WGAN Podcast | REALTOR Brandon Doyle: 1st Impressions of Virtual Staging AI | We Get Around Network Forum

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	--- WGAN-TV \| REALTOR Brandon Doyle: First Impressions of Virtual Staging AI for Winning Real Estate Listings \| Guest: RE/MAX Results REALTOR and Doyle Real Estate Team Leader Brandon Doyle \| Thursday, 22 August 2024 \| Episode: 225 www.DoyleRealEstateTeam.com \| Virtual Staging via AI \| www.WGAN.INFO/VSI (@DoyleRealtor) Transcript - What is a real estate agent's first impressions of virtual staging by AI? - Can real estate agents use virtual staging by AI to win real estate listings? - How does virtual staging by AI compare to virtual staging by a human? Stay tuned. Hi all. I'm Dan Smigrod. Founder of the [www.WeGetAroundNetworkForum.com]. Today is Thursday, August 22nd, 2024. You're watching WGAN-TV Live at 5: a podcast for digital twin creators shaping the future of real estate today. We have an awesome show for you! REALTOR Brandon Doyle: First impressions of Virtual Staging by AI for Winning Real Estate Listings. Our subject matter expert is RE/MAX Results REALTOR and Doyle Real Estate Team Leader, Brandon Doyle. And, Brandon was previously on WGAN-TV Live at 5: 74 Reasons Real Estate Agents Buy Virtual Tours. You can see that show at: www.WGAN.info/BrandonDoyle Brandon, good to see you again. Thanks for being back on the show. - Well, thanks for having me back. This is quite the production you've got going on here. - Thank you, Brandon. I should also mention, we just celebrated We Get Around Network's 10th birthday this week. There's 15,000 unique visitors to our website every month, and you were among the first 10 to join the WGAN community. - Wow, that's impressive. It's ironic because my Facebook was reminding me that I got my Matterport Pro Camera around this time, so there we go. I must have gotten the Matterport Pro Camera and then connected with you right away, so, very cool. - So, long time [www.WeGetAroundNetworkForum.com] member. Brandon, before we jump into today's topic, could you tell our viewers please about RE/MAX Results? - Yeah, so I'm with RE/MAX Results, which is the largest RE/MAX franchise in the world. It's based out of Minnesota here. So there's about 1,400 agents, I think, within Minnesota and western Wisconsin. So pretty big sized brokerage. A lot of very tech forward agents work here. And I myself am on a team with my father. So we're all just independent contractors, and yeah, I've been selling real estate myself for 12 years. And obviously a very tech forward individual, early adopter of virtual reality. I got a headset there behind me, and then I got the Apple Vision Pro here. And I write for REALTOR Magazine, as well. So I've tested a lot of these applications, and it's been a fascinating ride. - Great. And your website is: www.DoyleRealEstateTeam.com - Yep, so for anything real estate sales related in Minnesota: www.DoyleRealEstateTeam.com Otherwise for anything smart home, tech or speaking, consulting, that type of thing, www.DoyleMN.com is my alternate website. - Awesome. Brandon, please, if you would, give us a demo of [www.WGAN.info/VSAi], just so we can set the scene for our discussion today. - Yeah, certainly. Happy to do so. Just share my screen here. Alright, so I've been using [www.WGAN.info/VSAi] for about a month now, and the way it works is you get a number of credits, right, so you can use those monthly, and then you'll get more credit. So I think I had 18 credits to start with, and I uploaded a number of photos from vacant listings that we had just to get an idea of how it works. And so we do represent a builder here in Minnesota, and one of the challenges we face is that we've got these great homes, but it sometimes can be cost prohibitive to do full staging on all of them. And sometimes we'll use virtual staging. So here I've got a split entry home, and I just uploaded the picture here. And then... - They added this new feature. So if you just click on the thumbs up, that'll... - Oh, okay. - Yeah. - [Brandon] So I uploaded that. I selected what type of room it was. So in this case it's a dining room, and then you can select the furniture style, and then you can even do other variations. But here are the results that I got. So here we've got... They've kind of put it in the foreground as well, which is more of a family room space, but dining back there. There's a different angle. So in this one they correctly identified that, hey, maybe we should put some chairs here. And the dining is right underneath where the lighting is. And then again here we got one that has two sets of tables. So, hit or miss on some of these. - Could you stay on that image just for one more second? Yeah. Okay, so it generated three images. Could you hit the, create another variation so we could see what happens? - [Brandon] Yep. - About how long does this take for those three to pop up? - [Brandon] In my testing it was 30 seconds, so we'll see how it compares. - Okay. So, there's really two choices that you're deciding. 