Does Virtual Staging Actually Help Sell Listings? What the Data Shows

Every agent has heard the pitch: virtually stage your empty listing, watch the offers roll in. And like most marketing claims in real estate, it's partly true, partly overstated, and worth unpacking properly before you commit to it.

So let's look at what the data actually says.

Empty Rooms Are a Hard Sell

Most buyers can't look at an empty room and picture their life in it. They see white walls, bare floorboards, and unanswered questions about what fits where. That's not a perception problem unique to a few buyers. It's a near-universal one.

According to NAR's 2025 Profile of Home Staging, 83% of buyer's agents say staging makes it easier for buyers to visualise a property as a future home. That figure has been consistent year on year since NAR started tracking it in 2017. The buyers themselves aren't surveyed, but their agents are the ones watching them react to properties every week, so that number is about as close to ground truth as you'll get.

The same report found that 49% of sellers' agents observed that staging reduced time on market. And 29% reported it led to a 1% to 10% increase in the dollar value of offers.

According to NAR's 2025 Profile of Home Staging, 83% of buyers' agents say staging makes it easier for buyers to visualise a property as a future home.

These aren't wild claims from a staging company trying to sell a service. This is survey data from nearly 1,300 real estate professionals. Take it seriously.

What Virtual Staging Adds to the Equation

Traditional staging (trucks, furniture hire, stylists on-site) costs anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000 per property to set up, plus monthly rental fees until it sells. For most listings at most price points, that's a hard sell to a vendor.

Virtual staging solves the cost problem. You upload your listing photos, select a room type and furniture style, and get back professionally furnished images within 24 to 48 hours at a fraction of the price. No removalists, no scheduling around the vendor's routine, no retrieval when the property goes under contract.

The engagement data is encouraging, too. One widely cited study found that virtually staged listings receive 40% more views compared to non-staged listings, with buyers spending 20% longer viewing the photos. That's a meaningful gap. When you're competing for attention against dozens of listings in the same suburb, longer viewing time translates to more inspections and more serious enquiries.

Imagine you've just won a listing on a vacant investment property. The owner is interstate, the house is completely empty, and the inspection is in five days. Physical staging isn't viable. A set of virtually staged photos gives buyers something to respond to emotionally, and gets your listing looking like it belongs on the front page of realestate.com.au instead of buried in the results.

The Honesty Line (And It's Non-Negotiable in Australia)

Here's where a lot of agents get sloppy, and where the stakes are actually high.

Virtual staging is legal in Australia. But it requires clear disclosure, and the Australian Consumer Law is not forgiving when agents get this wrong. The ACCC, along with state-specific regulators, prohibits misleading or deceptive conduct in property marketing, and digitally staged photos that aren't labelled can constitute exactly that.

The standard you need to meet: label every virtually staged image clearly (something like "Virtually staged furniture is digitally rendered and not included"), and provide the original, unstaged photos alongside them. Don't use oversized furniture to make a small room look bigger. Don't use staging to hide a defect that's visible in the original. And don't remove permanent features like power lines or structural elements from photos, which the NSW Fair Trading Penshurst case established as deceptive conduct.

The penalties for getting this wrong are not a slap on the wrist. Under Australian Consumer Law, corporations can face fines up to $50 million for misleading conduct. Individuals face up to $2.5 million. Even if you never see the inside of a courtroom, a complaint can cost you your licence and your reputation.

Done properly, disclosure doesn't hurt your listing. It actually builds trust. Buyers appreciate knowing what they're looking at. What erodes trust is showing up to inspect a room that looks nothing like the furnished photos online.

Where AI Virtual Staging and Video Overlap

Here's the bit that most virtual staging conversations miss.

A staged photo is still a static image. It tells buyers what a room could look like. A video of that same room, with the staging already applied, shows buyers how it feels to move through the space.

With PropertyVideos.ai, virtual staging runs before the video is generated. That means the furnished room is what Kling (the AI video engine) animates. The camera moves through a fully staged lounge room, pans across a dressed-up master bedroom, and dollies into a styled kitchen. You're not just giving buyers a better photo. You're giving them a walk-through of the property's potential.

You can layer in AI actors, too. A couple in the staged living room, a family at the dining table. These aren't stock footage overlays. They're composited into the image before the video renders, so the movement feels natural.

The result is a listing asset that does everything a staged photo does, and then some. Buyers spend time with it. They share it. It works on Instagram, on listing portals, and in the DM you send to a prospective buyer who enquired last week.

So Does Virtual Staging Actually Help?

The honest answer: yes, the data supports it, within limits.

Staging helps buyers visualise the property. That part is well-evidenced. Whether it directly causes faster sales or higher offers depends heavily on the market, the price point, and how good the staging actually looks. Poorly executed virtual staging (furniture that floats, perspectives that don't match, styling that looks like a 2012 stock photo) can do more damage than leaving the room empty.

Quality matters. Disclosure matters. And context matters. A vacant entry-level unit in a busy market probably benefits more from virtual staging than a fully furnished prestige home that already photographs well.

What's clear is that presenting an empty property and hoping buyers can imagine it furnished is the weakest option available to you. The tools to fix that are fast, affordable, and better than they've ever been.

Use them properly, and you'll have better listing photos, more engaged buyers, and a marketing package that actually competes.