing equates to lower construction costs, increased customer satisfaction, and peace of mind for homeowners.