1. What type of room? Dining room, living room, kitchen, bathroom, kids room, outdoor? And then 2) furniture style, I believe there were about eight choices for you. - [Brandon] Yep. So, we got one, two, three, four, five... - Standard, Modern, Scandinavian, Industrial, Mid-century, Luxury, Coastal, Farmhouse. Maybe we'll just go up to that room type just for a second, and we'll take a look at what's under there. So bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathroom, home office, dining room, kids room, outdoor. Okay, so you just generated three new images. You want to take a look at those? - [Brandon] So fairly similar to the previous one. We got the issue with the two dining room tables, and this one, we moved the dining room table here. But I think part of that is that it's thinking that the full room is the dining room because I'm telling it, it is a dining room. I didn't tell it, it's a dining room/living room. So that might be a part of the problem. So it might be better to look at an example of a bedroom, right? Or as a home office. Different orientations. So this one was, I thought was a little bit better, but in my testing I found that it's very easy to go in and just upload photos. You can remove the existing furniture, and then choose to add furniture, and then you can sort things. So I can go add -- This is going to be 123 main st. There we go. Enter. And then keep it sorted that way. So if you had a bunch of different projects, you could have been there. And then our unassigned ones, we can just kind of drag them. This is going to be 123 main st. There we go. And click in and see the results. Of course, I told it, it was a bedroom, and so funny results, but let's switch it back and make sure they know it's a living room here. And maybe we'll go with some coastal furniture. We'll get another variation here. - How hard was it for you to figure out [www.WGAN.info/VSAi]? - [Brandon] Yeah, so I found it was very intuitive. I think it'd be nice to have a few more options for rooms, or perhaps auto labeling rooms would be helpful. And then the ability to do multiple photos at the same time would've been nice, but, overall, very straightforward. So... - Yeah, that is a feature that is coming by the end of 2024 is to be able to upload, say a set that might be a living room, dining room, kitchen, and open floor plan, and have it stage each of those images separately with the same virtual staged furniture. - [Brandon] Oh, that'd be smart. One of my other concerns was that if I stage this one with whatever furniture here and then I go over to this one and sometimes what I'm finding is if I use two angles of the same room, my expectation would be that I would see that same furniture positioned in the same way. But it's any AI where it's not remembering what it did previously. So it's just kind of starting from scratch. And so some of the results, I think, this one, I think is usable. It's okay. That seems realistic. There's others where I'm meh probably not something I could use in my marketing, but. - Okay. - [Brandon] You've got multiple -- It seems to do pretty well with interiors. It definitely struggles with snow and exterior, if you want to see some real fun results. - Oh, yes. - [Brandon] I mean, to be fair, it has no context of that this is snow and what it's looking at. And so it probably thinks this is all one patio. - Yeah, that's either fun or funny and-- - [Brandon] Yeah, it got even worse than that. - That's the interesting thing of whether you could actually at some future point, click a button to indicate snow. Yeah, it's kind of funny. Oh, I see, you've been playing around with it. Instead of saying outdoor furniture, you said bedroom furniture outdoors. - [Brandon] I don't know if that was just, it was scrolled, but yeah, we'll see. - Okay. - [Brandon] We'll see what we come up with in a new rendering here. - Okay. - But when I'm doing things, I can of course jump into different areas, so that's kind of fun. But yeah, we did the outdoor furniture as well. So you are probably not going to be the best here in Minnesota for the exterior, but that's okay. - All right. - There are limitations to any software platform. - Yeah, all right, why don't you take it off screen share. Let's have a conversation. - [Brandon] Alright, there were a couple good examples here I think are worth sharing, though. Like, it really did a good job with family rooms and bedrooms. Family rooms, bedrooms, offices, absolutely nailed it. And then there's a couple dining rooms I thought turned out really nice. We have some weird glitching going on there, but that would be easy to resolve. So yeah quite a few things that I could use. Brandon, thanks for the demo of [www.WGAN.info/VSAi]. What are your initial impressions? - Yeah, so mixed feelings I suppose. So I've had experience with paying professional stagers to come out. Obviously, it is very cost