Virtual Staging in Real Estate: A Future Outlook

• AI/ML
• April 16, 2025

by Bhumi Goklani

Virtual staging in real estate has emerged as a prominent alternative to traditional property staging. It helps realtors stage their properties digitally at reduced time, cost, and effort, fostering enhanced business benefits. This blog discusses all you need to know about the role of virtual staging in real estate and how it revolutionizes this industry.

According to the National Association of Realtors, four out of five buyer’s agents (81%) stated that staging a property made it easier for customers to visualize it as their future home. Twenty percent of buyers’ and sellers’ agents said home staging elevated the dollar value offered by 1% to 5% compared to similar homes not staged.

Virtual staging in real estate enables realtors or homeowners to digitally furnish and decorate unfurnished or empty properties, enabling them to create visually appealing listings. This way, real estate businesses allow potential buyers to visualize the space as it would be when furnished properly.

Virtual staging provides the next level of cost-effectiveness and flexibility compared to traditional staging, which is costly, time-consuming, logistically complex, and limited in design flexibility. This blog discusses everything, starting from the basics of virtual property staging to challenges, their solutions, use cases with real-life examples, and future advantages.

This blog will help realtors know everything about the role of virtual reality in property staging and employ it as an alternative to traditional staging, reducing time and cost and easing the property staging procedure.

What is Virtual Staging?

Virtual staging in real estate refers to furnishing an empty or unfurnished property digitally rather than staging it traditionally. It enables real estate professionals to showcase properties in an interactive and completely immersive environment. Unlike traditional staging, which needs physical furniture and decor, virtual staging digitally turns empty or outdated spaces into aesthetically furnished homes.

It makes the property viewing experience highly immersive, engaging, and accessible. Virtual staging minimizes cost, effort, and time while attracting a global audience and streamlining sales, making it a game-changer in the real estate industry.

Virtual Staging in Real Estate: Stats & Facts

• Virtual staging reduces the cost by up to 97% compared to traditional staging. 
• Reports found that virtual staging cuts down the staging costs by 97%.
• More than 90% of home buyers start their search online, and 97% of those consider photographs to be the most critical aspect of the home listing.
• 81% of buyer’s agents state that staging a home provides buyers with ideas about where they want to live and what they expect from an ideal home. 
• Staging the living room is found to be most important for buyers (39%), followed by staging the primary bedroom (36%) and the kitchen (30%).
• Virtual staging positively influences 83% of buyers, elevating interest in your listings.
• Staged homes tend to sell 73% faster compared to their non-staged counterparts.

Why does Traditional Property Staging Need to be Replaced with Virtual Staging?

Given below are a few of the challenges for which businesses need virtual staging software solutions:

Limited Reach

Traditional staging limits property visibility to those customers who can visit in person. This resists potential sales, especially for remote or international buyers. In this digital-first world, relying completely on traditional staging reduces market exposure and delays transactions. It causes businesses to struggle to attract a diverse range of interested buyers.

Higher Cost

Traditional staging comes with the need for hiring labor, renting/buying furniture, and managing logistics, resulting in costs of thousands per property. Furthermore, managing staged properties increases overhead and makes it a less scalable solution for real estate companies who look to elevate profitability.

Time Constraints

Staging a property traditionally takes days, weeks, or even months, delaying property listings in the competitive marketplace. Coordinating furniture setup, photography, and styling lengthens the property selling process. These delays are more likely to cause businesses to miss out on buyers who make quick decisions, leading to lost business opportunities.

Additional Constraints

When taken into consideration from a business perspective, traditional staging creates operational inefficiencies, limiting scalability and increasing costs. Missed sales opportunities caused by restricted reach and time delays directly impact business revenue. Organizations embracing digital alternatives like virtual staging solutions in a highly competitive industry like real estate are more likely to streamline processes, drive faster deal closers, and boost ROI.

Benefits of Virtual Staging in Real Estate

Virtual staging works well to provide all the solutions to the problems realtors encounter with traditional property staging. From global market reach to reduced time, cost savings, and many more, virtual property staging allows companies to leverage a wide range of benefits and take their business to new heights. Here’s how!

1. Global Market Reach

Virtual staging allows realtors to showcase properties to remote and international buyers with no need for physical visits. It widens the potential buyer pool, enhances engagement, and streamlines decision-making. Virtual tours, by breaking geographical barriers, make property sales more accessible and efficient for realtors.

2. Competitive Advantage

By providing immersive, high-tech experiences, virtual staging helps realtors set their properties apart in the crowded marketplace. Realtors making use of this technology gain an edge over competitors who rely on traditional property staging. The competency to present multiple design options and interactive walkthroughs helps them attract tech-savvy customers by making listing more engaging and memorable.

3. Customization & Flexibility

Virtual staging enables customers to visualize various design styles, furniture layouts, and decor alternatives. In contrast to traditional staging, the virtual staging solution enables real-time customization, allowing businesses to tailor spaces and showcase customers before purchasing. That level of flexibility elevates buyers’ confidence, enhances their emotional connection to properties, and boosts the feasibility of closing deals.

