How important is it to show a staged or furnished home in photos?

A: In a world where people do a lot of shopping, searching and dating online, we can’t forget about online house hunting.

Dressing up your house for sale is so important. It’s pretty obvious whose house is going to get the most offers and highest bids when you look at the pictures. Of course, price and location figure in, but first impressions are everything.

Here is how to make the best first impression when preparing your house for sale.

1. Staging is always necessary. First of all, it’s not always clear which room is the living room, dining, or bedroom unless it has a sofa, table, or bed in it, right? Especially in pictures. If the house is already nicely decorated and furnished, then full professional staging may not be required, but a professional stager can lend you some fresh bedding, pillows, rugs, and pictures, if needed.

2. Professional photography. When selling your home in the Bay Area, you need to stand out from the competition. Hire the photographer to highlight the home’s best features. You’ll be so happy you did.

3. Show off. All of that preparation needs to be shown off to the world. Make sure your house is on all of the online real estate platforms, public social media outlets and open houses scheduled. We want to see your house looking its best when we’re out house hunting.

A: The highest and best home sales usually come about because of diligent property preparation and presentation, which includes full furniture staging and catalog-worthy, picture-perfect professional photography — our photo shoots can take hours and hours.

Showing off a home and its various parts in the best light possible is key to getting the highest and best prices with the happiest buyers who can feel proud about the home they’re about to buy. Most consumers need to see fully articulated spaces before be willing to offer on it.

Unless you’re a developer, flipper or investor buyer, there’s nothing as uninspiring as seeing online pictures of empty rooms during a home search.

People lack depth-perception generally and usually black the imagination to visualize what a property might look like if filled (virtual staging can lead to a bigger let down when a person visits the property in person, too). A lot of the best deals our buyers have gotten come from looking past the nonstaged, empty-room spaces that most other people skip over that would have otherwise been perfect.

A: The business of buying and selling homes involves a high level of emotional engagement. For many people, home represents shelter, safety and a place to restore one’s soul. Being able to relate to a particular house as providing that depends upon a buyer being able to connect to it, emotionally.

Other than preparation and proper pricing, presentation is the most important aspect of successful home sales.

The property must photograph well in order to encourage emotional engagement when presented to the world via the internet (think MLS, social media, Zillow, etc . ... ).

To get great photos, staging is a must. Staging provides a stylish, current, neutral look for each room, allowing buyers to see the house at its camera-ready best. Empty rooms lack warmth and do not present a vision of how they could comfortably be used or lived in. Foregoing staging might be less expensive initially but often results in a home selling for far less money than it would have had it been beautifully staged.