prohibitive. I've also used the services BoxBrownie with the virtual staging, and that's good results. The turnaround time could be a little bit longer. This is obviously very quick. There were some of the images where I thought were very, very nice, and something I could use in my marketing, and there were others where it seemed that the AI just kind of struggled to understand what was going on with the image as far as where it should place the furniture. Maybe too much furniture, and some of it where it just placed artifacts in places that just didn't make sense and it wouldn't be useful. So as an early product, I think it's got a lot of potential, as far as cost savings, time savings, using it as something to augment existing technologies that we're using. I don't know that it's a full replacement for a virtual staging with a human guided experience quite yet, but it's headed the right way. - Alright, let's break it down. First, because there's a lot that you covered just in that initial impression. So I want to ask you to expand on some things. First, you had mentioned physical staging. Has your team done that at all in Minneapolis? - Yeah, so with new construction, if it's going to be a model home, we'll typically get that staged. And then working with existing sellers, so an existing home where they're just moving, typically the stager will work with the furniture that they have and kind of tweak it to make it look nice, kind of declutter a little bit, optimize for the overall look of the space. Rarely do we bring in furniture for existing homes. Mostly it's removal of things, right? we'll use a digital tool to get rid of some clutter that might be left out on a countertop or-- - Right, but even before we get to digital tool, if we stay focused first on the physical staging, even if it's just removing furniture to declutter physical furniture, is there a range of how much you're paying to do that type of physical staging, even if it's just to organize existing furniture and remove some of the furniture as well? - Yeah, so typically, what an agent would cover would be their consultation. So oh, $350 to $500, and then staging would start around $2,000, but very quickly goes up, if you're dealing with a larger property or bringing in nicer objects. Some agents do own some furniture of their own that they'll bring in or that type of thing. But it kind of is a hassle because, well, it's heavy, right? So you got to get that in. And then what do you do with it afterwards? Where do you store it? What happens if it gets damaged? There's a lot of logistical issues that are around physically staging a space. - Okay, I think what I'm hearing is the minimum you're going to spend on a physical stager is $2,000 to $2,500 at a minimum. Does that sound -- - Yep, that's about a good starting point. - Okay. So, I could imagine that that might've inspired you. You mentioned BoxBrownie, BoxBrownie.com. That might've inspired you to look for an alternate solution. Can you talk a little bit about using BoxBrownie.com for virtual staging? - Yeah, so I think BoxBrownie is really good for object removal and blue sky replacement. That's kind of where they're the best at. They do so much stuff. - Yes, but let's focus just on the virtual staging piece. - Yeah, but that's the primary thing I would use it for. They do have virtual staging. It tends to be a little bit more expensive. I don't recall off the top of my head how much it is per image, but I believe they're still using actual humans to decide where the furniture goes, what furniture is appropriate. I mean, there's some input from the agents. One thing I do about that is you can do a group of photos. So I would upload - hey, let's stage these five rooms, but I might have multiple angles from that room. So in that example where the dining room and the living room were kind of connected, you would see the dining room in the background. And so if I had a living room shot, I would want to have the same furniture carried forward. And they've done a really good job with that. - And I think I heard two things for virtual staging that you were doing with BoxBrownie. The first was just removing clutter and then the second was actual virtual staging using humans. I'm just looking at the BoxBrownie.com website right now. So virtual staging in the US is $24 for a 48 hour turnaround. Item removal and virtual cleaning is $4 to $8. An object takes up to 24 hours. - And those are the minimum prices. It only goes up, so. - It only goes up meaning-- - And per image too. - Yeah, if you have a lot to declutter. - Yeah, so it wouldn't make sense in a house where you're trying to do everything. It does make sense if oh hey, we forgot this one little thing, or hey, here's a couple of rooms. Maybe there was a tenant in place, and we just weren't able to do what we wanted to. Let's, instead of physically doing it, let's do that digitally and then make sure that that's well disclosed when sharing the images online. Or if in some