4. Time Efficiency

Traditional staging takes days, weeks, or even a little longer to set up and remove. Virtual staging enables instant digital furnishing and modifications, eliminating delays. It allows realtors to list properties faster, perform virtual showings anytime, and lessen downtime in sales, fostering accelerated transactions and maximized property marketability.

5. Cost Savings

Since physical staging involves hiring designers, renting furniture, and managing logistics, it adds significant expense. Virtual staging allows businesses to eliminate these expenses with cost-effective digital alternatives. It enables realtors to stage multiple properties without breaking the bank, making high-quality property presentation way more effective, scalable, and affordable.

Virtual Staging in Real Estate: Use Cases & Real-Life Examples

Virtual staging is transforming how the real estate industry operates. It provides an interactive, immersive, and cost-effective way to showcase properties digitally and streamline the sales process. The following are some of the use cases and real-life examples of virtual staging software solutions showcasing its impact on the very industry:

1. Homeowners & Interior Designers Experimenting with Decor

Virtual staging software allows homeowners and interior designers to preview different decor styles, paint colors, and furniture arrangements before making a final decision for purchase. It helps businesses save on the costs spent on traditional staging.

How It Helps:

• Tailor design choices before investing in physical changes.
• Allows showcasing products in a real-world setting.
• Enables designers and architects to present concepts to clients in 3D. 

Real-Life Example: IKEA’s VR Showroom

IKEA launched a virtual home design system, enabling customers to preview furniture in their homes before purchasing. The solution led to a significant boost in online furniture sales and an excellent increase in customer satisfaction. With this system, homeowners can simply swap furniture, colors, and lighting in real time, lessening the risks relating to renovation.

2. New Home Builders Showcasing Multiple Floor Plans

Using virtual staging software, home-building companies allow potential buyers to explore different floor plans and layouts without building various model homes.

How It Helps:

• Allows buyers to select wall colors, flooring, and kitchen designs.
• Ensures an immersive buying experience, leading to increased conversions.
• Helps save on the cost of building physical model homes.

Real-Life Example: Toll Brothers VR Home Tours

Toll Brothers, a luxury home builder, has implemented VR home tours, letting their buyers customize layouts, flooring, and kitchen styles. It supports the pre-selling of homes before the construction begins. With this system, home buyers can visualize their homes in various styles, minimizing indecisiveness while maximizing early commitments.

3. Enhancing Rental Listings & Short-Term Stays

Virtual staging enables property owners to showcase various decor styles and attract different audiences, such as business travelers and families. Vacation rental companies stage empty apartments using virtual staging apps. It helps them make listings more appealing and attractive on platforms like Booking.com and Airbnb.

How It Helps:

• Allows application of a variety of themes for multiple furnishing styles depending on audiences.
• Renters get a realistic preview of the property before renting.
• Reduces costs with no need for physical staging before listing.

Real-Life Example: Airbnb VR Staging Integration

Airbnb tends to provide virtual tours of the property showcasing vacation rentals. It enables renters to walk through homes before booking. The system provides Airbnb with an increase in bookings and a decrease in cancellations because of realistic expectations.

4. Attracting Remote & International Buyers

Real estate agency dealing in high-end properties makes use of virtual staging to assist overseas investors in exploring homes without the need to visit them in person. It ensures convenience in the sales and purchases of property.

How It Helps:

• Ensures global reach by allowing buyers to explore homes remotely in 360° VR.
• Accelerates decision-making by reducing time spent on property visits.
• Fosters higher engagement by increasing buyer confidence and interest.

Real-Life Example: Sotheby’s International Realty’s VR Property Showcases

Sotheby’s introduced virtual property tours for million-dollar homes, enabling overseas buyers to explore homes remotely. This leads to a massive increase in international inquiries and more closed deals without physically showing the property. Customers can tailor interiors virtually, making the process way more interactive.

5. Selling Unfinished or Under-Construction Properties

Virtual staging allows real estate businesses to showcase fully furnished units to potential buyers before construction is completed. Realistic 3D visualization powered by technologies like Unreal Engine and Unity helps them turn architectural blueprints into a completely interactive virtual model, enabling potential buyers to visualize the final look before the construction meets reality.

How It Helps:

• Customers can visualize the finished property through immersive virtual tours.
• Property owners can pre-sell units without waiting for physical completion.
• Customers can use customization features to personalize layouts and interiors.

Real-Life Example: Emaar Properties’ VR Staging for Off-Plan Sales

A Dubai-based real estate development company, Emaar Properties,” uses virtual staging for its business, enabling buyers to walk through apartments before they are built. With this strategy, the real estate development company achieves increased pre-construction sales. Furthermore, it allows buyers to customize interiors and choose furnishing packages, ensuring a personalized property purchasing experience for its customers.

6. Commercial Real Estate Leasing & Office Space Planning

Virtual staging software solutions allow commercial real estate firms to visualize office spaces before signing a lease with customers. These solutions provide 360° virtual office tours & site walkthroughs. It allows businesses to explore office spaces remotely, lessening the need for physical visits, reducing expenses, and accelerating leasing decisions.

