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In Greater Boston, real estate is a ‘beauty contest’ of virtual and traditional staging
In a “Zillow world,” listing photos are a seller’s one chance to make a first impression on prospective buyers
As the old saying goes, you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression — and that certainly applies to selling a home. With about 79 percent of prospective buyers using a real estate app during the home-buying process, according to Zillow, and about half (51 percent) finding their home online, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), it’s more important than ever to have professional photos that will grab the attention of buyers as they swipe through hundreds of homes.
To get the best photos, many experts recommend staging the home to appeal to the most buyers by rearranging furniture, decluttering, adding decorative accessories, and making other aesthetic improvements — whether that’s physically or virtually.
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Staging has long been touted by real estate professionals to sell a house quicker and for more money, but data from NAR doesn’t exactly bear that out. According to NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Staging, a survey of real estate agents conducted in February 2025, three out of 10 (29 percent) real estate agents reported that staging their sellers’ homes led to a 1 percent to 10 percent increase in the dollar value offered, and about half (49 percent) of sellers’ agents said that home staging reduced the time homes spent on the market. The biggest benefit of staging, according to the survey: A majority of buyers’ agents (83 percent) reported that staging made it easier for buyers to envision a property as their future home.
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According to a 2025 NAR report, staging in the following rooms was most important to buyers:
Living room: 37 percent
Primary bedroom: 34 percent
Kitchen: 23 percent
But, local experts say these are national statistics that don’t reflect Greater Boston, which remains a competitive market.
“In Boston, staging is the norm,” said Julie Chrissis, owner of Chrissis & Co. Interiors in Boston and a home stager. “Everything is a beauty contest.”
Indeed, 48 percent of real estate professionals who responded to NAR’s survey said that buyers expect homes to look like they were staged on TV shows, and 58 percent said buyers were disappointed by how homes looked compared to homes they saw on TV.
“If you choose to be an outlier and not stage, you’re just making everybody look better,” Chrissis added.
Chrissis said she works with both real estate agents and home sellers, and that she’s staged homes priced from $96,000 to $15 million. “It’s not just for the wealthy,” she said.
Angela Carosella recently worked with Chrissis to stage a two-bedroom, two-bath condominium in Watertown that had been previously occupied by her mom. “The house was clean, but it wasn’t warm and homey,” she said. “There were a lot of doilies and brown furniture.”
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Chrissis took about three hours to stage the condominium, which cost $525 and was paid by the listing agent. She rearranged furniture, added bedding, pillows, art, plants, and other décor, and focused on lighting to brighten the unit. “After she was finished, there was a huge painting over the couch to draw your eye to that corner of the room, which had lots of natural light,” said Carosella. There was also a big vase on the table and a bowl of bright-green Granny Smith apples on the kitchen counter to add pops of color.
The result: The condo was purchased by the first person who saw it, who made an offer well over the asking price. There were other offers as well. The unit sold a month after listing for $795,000.
“Without the staging, I don’t think it would have sold as quickly,” said Carosella.
Virtual staging
In West Philadelphia, a listing caught the attention of Zillow Gone Wild, an account that posts quirky homes on the market. It’s a completely dilapidated town house for $81,900 with peeling paint, stripped floors, and missing walls. But with a few house plants and some midcentury furniture, it could be homey. That’s, at least, what the comical virtual staging (a dining table under a crumbling ceiling and potted succulents displayed on exposed framing beams) in the photos suggests. A post about it had commenters on Reddit cracking jokes, but virtual staging has become a serious marketing tactic.
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Digitally enhanced photographs of a listed property — whether it’s vacant and needs furniture or furnished in a way that wouldn’t attract potential buyers — are becoming more commonplace online. (Though, according to NAR’s survey, just 8 percent of agents said they only virtually stage homes.)
Dave Costello, an agent at Gibson Sotheby’s International Realty in Boston, is co-owner of Atlantic Virtual Staging in Newton. The advantage of virtual staging is the cost — Costello charges $75 per photograph — and the efficiency. “Staging a traditional home could cost thousands of dollars and could take weeks to do, plus there’s wear and tear on the property due to the move-in and move-out,” he said. Virtual staging takes two to three days.
Virtual staging is also flexible. A spare bedroom can be enhanced to depict a home office or a child’s room, and a near tear-down can spark an investor’s creativity. Eyesores in a home — like old gym equipment or a grand piano that takes up too much space — can be digitally removed from the images.
Some virtually staged photos are marked as such or are easy to spot, while others are so realistic viewers may not even notice. Massachusetts law prohibits brokers from “advertising in any way that is false or misleading.” While the laws and regulations do not specifically address virtual staging or the use of AI, it might be wise for agents to disclose to potential buyers that rooms have been virtually staged.
Of course, virtual staging does not extend to an empty space during an open house or an in-person visit. To combat potential in-person disappointment, some agents put up easels displaying photos of the virtually-staged rooms. But Jennie Norris, chairwoman of the International Association of Home Staging Professionals, said she often has to traditionally stage homes that were previously virtually staged because while virtual photos may get a buyer in the door, they don’t see what they saw online and it feels like false advertising.
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But for some, just getting people through the door is a win.
“We live in a Zillow world, where many buyers start their search,” said Costello. “You need to provide imagery that’s good enough to get a buyer to go visit the home.”
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