cases too, we might have a space where it's really hard for the buyer to visualize how the space would be used. I mean, so in those instances, doing virtual staging and then having the image online, but also a physical printout at the location is a really nice thing to have. I just kind of put it up in the corner like, "Oh yeah, that's where my couch would go." Or, "I could see us utilizing this space that way." - And is there a kind of a rule of thumb when you've ordered from BoxBrownie.com of how many images? Is it typically five? Is it 10? Does it just depend on the... - Yeah, it all depends on the property, the price. You know, obviously we -- it's very cost prohibitive to do it for everything. But we might focus on an area, whether that's the kitchen or dining space or a bedroom or an office and do those. So I would say we would typically have done three to five rooms, but we might do multiple angles within those rooms. So at the high end, I think I would be spending an additional $250 beyond just what I've paid for photos already. And then you got to think about that turnaround time, so-- - I'm a bit confused, though. Is that photos from the photographer or photos from your initial staging where you've said, "Okay, $24 a picture, but now I'd have two other views of that same room." - Yeah, so this would be, I had the photographer out there. I got the photos back. I looked at them and said, "I think that these rooms first need attention and these specific photos within that room." And so again, it would be a handful of rooms and maybe a couple of angles of each. And so combine that together as a package, we're spending anywhere from $24 on the low end if it's just one, and then $250 is not uncommon. And so that's in addition to what we were paying for the photographer. You can see where that could add up. - Okay, so physical staging, $2,000 to $2,500. Very limited in terms of which listings get that because there needs to be enough margin in the project in order to justify it. Second, virtual staging with humans in the loop to actually do the staging. That has been $24 per image. And sometimes you end up spending $250 on a group of images with various angles of the same room. - And there's other providers in that space as well. So one of the photographers we work with has it as an option. It's just an upsell, and I'm sure they just turn around and give it to some third party, and then either pull a tiny spread on it or it's just a way for them to say, "Oh, we do that too." Nice thing with doing it that way is that it's all included in that package. And so it's just one deliverable versus having to take something, sort through it, and then go back, so... - And so you're getting a bundled price from the photographer that might include photos, virtual staging, and whatever else you've decided to buy, whether it's floor plans, or video, or aerial. - Yeah, the great thing with the providers that we're working with here locally is that they do add those packages that are going to be photos, 360 tour, tour, floor plan, aerial, and then they'll include, either an aerial shot and/or they could do the blue sky replacement, all included in one price. And so I really do that. They're also doing that twilight photo, which I've gotten feedback from from sellers that they think it kind of looks a little hokey, so we don't always include that. But yeah, they do have the add-on, which I really like. So you could do add-ons for videos. You could do add-ons in I think virtual staging. Yeah, $20 per image is what this company was charging, so. - Oh, so that's what the photographer was charging? - That's what the photographer is charging, yeah. - Okay. So, and then I think you were talking about how long it took to get back from BoxBrownie.com. One or two days. Does how long it takes to come back sometimes affect your decision about whether to go forward or not? - Yeah, so of course sellers are always to the last minute getting the house ready, and then we want to get the stager through there to make sure to tweak everything and get it perfect. And so when we get the photos, usually we're wanting to go live right away. And so in our market, we try to go live on Thursdays and Fridays, and drive a lot of traffic on the weekend. But if I'm getting the photos back on Wednesday, and then it's another 48 hour turnaround I'm going live without that, and then I'm adding it after the fact, which isn't always ideal, especially in a market where homes are selling very quickly. - Okay, so now we're up to [www.WGAN.info/VSAi]. Let's talk a little bit about cost. Now, for the purpose of today's show, I provided you with a no-charge [www.WGAN.info/VSAi] Standard membership good for 12 months, which is something that we happen to offer to our We Get Around Network Standard members at no charge for 12 months. So I thought it might be nice for you to take [www.WGAN.info/VSAi] for a spin. First, I think it just may be helpful to talk a little bit about pricing so