How It Helps:

• Customers can customize office space according to their needs.
• Enables customers to tour spaces virtually before scheduling site visits.
• Reduces the time it takes to finalize deals and streamline leasing procedures.

Real-Life Example: WeWork’s VR Office Tours

WeWork implemented virtual staging, enabling it to showcase office spaces to potential customers and eliminating the need for multiple physical visits. It streamlined leasing commercial spaces while attracting more businesses. With this system, customers can experience different office layouts before they sign a lease and invest in them.

Considerations for Implementing Virtual Staging

Virtual staging adoption needs strategic execution. For this to be possible, executives should align stakeholders, allocate resources, and set defined KPIs. By following a structured roadmap, which involves research, assessment, staging, and measuring ROI, business leaders can simply position themselves at the forefront of real estate technology advancements.

Assessing the Current Staging Process and Identifying Pain Points

Realtors should comprehensively assess current staging time constraints, operational inefficiencies, costs, and their target customers. They should also identify challenges like limited reach, lengthy staging timelines, and high expenses.

Once a realtor has this data clarified, they can develop a robust business case for adopting virtual staging as an efficient, cost-effective, and scalable solution to the problem. The solution helps them expand their reach to the customers and increase sales.

Researching Virtual Staging Providers and Requesting Demos

Realtors should explore leading virtual staging platforms and pricing and compare features and integration compatibilities. Once done with the research, they should request demos to assess usability, compatibility, and customization options suitable to the business’s needs.

Proper research helps executives make informed decisions and implement a solution that is aligned with their operational and financial business needs.

Piloting Virtual Staging With a Small Portfolio of Properties

Before full-scale implementation, decision-makers should test virtual staging on a limited group of listings. They should monitor buyer engagement, sales cycle impact, and customer feedback.

With this phased approach, they can ensure minimized risk, offer real-world insights, and allow teams to refine workflows before rolling out virtual property staging company-wide.

Measuring Scaling Solution and ROI Across the Business

After a successful implementation, business owners should analyze key performance metrics like mitigated staging expense, increased buyer interest, and faster sales cycles. They should use data-driven insights to justify expansion.

Once the initial implementation proves successful, they should integrate VR staging into all relevant listings, fostering widespread adoption and long-term efficiency.

The Future Outlook of Virtual Staging in Real Estate

With data showing increased buyer engagement, reduced time-to-market, and boosted sale prices, virtual staging is gaining traction in real estate. It’s a cost-effective alternative to traditional staging, enabling businesses to stage their property with less expense and make the most out of them. Here’s how virtual staging is going to be the future of real estate.

• Hyper-personalized staging with AI & data: Leveraging AI in real estate, the virtual staging is getting more customized to buyers’ needs and preferences. By assessing data relating to buyers’ behavior and lifestyle, AI will generate customized decor, color schemes, and furniture that resonate with specific customers. That level of personalization will help enhance buyer engagement and the profitability of real estate. 
• Integration with the Metaverse and virtual real estate: The Metaverse will reshape real estate by providing immersive virtual environments wherein properties will be showcased and experienced. Virtual staging within the Metaverse enables potential buyers to explore properties in a fully interactive 3D space, ensuring a realistic sense of scale, design, and ambiance. 
• Immersive visualization with virtual reality: Integrating Virtual Reality (VR) into virtual staging will revolutionize property viewings by ensuring immersive, 360-degree tours. Prospective buyers, by donning VR headsets, will explore properties in detail from anywhere. It will effectively reduce the need for physical visits and broaden market reach. 
• Interactive 3D property experiences: The future of virtual staging will move beyond static images to more interactive and engaging 3D visualisation of staged properties. It’ll allow potential buyers to navigate through properties, view spaces from different angles, and interact with various design elements. This dynamic presentation offers a comprehensive understanding of the property’s layout and potential, making the buying decision more informed and engaging. 
• Real-time virtual renovations and upgrades: Emerging technologies are enabling real-time virtual renovations, allowing buyers to digitally visualize changes to a property. Realtors, through virtual staging platforms, can experiment with different design elements, layouts, and furnishings, customizing the space as per the customer’s changing preferences. It’ll help realtors stage their property conveniently and make it more profitable.

Beyond Reality: Elevate Your Property with Virtual Staging

58% of buyer’s agents state that home staging influenced most buyers’ view of the home the majority of the time. Therefore, your property mustn’t fall short of leveraging this remarkable benefit by property staging.

Being a leading real estate software development company, Mindinventory is helping businesses with comprehensive real estate software development solutions. From virtual staging software solutions to real estate agent AI development and consulting, we provide every solution you may need for your real estate business.

A digital twin technology for smart city management is one of our creations, showcasing how we excel in the industry. We created a highly interactive, real-time model of the city, helping our client in decision-making, resource optimization, and project planning.

With around 14+ years of experience and around 250+ vetted professionals, we’re proud to have developed and delivered hundreds of projects. With 95.6% project success, we reign supreme in real estate software development and can be the right fit for your property staging software development needs. Contact us and take advantage of virtual staging!

FAQs on Virtual Staging in Real Estate