Virtual home staging draws mixed reactions 

If real furniture is too expensive an investment for a for-sale house, why not go for virtual furniture?

A few companies are popping up around the nation that offer to virtually stage vacant homes, bringing a lived-in look to marketing photos for a fraction of the cost of physically staging a home.

These virtual staging companies will take a seller’s photo of a vacant room, digitally insert furniture and accessories, then send the photos back to the seller for use on fliers and Web sites.

The trend has yet to hit Idaho, but with the product’s online availability, anyone can use it.

Not everyone is sold on the concept.

“Some of the concerns are, people will say, ‘Are you deceiving the client?’ Which we’re not,” said Dennis Miller, co-owner along with Bryan Bittner of Cranford, New Jersey-based Virtual Staging Solutions. “We’re showing the potential. … We’re not out there to fool the customer, we’re just there to show, ‘Hey, this is what the room could look like.’”

Virtual Staging Solutions opened in December 2008 and has since served clients all over the country and in Canada, Germany and Australia. Miller emphasized that his company doesn’t repair cracks or paint walls – it strictly furnishes and accessorizes.

The group will digitally stage photos of three rooms for $197, with each additional photo costing $47. The photos can be used online and printed to display in the home for visiting potential buyers.

The company is slowly growing, though awareness of the service isn’t at the level the company would like it to be.

Pete Hitt, a real estate agent with Mountain Lakes Realty in McCall, expressed a mixed reaction to the concept of virtual staging.

He said while ultimately it’s appropriate pricing that sells a house, if virtual staging gets a house attention while saving the seller some money, it could be a good thing.

On the other hand, he wondered about the legality of the practice.

“Let’s say the carpet’s dirty, and let’s say you put a digital couch over that area – that does not disclose the reality of the situation,” Hitt said.

He acknowledged that the practice might not differ much in that regard from traditional staging.

“You could use it both ways,” he said. “If you had great intentions, if it’s completely, 100 percent accurate, it might be okay. It could also be used in a negative way as well. It’s hard to say.”

Hitt’s concerns are shared by others. On a National Association of Realtors blog, 88 out of 233 poll respondents said they thought virtual staging had the potential to mislead buyers.

But from a legal perspective, virtual staging is just fine.

Richard Hall, an attorney at Boise-based Stoel Rives, said he didn’t think there would be any issue with the practice.

“In some cases, people will come in and stage a home, take pictures and then remove the furniture,” he said. “I don’t see any difference between that and virtual staging, and I don’t think anybody’s ever questioned that as being legal or not legal.”

He said a problem would arise if virtual stagers tried to misrepresent the size of the home, for example, by shrinking down a digital couch and presenting it as a normal size.

But buyers don’t rely on photos when they’re purchasing a home.

“It would be very difficult for someone to make some sort of claim about misrepresentation of the home based on a photo if they have the opportunity to walk through and see it themselves,” Hall said.

Another attorney, David Alexander of Racine Olson Nye Budge & Bailey in Pocatello, said digital altering should be approached with caution.

“A Realtor would probably be wise to at least let people know that the furniture in this picture was created by a computer,” he said.

He added that digital staging has the potential to be less misleading than traditional staging.  

“[In traditional staging,] the furniture is actually in the house at the time it’s being shown, so it’s more likely a buyer could be misled and think that the furniture or window treatments go with the house,” he said. “But if it’s a picture followed up with a visit to the house, where the buyer sees there is no furniture, no window treatments, it’s going to be hard for a buyer to claim he thought the window treatments went with the house.”

Reactions in the Idaho real estate industry were varied.

Patti Walker, owner of 360 Home Staging in Meridian, said digital staging can’t compete with actual staging. “[If I’m a potential buyer,] I’m walking into the house; I’m not walking into that picture,” she said. “… The house has to come alive and the furniture is what helps the house have that feeling. And the buyer needs to feel enveloped by the warmth of a house.”

But another home stager, Teri L’Hirondelle of 1st Impression Homestaging in Post Falls, was intrigued by the concept. She said it’s a service she would consider adding to her own business model.

“Eighty to 85 percent of homebuyers look at pictures on the Internet before they go and look at a house,” she said. “…If I put furniture in there, even if it’s only in a picture, at least it gives the concept of how long a wall is or how wide that room is or what type of furniture would fit in the room.”

Virtual staging can be done for less than half of what it costs to stage a home, and less than half of what it costs to rent furniture each month, she said.

Jim Paulson, an agent with Progressive Realty Corporation in Boise said virtual staging was a great idea, as long as it was disclosed that photos were digitally altered. Staging makes a big difference, he said, comparing the practice to selling picture frames.

“If you go buy a nice photo frame … those always have warm fuzzy pictures in the middle,” he said. “…Then you insert your own picture and it doesn’t always maybe look as nice, but you’ve got to sell the concept, for sure.”

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