Matthew Ping, principal agent at Porcupine Real Estate in New Hampshire, recently came across a listing online for a property with a lawn so lush that it caught his attention and prompted him to click through to the full listing.
However, when he read the property description, he learned that the lawn in the photo had been “virtually upgraded.” Then he realized that the roof and facade of the house had also been “virtually upgraded” by Lister. If a buyer wanted to make such changes to the property, it could cost up to $100,000, according to Ping.
“So why are you putting this on a list?” he said. “I don't think that makes sense. I think it would put a lot of people off.”
These days, most homebuyers are encountering real estate online for the first time, making eye-catching listing photos more important than ever. Those who can afford it often bring in professional installers to refurnish or decorate a home to make it generally appealing.
More than 80% of buyer agents told the National Association of Realtors this year that staging helps their buyers envision a property as their future home. Since the advent of online listings, real estate agents have used lighting and professional photography to create photos that highlight a property's best features.
Now AI is disrupting this process with “virtual staging”.
This is how virtual staging works
New tools can digitally transform interiors to match current trends and appeal to specific audiences – turning an empty office into a nursery for a young family or furnishing an empty room so potential buyers can more easily imagine themselves in it.
“AI has really enabled sellers of all price points to use staging, be it AI or physical, to really help market their property,” says Katy Borja, director of marketing at Dickson Realty in Reno, Nevada. “The advantage of AI is speed, flexibility and rapid time to market.”
The process of staging a home with AI is pretty simple. Agents or home sellers upload photos of an existing space to an AI-powered virtual staging platform and give it prompts for the style they're looking for. The platform analyzes the image and automatically adds digital furniture, decorations and design elements, providing multiple staging options in a matter of hours with some tools and seconds with others. In some cases, users may need additional editing software for final tweaks.
Borja says agents at her firm use AI-staged photos in their marketing materials, including postcards, on their websites, and in photos of Multiple Listing Service (MLS) listings.
“The key here is transparency and ensuring that the photos are labeled as AI staging and not what a home actually looks like, so that buyers don’t feel tricked into buying a property that doesn’t look like the AI staged photo promises,” Borja said.
Ping says his firm's seller agents haven't yet used AI for staging, primarily because most of their clients live in furnished homes that don't require much staging, as opposed to vacant properties that are harder for buyers to imagine. But his buyers' agents see AI-staged photos more often.
“This is where you can provide value to your buyers,” he said. “You can say that this could be an AI image, so when we get there, don't be surprised if you see something different.”
An inexpensive DIY tool
One of the biggest benefits of using AI to stage a home is its cost-effectiveness. Virtual staging can significantly reduce costs compared to physical staging, which can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars for luxury properties. It also allows for the deployment of a property that may be in a remote location, making the cost of physical deployment prohibitive.
“AI staging really opens up conversations about a home’s possibilities and can help the buyer’s agent really focus the conversation on what the client wants,” Borja said.
Additionally, real estate agents can complete virtual staging much faster than traditional staging. AI tools work almost instantly, while traditional staging can take weeks or longer to arrange the right furniture and accents in a home or make cosmetic fixes like a repaint.
While there are many benefits to virtually staging a home, there are also some limitations. The MLS rules that most agents use for posting photos vary by location, but most require disclosure of virtual changes to a photo and do not allow changes that alter the dimensions of other physical features of a property or space.
Risks for potential buyers and sellers
Potential buyers who view a property in person after seeing a virtually staged listing may feel disappointment – or even displeasure – if the home looks significantly different than they expected based on the listing.
Borja says many of her firm's agents combat this by posting AI-staged photos alongside actual photos of a house or room.
Not everyone agrees that AI staging has a significant impact on the speed of a sale or the price of a home.
“Virtual staging is less expensive and generally quicker to produce, but most stagers report that they have less of an impact on buyer interest than physical staging,” said Felicia Pulley, creative director of the Real Estate Staging Association and host of the Staging Insider podcast. “When it comes to offerings, personal experience is still the main focus.”
However, set designers are also using AI technology to reduce their workload.
“Most set designers use AI behind the scenes to make their businesses more efficient, not to replace on-site staging,” Pulley said. “The biggest impact right now is in marketing, writing captions, blogs, email subject lines and ad copy in minutes rather than hours. Stagers are also using AI to design proposals, estimates, customer emails, and create internal emails.” [standard operating procedures] and customizable checklists.”
Ping and Borja agree that the use of AI in photo listing will likely continue to increase over time.
“I definitely think it’s an evolution and not a revolution,” Borja said. “As technology continues to grow and AI becomes more integrated into all aspects of business, it will become just one more thing available to agents.”