Virtual Staging: How To Make Your Home Stand Out In An Online Listing

One major real estate trend that isn't likely to fade anytime soon is the prevalence of high-quality, interactive online home listings. If you're a seller, making your listing stand out is no longer a simple matter of ensuring your home looks great in person, but instead involves creating a carefully curated online presence that grabs and holds potential buyers' attention. Ensuring that your home stands out in an online listing is one of the most important steps you can take as a seller. But learning exactly how to create an eye-catching virtual listing is a complicated process that takes both skill and resources. Learn more about virtual staging and what it can add to your home sale process.

Leave It To The Pros

Gone are the days when a few quickly snapped exterior and interior photos could ensure a bustling crowd at an open house. In today's saturated online marketplace, ensuring that you've got high-quality photos and video is a must. Engaging professional real estate photographers and videographers can ensure that your home is lit, staged, and shot to its best advantage. According to research in the Wall Street Journal, sellers who include a photo have about 20 seconds to secure a buyer's interest and attention online, while sellers with a text-only listing get about two seconds of a potential buyer's attention. Savvy sellers must use this extra bit of attention to create a strong first impression in a buyer's mind.

Professionally taken and retouched photos, engaging virtual tours, and video content are all a great way to grab and hold a buyer's attention, and quality makes a big difference. While you can take photos on a phone camera or create a virtual tour with an app, the quality is likely to be notably poorer than if you allow professionals to create photos that highlight your home's best features. Look for a photographer who specializes in real estate photography, as they're likely to have the expertise and equipment to show your home to its best advantage.

A great seller's agent should be able to point you to the best, most cost-effective professionals, helping to ensure you don't make an expensive mistake hiring a photographer or videographer without a proven track record. Or, even better, hire an agent who has a professional photographer that they know and trust. Full service real estate agents often provide the photographer and the photos. Making sure you work with seasoned pros from start to finish can help to make sure your listing is eye-catching and compelling, from the day it goes live.

Stage Your Home 

Home staging isn't just for in-person viewings, and having your home staged and ready when you bring in a photographer can make sure your online listing is as effective as possible. If you plan to bring in a professional stager, make sure to do so before shooting photographs or video for your online listing. More people are likely to see your online listing than to see your home in person, so ensuring that the home looks its best in that listing can pay dividends.

If you plan to stage your home yourself, following some basic rules can help to make sure your home photographs well. First, make sure to eliminate personalized items, such as family photographs or highly personalized art or decor. These items can make your home look cluttered, and can make it difficult for potential buyers to envision themselves making the space their own. On the other hand, try not to leave rooms empty — it's much easier for buyers to accurately assess the size of rooms when they are furnished. Choose neutral colors for home accents, and make sure your space is decluttered and clean, with clear pathways and open spaces that highlight your home's openness and natural light. Although photos can be retouched or even "virtually renovated," it's always better to have your home looking its best, with a minimal amount of retouching required.

Consider Going The Extra Mile With An Interactive Virtual Tour

While photos and videos can be eye-catching, truly interactive virtual tours can take your listing to the next level. Millennial buyers, in particular, are more comfortable buying homes sight unseen and an interactive virtual tour that allows them to "walk around" your home in a virtual setting can increase the likelihood that potential buyers may make an offer without ever even seeing your home in person. These virtual tours can also be shared on social media, increasing your listing's reach to a wider audience. 

Using a virtual tour to tell a story about how your buyer can use your home is a great way to make your virtual listing stand out from the crowd. If your home gets great natural light, make sure your virtual tour is shot during the time of day when exterior light is at its peak — homes look better with lots of natural light. Focus on your home's best features, ensuring that your virtual guests will understand the two or three features that make your home stand out from the crowd. If those great features include lots of pantry or closet space, make sure those areas are included in your home's virtual tour — even if that means you need to declutter or reorganize them before shooting. 

Make Sure Your Listing's Description Is Exhaustive

While eye-catching visuals can help to get buyers to check out your listing, the text of your listing is what will help to hold their attention. Make sure that your listing includes a complete, engaging description of your property's features, and be sure to include keywords your potential buyers may be searching for. Including words or phrases like "air conditioning," "backyard," "solar panels," or the size of your home's garage can help direct buyers who are searching for specific features to your listing. If your home has smart features, make sure they're included and described in your listing's text. Work with your real estate agent to ensure that all of your home's features, systems, and recent upgrades are specifically included in your online listing. 

When Home Means More, You Need A Team With More To Offer

Finding an agent who can use the latest technology to make your listing stand out and effectively market your home can be difficult, but Baird & Warner agents are here to help. Whether you're buying or selling your Chicagoland home, we know that home is about so much more than just four walls. 

Buying or selling a home is a big deal, and our homes have never been more important. That's why your local Baird & Warner agent is with you at every step of the way, from finding the perfect home to connecting you with local experts in mortgage and title. Whether it's the beginning of a story or the end of a chapter, we're here to help.