Does virtual staging help sell homes?

What does the NAR 2025 staging data say?

The best widely cited source is NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Staging, a survey of REALTORS® published May 6, 2025. Here is what agents reported.

• Visualizing the home: 83% of buyers’ agents said staging made it easier for a buyer to visualize the property as a future home.
• Offers: 29% of sellers’ agents reported a 1% to 10% increase in the dollar value offered (19% saw 1–5%, 10% saw 6–10%). 30% saw no impact and 34% weren’t sure. Among buyers’ agents, 17% reported a 1–5% increase.
• Time on market: 49% of sellers’ agents said staging reduced time on market, 19% greatly and 30% slightly. The report gives no number of days.
• How common it is: 21% of sellers’ agents stage all listings, 10% stage only hard-to-sell homes, and 51% don’t stage.

What doesn’t the data tell you?

It is easy to overstate these numbers. Before you quote them to a seller, keep the limits in mind.

• It is about staging in general. Most of the findings cover physical staging. They don’t prove that adding digital furniture to a photo raises offers.
• It measures agent opinions, not sale records. These are survey answers about what agents observed, not a controlled comparison of staged and unstaged homes.
• Many agents are unsure. 34% of sellers’ agents weren’t sure whether staging affected offers, and 30% saw no impact.
• Agents rate virtual staging lower. 34% of sellers’ agents said their clients see virtual staging as less important than physical staging, while 24% called it equally important. 38% of buyers’ agents said less important. Only 8% of sellers’ agents use virtual staging alone.

Be careful with other headline numbers too. A frequently quoted Zillow figure, 81% more views, refers to listings with 3D Home tours in 2022, not virtual staging. Use each statistic for what it actually measured.

Which rooms matter most to stage?

The takeaway is simple: if you only stage a few photos, make them the living room, the primary bedroom and the kitchen. Those are the rooms buyers’ agents say matter most.

When does virtual staging backfire?

Virtual staging hurts when the photos promise something the house can’t deliver. The most common ways it goes wrong:

• Buyers feel misled at the door. Unlabeled staging, or staging that makes a room look bigger than it is, creates a bad first impression in person.
• Defects are covered. Placing a rug over damaged flooring or a plant over a wall crack is concealment. NAR’s February 2026 guidance warns against hiding defects.
• Permanent features change. New paint, swapped fixtures or a removed power line cross from staging into misrepresentation, and MLSs like Stellar prohibit them.
• The scale is wrong. An oversized sofa makes a room look cramped; a tiny one makes it look like a showroom. Both read as fake.
• Every photo is staged. Mixing in unedited images, or showing originals next to staged ones, helps buyers trust what they see.
• The style doesn’t fit the house. Ultra-modern furniture in a 1920s colonial can confuse buyers about who the home is for. Our style guide helps you match.

How can you measure it on your own listings?

No survey will tell you what works in your market as well as your own numbers. You can’t run a perfect experiment on one house, but you can track enough to see a pattern over a few listings.

1. Pick your metrics before you list: portal views and saves, showing requests, inquiries, and days to first offer.
2. Record the setup: how many photos were staged, which rooms, which style, and whether originals were shown.
3. Compare like with like: stack each staged listing against your own similar unstaged listings at a similar price point and season.
4. If you add staging mid-listing, note the date and compare the two weeks before with the two weeks after. Price changes and seasons will muddy this, so treat it as a signal, not proof.
5. Ask buyers’ agents at showings whether the photos matched the home. Mismatches are worth knowing about quickly.
6. Review after five or more listings. One house is an anecdote; a handful starts to show a trend.

So is virtual staging worth it?

For vacant homes, usually yes, because the bar is low. NAR’s median for a staging service is $1,500, and virtually staging the key rooms of a listing often costs less than a single month of furniture rental. If it helps even a few more buyers understand the space well enough to book a showing, it has likely paid for itself.

Where in-person impressions decide the sale, it may not be enough on its own. Our virtual vs. physical staging guide covers when to combine them, and the cost guide shows current prices.