Virtual Staging With Matterport

Virtual staging is a quick and cost-effective alternative to traditional home staging. Featuring a limitless array of design elements, virtual staging allows for a home to be staged after a photo shoot – without the need for moving heavy furniture from room to room. Hometrack Real Estate Marketing offers virtual staging solutions to help your properties sell faster. And now, they have expanded their service to include virtual staging of your Matterport 3D virtual tours.

What exactly is virtual staging and how is it done? What are its benefits over traditional staging services? How might virtual staging enhance your Matterport showcases? And how can Hometrack help?

What is virtual staging?

Nearly all buyers suggest that real estate photographs are the most important factor when viewing a home on the internet – a pretty important detail, since more than ninety percent of those buyers begin their home search online. That means staging a house for a photo shoot can be a big advantage. According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), more than eighty percent of buyers’ agents believe that home staging makes it easier for their buyers to visualize a property as their future home. NAR also reports that a significant percentage of agents say that staged homes sell faster and at a higher price than those that are not staged.

But what is virtual staging? Virtual staging involves the enhancement of digital real estate photos to create a true-to-life rendering of a staged room. With the help of photo-editing software similar to that used for computer graphics in the movies, a real estate photographer or digital staging professional can add life to a room with furniture and decorative items, creating an exceptionally realistic representation. Anything can be added: tables, chairs, sofas, rugs, wall hangings, and more. And if something appears in a picture that shouldn’t be there, it can be removed during the process.

Virtual staging vs. traditional staging

The physical act of staging a home has long been a real estate marketing tool agents have employed to help prospective buyers imagine themselves living in a space. But for many sellers (and agents), home staging has been a luxury they could not afford. Not only does staging cost a considerable amount of money, it takes a lot of time and is quite intrusive if the seller still lives onsite.

Virtual staging presents a better alternative. In a matter of minutes, a room can be transformed from empty to fully furnished. A dining room table and chairs can appear, kitchen appliances can be installed, artwork can be hung. But the house does not need to be completely empty to be staged virtually. With a few amendments, a home can be photographed while still occupied, and virtual staging can fill in the details to augment or supplement its current contents. As long as you remain within the limits of disclosure laws and the principles of truth in advertising, you can spruce up properties for your sellers and spark the imaginations of your buyers.

Among the capabilities of virtual staging are the following:

• Stage an empty room so that visitors can better visualize the space
• Change the design style of a home to suit your buyers (ie. from traditional to rustic or from minimalist to mid-century modern)
• Change the purpose of a room (from an office to a child’s playroom, for instance)
• Change flooring or add walls
• Eliminate unwanted items (such as a toy on the floor or a moose head above the mantle)
• Correct scuff marks on the walls
• Blur sensitive data
• Change the view from the windows (add light, sky, etc.)

Beyond the visual details that can be added or erased from an image, virtual staging also allows a homeowner to maintain privacy. Family photos, college degrees, school pennants, or other items that reveal personal information can be eliminated with virtual staging.

What’s more, the recent spread of COVID-19 and the need for social distancing have moved many showings and open houses to the internet. In-person events have been put on the back burner in favor of real estate videos and 3D virtual tours. Virtual staging eliminates the extra foot traffic of traditional staging and works seamlessly with your listing photographs and your Matterport tours to maintain a safe environment for your clients.

Virtual staging for your Matterport 3D virtual showcases

As a compliment to the selection of photographs that accompany each of your listings, a Matterport virtual tour captures images of a home and offers up its “digital twin”. Complete with dollhouse and floor plan views to help buyers better envision the space, a Matterport showcase provides an immersive experience as close as possible to the real thing.

With Matterport, visitors can walk the hallways, investigate every room of a house, every nook and cranny on every floor. They can read highlighted information about property features with notes called “Mattertags”, and they can accurately measure walls and doorways. They can travel outside and tour the yard. Videos and 360 degree panoramas can also be embedded in a Matterport showcase. And it can all be viewed on any device from practically anywhere in the world.

Now, Hometrack can refine your Matterport 3D virtual tours with virtual staging.

How can Hometrack help with virtual staging?

Hometrack has long been a preferred Matterport Service Partner. Recently, Hometrack developed a new partnership with VRPM, the UK’s premier Matterport service provider and experts in virtual staging for Matterport. They are a group of passionate technologists, developers, and photographers who lend their custom digital tools to make your virtual tours come alive. According to Hometrack, VRPM not only delivers results that are second to none, they also provide clear communication and prompt service.

When you trust Hometrack and VRPM with your Matterport digital twin, you will receive a virtual tour staged to reflect your needs and those of your seller – and customized for your buyers – in as little as forty eight hours for a fraction of the cost of traditional staging services.

A recent study revealed that seventy seven percent of agents believe staging helps them to sell a property. Now, with Hometrack, you are able to add virtual staging of your Matterport tours to the list of services you offer to help your clients move through the market.