that when we're talking about well, how good it is or is it the blah blah blah, maybe our audience just has some context, so let me just cover that for our audiences. It's likely that you're going to be paying between 95 cents a photo or 65 cents a photo, which is either a Standard plan for $228 a year, or a Professional plan for $468 a year. One's going to have 20 images ... Standard's going to have 20 images a month. Professional's going to have 60 images a month. And there are plans that are less, and there's plans that are more. So if you're doing any kind of volume, you're probably at 65 cents an image. So does that change your conversation at all in terms of [www.WGAN.info/VSAi] versus virtual staging by a human? - Yeah, definitely. Like, I kind of showed, there were some results that were really impressive that I could use and within a minute have something up and running. It's no different than using a program like ChatGPT. Its output may vary. You can always use a human, and it's going to be better, but what are your opportunity costs here? And so if you're just trying to get something right away, it's certainly fast. And then within that -- so you get three results, and I think we kind of showed that okay, two of them didn't really hit the mark, one of them was good, and then if it was something that needed to be tweaked, it can hit the regenerate button, and see what you get the next time. So that's pretty cool. It's a package, so you get the number per month or whatever, and it kind of seems in line with what an agent or a photographer might actually be using and kind of puts it into these edge cases where I should be doing that or that might add a benefit to my project. But because of the cost previously it's hard to get agents to spend money. - Well, it'd be interesting. - $25 times whatever adds up. - Well, [www.WGAN.info/VSAi], at least, I think what I was hearing was BoxBrownie, $24 an image, virtual staging takes two days. [www.WGAN.info/VSAi], based on a yearly plan, is $19 for 20 images. And you can do unlimited re-imagination of virtual staging. So, if you pick that living room/dining room that you were showing us, and you decided to regenerate it 50 times, you could do that for the cost of one photo. So does that give you any thoughts? "It's not perfect, but for the price it's probably worth putting in the mix ..." Help me out here understanding how you evaluate something. - Yeah, no, you nailed it. That is exactly it. So I think for someone that just wants to give it a shot, maybe they're using it sparsely, but there's going to be other times where you want a very specific look, and you're going to want to spend the extra money. So is it a complete replacement for a human virtual staging or a physical virtual staging? Absolutely not. Is it a really cool tool that I could see an agent or a photographer adding to their arsenal? Yeah, definitely. And everyone is at different stages in their journey in what they're trying to achieve, as well. And so I would almost consider it, using AI for video creation or content creation, it can do a really good job really quickly, making clips from the show that you could share in other places. But if you really wanted the best of the best, you would have someone sit on our call, take notes and say, "Oh wow, at 4:41, Brandon mentioned this, and we want to highlight that. And so I'm going to take this clip, but I'm also going to overlay this text. But I'm going to cut out a little bit of what he said here because he tends to drone on." And so that level of expertise would, of course, cost more. The output would be superior. I think it is a very similar way, - Well, of course I'm not really me. Today. is my AI avatar, my digital twin engaging with you, plugged into ChatGPT-4o. - There we go. - Yeah. - I didn't even have to put my goggles on to see you. - Maybe by next year we'll be doing that show. So does the virtual staging -- So, I think kind of what I'm hearing is that physical staging is just really prohibitive in terms of cost and I'm just guessing, now with virtual staging, and I mean people are beginning the conversation online looking for homes. So does even the physical staging play into, they may not have, well, I guess, I suppose you're still getting your photos that you're doing, but that seems kind of expensive to pay $2,000 to $2,500 when you might be able to pay 65 cents times 10 images and, for $6.50 have what you need and have it instantly. I don't want to put words in your mouth. Help me understand. I'm trying to understand the relationship between these three things and where [www.WGAN.info/VSAi] fits in, if at all. - Exactly. So price is going to be a big consideration. A commission or a package for a photographer on a luxury home is going to be typically higher. And so in those instances, they might require the physical staging, especially if they're getting a lot of people there in person and it's hard to really visualize the space. Traditional home, maybe