Most Homebuyers Struggle to Visualize Empty Homes, Driving Demand for Staging

Written by:

Rudi Davis

Date:

07 Feb 2026

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The real estate industry often assumes that buyers can walk through vacant properties and imagine their future lives there. Fiorenza Bilak, Founder and CEO of Stage The Space, LLC, argues this assumption is fundamentally flawed.

“Statistically, 83% of the entire world does not have imagination,” Bilak says. “When 83% of your potential buyers are walking into a property, that’s a big number. That is 83% of possibilities going down the drain because they don’t understand space, they don’t understand scale, and they don’t understand design in general.”

If accurate, this figure reveals a significant disconnect between how properties are presented and how buyers perceive them. For every ten buyers touring a vacant home, more than eight cannot mentally furnish the space or envision their own lifestyle within its walls.

The Visualization Problem

Recent research in spatial cognition and buyer psychology supports Bilak’s assertion. When buyers view empty rooms, they encounter several cognitive hurdles at once: judging scale, imagining furniture placement, visualizing color schemes, and picturing daily life in the space.

“We are giving them the answers they are forming while they’re walking into a space,” Bilak explains. “Even my husband is one of them. We go see a vacant property, and he goes, ‘Well, what do I do with that space?’”

Buyers who can’t visualize the possibilities often fail to connect emotionally with a property. They focus on flaws rather than potential, compare vacant homes unfavorably to furnished ones, and struggle to see the value that would justify a firm offer. This results in longer listing times and lower sale prices.

Beyond Buyer Perception

Bilak says the inability to visualize also influences formal property valuations. “Most of the time, buyers are more willing to overlook flaws because it’s staged,” she says. “Even the appraiser, most of the time, appraises higher than an unstaged home.”

If appraisers assign higher values to staged homes, the impact of staging extends beyond marketing and can directly affect the property’s appraised value. This suggests that staging doesn’t just help homes sell faster; it may also increase their objective market value in the eyes of professionals.

The underlying mechanism is similar: when appraisers can see how rooms function and flow, they are more likely to assess properties favorably than when left to imagine those details.

Industry Resistance

Despite the proven benefits, Bilak says many real estate agents still hesitate to recommend staging. “A lot of agents are not using staging because they think it’s too expensive or it’s not worth the time, when, in fact, there are studies that back it up completely,” she says. “That is really mind-blowing to me, that real estate agents nowadays don’t use that as their own marketing tool.”

This reluctance is often rooted in concerns about client budgets rather than doubts about the effectiveness of staging. Agents who assume their clients cannot afford staging usually avoid discussing it, resulting in longer listing times and lower sale prices.

Addressing the Gap

Stage The Space addresses the visualization problem through what Bilak calls narrative staging, which creates a lifestyle story rather than just filling empty rooms. The company uses neutral color palettes to appeal to a broad range of buyers, appropriately scaled furniture to show how spaces function, oversized art for impact in large rooms, and natural materials and greenery for warmth.

“We want to tell a story,” Bilak says. “We want them to walk into a property and see themselves living there, like imagining the lifestyle.”

To help agents overcome cost concerns, Stage The Space now offers pay-at-closing options, allowing staging fees to be paid from sale proceeds. Bilak says this approach has made it easier for agents to recommend staging, removing the primary financial objection.

It remains to be seen whether the industry will act on the 83% statistic. Still, the neurological reality is apparent: most buyers cannot visualize empty spaces, and failing to address this gap may be costing sellers both time and money. As research and experience increasingly show, staging is not just a marketing tool—it is a practical solution to a widespread cognitive limitation among buyers.