Make yourself invaluable to realtors with a few simple add-ons that will help them sell faster and easier.

What is Virtual Staging & Why You Should Offer It

Virtual staging is the art of digitally adding (or removing) items from a real estate photograph. It’s a godsend for real estate photographers. With a little bit of editing, you can clean up a dirty, cluttered room, or add tasteful features to an empty room to make it look more appealing, livable, and marketable.

Compelling real estate photographs are one of the most powerful tools that a realtor has to work with. It makes marketing homes so much easier, and a great photograph can actually sell a listing all by itself. Utilizing virtual staging, instead of with actual real furniture, saves a realtor both time and money. As a real estate photographer, you should be offering virtual staging as an additional service, alongside your basic photography.

Here’s the top three reasons why real estate photographers should be offering virtual staging to their clients:

More Revenue

First and foremost, you can make extra money by offering virtual staging. After all, you’re the one who has secured the job, set up the shoot, took the pictures and managed the relationship with the agent. Why should you allow someone else to come in at the end and earn more money off your hard work?

Of course, taking great real estate photographs is what you do best, and should remain the focus of your efforts. But virtual staging, alongside 3D tours, floor plans, drone photography, and property websites are a few add-ons that you will add to your bottom line on any job.

Don’t forget that realtors have spent years physically staging homes. They know how much time, money and effort it takes to create a specific look for a previously empty room. They’ll be thrilled to see what you can deliver and how quickly and affordably it all comes together.

Better Product

There is no question that virtual staging can help you offer better marketing material to your real estate clients. There’s nothing more distracting than looking at a picture of a cluttered room and trying to envision yourself living there. It can ruin a potential buyer’s first impressions and when selling real estate, sometimes the first impression is all you have.

Or you can offer a very different look and feel to an empty room depending on the client’s taste. From Mid Century Modern to Hamptons Beach House – you get to wave a magic wand and adjust the look of the room to give the buyer a great idea of how much potential there is to the property.

With virtual staging, you can become the magician for your clients.

Minimal Effort

The best news of all is how easy this is to achieve. There are literally teams of world-class designers and editors waiting to help real estate photographers turn their photos into virtually staged masterpieces. You don’t have to know anything about Photoshop or interior design to make virtual staging happen. All you need to do is sign up with a professional real estate photo editing service and you can instantly start charging for your services. It’s that easy.

How To Do Virtual Staging

The first thing to remember is that virtual staging is no substitute for a great photograph. Don’t think about it as ‘we’ll just fix it in the edit’. Focus on getting good, clean pictures. Then sign up with a service like PhotoUp or BoxBrownie that suits your style and budget. Choose the right format for your pictures, and then the style of furniture that you would like to see in the room.

Be aware that some services charge extra to remove items and to make revisions, so make sure you know and understand the terms of the company you’re working with.

Once you get up and running with a virtual staging company, you’ll see that it’s a ‘no-brainer’ to offer this service to your clients. Not only does it add an additional service to your business and increase your bottom line, but it’s also a fun and creative endeavour to undertake. You’ll enjoy selecting furniture and styles and re-imaging rooms in new and unique ways that keep the job interesting, while also being a valuable service to your clients.

Sign up today for a free trial with PhotoUp and let’s explore how we can work with you to create incredible virtual staging images for your clients.