there's just one or two rooms, they're just empty, and we want to put something there, like, "hey, this is an office" or "this is a bedroom," and then it looks better than just a white space. That's where virtual staging really, really shines. - How about, as a real estate agent on the Doyle Real Estate Team at RE/MAX Results? You've had a chance to play with this. Does [www.WGAN.info/VSAi] fit into the mix going forward or "no, that was fun to play with, Dan gave it to me for some time, and I'll stay with BoxBrownie.com." - Yeah, so I think that we have the benefit of working with a stager in real life and then also having other venues that we use. And so we really pride ourselves on the quality. So our standards are very, very high. And so for me, I don't know that it's at a level where I would use it day to day quite yet, but I see the path to the future, and I see instances where it would make sense. And I think for a lot of people it's going to be a great option for them. - When you have that Thursday deadline to go live on the MLS, and you've just gotten your pictures and that the time to get back this virtual staging by a human is going to take a day or two, does this give you either a temporary placeholder or a viable option? - Yeah, that's a great question. So I'm really of the mindset that we only have one opportunity to make a first impression, and I would personally prefer to hold everything back until it's fully ready. So when we meet with sellers, we're really trying to outline things like, "hey, here's the steps we need to take. And we would build in time for that if required." If I'm in a position where I need something right away, I think I would rather hold off and get it right than put something out there that maybe doesn't meet our quality standards. But that being said, I think there were some select images in there where they definitely would meet our standards, and it would be something that I would use. - And, could you just keep regenerating until you felt it met your standard, and even though that took a little bit of time versus getting it the next day or two with a human? - Yeah, some of it comes down to a conceptual understanding of the space that maybe even hitting regenerate isn't going to overcome. So the amount of furniture or other things, I think it's more than just a regeneration. It's kind of a broader understanding of what we're trying to accomplish that can't always be communicated with AI. And this is true beyond image stuff. There are things that we can't have AI write for us. It just isn't going to be the same. And so yeah, no different there. - When you mentioned decluttering, which was a service that you were using BoxBrownie.com -- humans to actually go declutter a space virtually, did you play around at all with [www.WGAN.info/VSAi], specifically just for the decluttering feature? - I did not get that opportunity because I didn't have any photos recently of houses that were cluttered. All of our sellers recently did a really good job getting their houses ready. So I suppose I could really dig and find some older photos and give that a shot. I'd be curious to see what the result looks like. But that could be a really good-- - You could remove furniture as well. I mean, do you have listings where the furniture is tired and you wish for that listing -- Beautiful house, but the furniture didn't keep up with actually the property? - I can certainly relate to that. I don't have any recent examples, however, but that is a perfect use case scenario, and there's definitely a really good market for that. So that would be perfect. - But I would still imagine if you had a choice of posting to the MLS with empty spaces versus virtually staged spaces, you're going to take the virtually stage spaces. No? Do you have a preference for showing an empty space? - So as long as the virtually staged photo is a good representation of what the home could be, it's just, there's a lot of artifacts that happen with AI. Obviously, there's no hands in these, but watch out for that sixth finger or that type of thing. And kind of clicking through, I'm seeing there's a towel that's hanging on nothing. There's a rack that... It's not anyone's fault. It just doesn't quite understand. - It's not perfect, yeah. - It's not perfect. - It's not perfect. And my eye goes right to it. - I just wonder though, because I think what I may be hearing, I'm more of a perfectionist rather than "good enough" .. and it lets the listing up sooner. - I'm of the mindset that good enough is a negative actually. Personally if I'm looking through the MLS, and I come across an image that was clearly altered, and it was done in a bad way, I have negative thoughts about that property, and it just doesn't meet my quality standards. And I'm like -- "Oh look, what are they trying to do?" Or "Why did they cut corners on this?" Why? It's not a reflection -- It's not something that meets my brand standard, I guess, so. - All right. - But also, we all