Generative AI Is Your Ally for Smart Staging, Faster Deals

Real estate professionals can use content sponsor AI HomeDesign to lower the costs and effort it takes to stage properties.

By: Salar Davari

“AI will take your job… but to the next level!”

This is the most accurate observation I’ve seen about generative artificial intelligence. AI is not taking your job—it’s making it easier!

Let’s put aside all the futuristic conspiracies about AI and merely consider generative AI as a tool that can make your day more productive and your workflow much smoother.

Real estate professionals are typically swamped, juggling tasks and dashing around town to get the job done. They meet several clients back to back, prepare transaction documents, and list one property for a seller while showing another to a potential buyer. Later in the day, pros might need to check market stats, help a client find a mortgage lender, or share a few social media posts to grow a community.

Doing such various tasks single-handedly was a headache a few years back. But today, thanks to generative AI, practitioners can handle their jobs much faster and more effectively. Let’s go through three of the most pivotal applications of Generative AI together.

Pro Listing Photos

Everyone understands the value of eye-catching photos on real estate listings. Though house hunters have a price range in mind and consider property descriptions, it’s the images that grab their attention and influence their decisions. In NAR’s 2023 Profile of Home Staging report, 89% of listing agents and 77% of home buyers say listing photos are crucial to their clients.

Agents have three options for preparing those photos:

1. They can hire a home stager to stage the house, ask a real estate photographer to shoot the property and wait for the photographer to edit the photos. This can take three to seven days. As for the costs, staging a property can cost as much as $2,800, and real estate photographers typically charge between $60 and $300 per project.
2. The second option is to utilize traditional virtual staging or photo editing. Many companies or freelance editors can deliver staged or edited photos in 24 to 48 hours—so, that’s a couple of days of waiting. These companies typically charge around $10 to $50 per photo. This means that, on average, you will spend from $500 to $1,500 for each listing.
3. The third—and most cost-effective—option is to utilize generative AI, which can virtually stage a photo of a vacant space in 30 seconds for as low as $0.03 per photo. A platform like AI HomeDesign offers AI Virtual Staging(link is external), which enables agents to stage their properties virtually in 30 seconds based on buyers’ preferences. Agents can also remove all furniture, enhance the overall quality of their listing photos, and even add a magical twilight to their exterior images—all in two to five minutes and for under $10 combined.

Catchy Property Descriptions

A well-crafted description can complement the virtual presentation by adding depth and context that pictures alone might sometimes miss. Writing a concise yet compelling description that captures a property’s essence and allure is challenging and time-consuming.

With generative AI, however, writing such descriptions becomes easier and significantly more effective. Plus, it’s done instantly, as AI needs only milliseconds to write such descriptions.

Numbers and Charts

It’s a fallacy to assume that generative AI can precisely predict the future of the real estate market. However, it can provide accurate, reliable insights that help us understand customer behavior patterns and upcoming market trends.

Generative AI feeds on data. Therefore, it can tell us how buyers and sellers in each region have behaved within a given period or how long properties stayed on the market before they were sold. With such insights, agents can analyze potential risks, identify market swings or investment opportunities, and adapt their strategies to maintain a competitive edge.

Holding the Middle Ground

While generative AI can help real estate agents in multiple ways, it is only an option. How often and for what purposes an agent should use generative AI depends on their busy schedule, the property they’re selling or renting, and their clients’ preferences. Remember, REALTORS® have a duty under Articles 2 and 12 of the REALTORS® Code of Ethics to disclose the use of digitally altered or staged images to avoid misrepresentation.

If, for example, an agent has a way with words, no one can compel them to use AI for writing property descriptions. When the property owner is willing to pay the staging costs and doesn’t mind the wait, physical staging might be the way to go. But generative AI can be very instrumental for real estate professionals who value their time and money as much as the quality of the final job.