Matthew Ping, principal broker at Porcupine Real Estate in New Hampshire, recently came across a listing online where the grass was so green that it caught his eye and he clicked through to see the full list.
However, when I read the property description, I saw that the photos showed that the lawn had been “virtually enhanced.” It was then noticed that the roof and facade of the house had also been “virtually strengthened” by Lister. If a buyer wants to make such changes to a property, it could cost up to $100,000, Ping said.
“So why put it on the list?” he said. “I don’t think it makes sense. I think it’s going to turn a lot of people away.”
Most home buyers today are discovering properties online for the first time, so eye-catching property photos are more important than ever. Those who can afford it often hire professional stagers to renovate and decorate their homes to give them universal appeal.
This year, more than 80% of buyer agents told the National Association of Realtors that staging helps buyers envision a property as a future home. Since the popularity 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 that process with “virtual staging.”
How virtual staging works
New tools allow you to digitally redesign your interiors in line with current trends and target specific users. You can turn an empty office into a nursery for a young family, or furnish an empty room to help potential buyers imagine themselves in the room.
“Thanks to AI, sellers at all price points can now leverage staging, whether it’s AI or physical, to really help market their properties,” said Katy Borja, director of marketing at Dickson Realty in Reno, Nevada. “The advantage of AI is speed, flexibility, and how quickly you can get to market.”
The process of staging your home using AI is very simple. Real estate agents and home sellers upload photos of existing rooms to an AI-powered virtual staging platform and are prompted for the style they’re looking for. The platform analyzes images and automatically adds digital furniture, décor, and design elements, offering multiple staging options within hours with some tools and seconds with others. In some cases, additional editing software may be required for final adjustments.
Borja said her company’s agents use AI-enhanced photos in marketing materials such as postcards, websites and multiple listing service (MLS) listing photos.
“The key is transparency and making sure the photos are labeled as AI-staged versus what the home actually looks like, so buyers don’t feel cheated and buy a property that doesn’t look exactly as the AI-staged photos show,” Borja said.
Ping said his company’s seller agents are not yet using AI for staging. The main reason for this is that most customers live in furnished homes that don’t require much staging, and are not vacant properties that are difficult for buyers to envision. But his buyer’s agents are seeing AI-staged photos more often.
“That’s where we can bring value to buyers,” he says. “I can tell you this could be an AI image, so don’t be surprised if you see something different when you get there.”
Cost-effective home improvement tools
One of the biggest benefits of using AI to stage your home is its cost-effectiveness. Virtual staging can significantly reduce costs compared to physical staging, which can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars for high-end properties. You can also stage properties that may be in remote locations, making physical staging cost-prohibitive.
“AI staging really expands the conversation about the potential of a home, and it helps buyer agents really direct the conversation in terms of what the customer wants,” Borja says.
Additionally, real estate agents can complete virtual staging much more quickly than traditional staging. While AI tools work almost instantly, traditional staging can take weeks or more to place the right furniture and accents in a home or complete cosmetic fixes like repainting.
Although there are many benefits to staging your home virtually, there are also some limitations. The MLS rules that most agents use to post photos vary by location, but most require disclosure of virtual changes to photos and do not allow changes that change the dimensions of the property or other physical features of the room.
Risks for potential buyers and sellers
After viewing a virtually staged property, potential buyers who view the property in person may be disappointed or even angry if the property looks significantly different from what they expected based on the listing.
Borja says many of his company’s agents are combating this by posting photos taken by AI side-by-side with photos of their current homes and rooms.
Not everyone agrees that AI staging has a significant impact on home sales speed or price.
“Although virtual staging is cheaper and generally faster to produce, many stagers report that virtual staging has 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. “The in-person experience still does the heavy lifting when it comes to offers.”
Still, stagers are also using AI technology to reduce their workload.
“Most stagers are using AI behind the scenes to make their business more efficient, and it is not a replacement for in-person staging,” Pooley said. “The biggest impact right now is in marketing, where social captions, blogs, email subject lines, and ad copy are created in minutes instead of hours. Stagers are also using AI to draft proposals, quotes, and client emails, as well as create internal (standard operating procedures) and client-facing checklists.”
Ping and Borja agree that the use of AI in listing photos will likely continue to increase over time.
“I definitely think this is an evolution rather than a revolution,” Borja said. “As technology continues to grow and AI becomes increasingly integrated into every aspect of business, it will become another thing agents have at their disposal.”