are at different points in our career, and so what I think wouldn't fit doesn't mean it's not a good fit for somebody else. So there is that caveat. - Yeah, no, no, I'm wondering because I've talked to a number of people where good enough is actually good enough versus perfect, and good enough is -- if I can get it instant versus waiting a day or two, that matters. If I can pay 65 cents versus $24, that matters. If I'm paying 65 cents versus 2$4, that may be that I can do a listing that is not a high-margin listing, and I wouldn't normally spend $150, $250, $350 on virtually staging a property because it's coming out of the agency's commission, that maybe this is an option where well, "okay, it's good enough. I can get five images for less than $5. I can get six for less than $5" - Yeah, I mean, it's hard to argue with the cost and the turnaround time. Within 30 seconds, no one's going to beat that. And the cost, yeah, 65 cents an image is just crazy cheap. And there's definitely images within the set that I could definitely use that 100% meet my standards, and it's "okay, we'll put this up there." Yeah, so there's definitely, there's a use. - Well let's hear the argument because I'm really curious. If it's 65 cents an image and I'm not talking about a million-dollar plan. I mean, even if somebody was paying 95 cents an image, which is $228 a year, at 95 cents and you get it instantly, why would good enough still not be okay, given it's so far less costly? It's so much quicker. And it may mean doing listings that desperately cry out for decluttering and desperately cry out to be virtually staged because the furnisher is a mishmash. - Yeah, there's definitely a market for it. - Do you think this gives you at least a tier of some of the listings you're doing, where you wouldn't normally spend that? You might say, okay, I'll take this [www.WGAN.info/VSAi] for spin, it'll let me do something that I wouldn't normally be able to do for this price point. - It's an interesting thought. So we kind of subscribe to this notion that I'm going to do everything the same. So when you list with us, no matter if it's a million-dollar house or a $60,000 condo, you get the exact same package, and we treat everything the exact same way. And if that means that we make less, well, obviously we make less if it's a smaller amount. We're a commission based industry, but for me, everything I do is a reflection of my brand. And what I've found is that these -- even with the lower price point, people are going to see it, and they're going to say, "oh wow, they do really great marketing. I want to work with them." And I don't want them to say, "oh, they really phoned that one in, or they use something, they shortcut it here or there." And so for that reason, I just wouldn't use some of them images, but clicking through -- I think there's a handful here that I would use. - Yeah, well point taken because I do remember when we did this WGAN-TV Live at 5 show, which I think we were going to do 10 or 20 reasons real estate agents buy virtual tours. It is literally, I counted in post-production, there were 74 reasons that real estate agents buy virtual tours that you had listed. And that was a discussion you had, providing a package, and the same package for every listing. So that that would be what you would be known for, whether it was a lower-end house or a higher-end house, it's the same package. So tell me about your marketing plan as it specifically relates to virtual staging. If the listings are empty, does it automatically get virtual staging? If it's badly furnished, does it automatically get virtual staging? If it's cluttered, does it automatically get virtual staging? Where does virtual staging fit it: whether it's done by a human or now potentially by AI, where does that fit into helping you win more and bigger premium listings? - Yeah, great question. So everything that we do creates a portfolio or a showcase. And so when we meet with sellers, I have this expectation that they probably already look through our listings to see who we are, what we do, and kind of the price points that we work. And so even when I'm meeting with a seller that may be at a lower price point, they may think that, "oh, I'm not going to get that same 360 tour, or I'm not going to get the floor plan," or what have you. But, for us, it's really just what makes sense for the property. And so if I was walking through a property... A hypothetical situation, we got a renter in the place, right? It's very difficult to work showings around renters, obviously, it's their furniture. So we can't just say, "hey, you got to get rid of that couch, it's ugly." That's not going to work. So we got to kind of be respectful of them, but then we want to showcase it the best possible -- And so we may tell them to like, hey, you gotta clean up for the photos, and well they've got clothes laying around or something. That's the perfect opportunity to do an object removal. As far as furniture placement, we really reserve that for instances where it's difficult to visualize the space. So a lot of times, and it's again, price point driven, it's almost better to be vacant. So if we can get it empty, that's fine, but it's kind of matching the market. And so if I see a property where it's like, wow, it's hard to tell what this room is, like, how does it tie in? In that case, I would definitely tell the seller, like, "hey, here's an option that we have for you." And always just present these things as options. So whatever makes sense. And then we add that in, and we just absorb that as a part of the cost. - And is it reasonable to say that when you're on a listing presentation, if it needs one of those things, decluttering, virtual staging, that it just becomes part of the package? - Correct. - That's based on what you feel is necessary to successfully market the property. I'm kind of asking, Brandon, to just kind of switch hats for a moment, since the We Get Around Network community is mostly real estate photographers, and they're talking to real estate agents, REALTORS, like you, is part of their pitch: we're going to help you win more and bigger premium listings by offering you an add-on package of virtual staging, and depending on the price point of the client -- - That is huge. For me, I'm a guy that has all the resources to do all this stuff. I know the people in the industry that build this type of stuff, but I still find value in just having a one stop shop. And so part of the reason that I chose to go with Realvision when they were bigger in our market, and now the photographer I'm working with has Matterport and the floor plans all in one package, was so that I got a package, so it wasn't coordinating multiple people out to the house. And then when I got something back, it was just ready to go. And that's why I love having the add-ons that I could say, "hey I think this is an instance where we might need to virtually stage." "Oh, I think we want to do object removal, or blue sky replacement, or put something on the TV, or make the fireplace on." That type of thing. It's nice to just have that versus getting something back, and then having you go to a different vendor and then re-uploading. BoxBrownie is great. But that's a limitation with those guys that I see is that it does take a little bit longer, and I am having to redo things. Whereas if it's offered right through my photographer for all I know, they could be using the same services, but, for me, I'm just interfacing with one place. And I'm not always going to need those services, but it's nice to know that they're there when I do have it. - Okay, I just have two more questions for you. The first is a follow up on what you just said and the kind of the question that I'm asking, which is, is there an opportunity for a real estate photographer to offer two different virtual staging packages? What I mean by that is if the real estate agent wants bespoke virtual staging, a human to do the virtual staging, that's something you're doing, you're familiar with that, so that there's a price for virtual staging by a human, and that's here's our add-on price, whether it's by individual picture or bundle of three, five, seven, nine, whatever. Is there an opportunity for the photographer, the real estate photographer, to also offer a [www.WGAN.info/VSAi] package, which may be a "good enough" package? So where the price point, or the the managing of expectations is, "hey, you don't really have any control of it, we don't have any control of it, we just hit a button and it generates these images, it generates, we'll keep generating until we feel like we have good enough, but that said, the price is ridiculously low." So we're able to offer you a bundle of X number of images for $79, 9$9, $149, $249, $299, whatever the appropriate price point is, so that there's a price for virtual staging that's bespoke by a human, and there's yet another price point, which is [www.WGAN.info/VSAi]. Sorry, that was a lot of words, but I-- - No, no, I get it. Yes, I think there's an opportunity to do that. What I think would end up happening, though, if you're not appropriately managing expectations, somebody gets something back, they say, oh, this isn't quite right, but now they expect you to offer that next level for them and they're going to want it at that lower price. And so I would really caution them that you're either this camp or that camp, and if you're going to try to do both, really, really outline, "hey, here's what you're getting." Just so if you want to pick the furniture you want, to be really this next tier, you need to pay more, otherwise, for this low price or this included, maybe it's included, then, ah, here's some virtual AI stuff that we kicked out that we thought was kind of fun. They might not all work for you, but hey, here it is. - Well, would that mean maybe that a real estate photographer could use [www.WGAN.info/VSAi] as a differentiator to say, "hey, there's no charge for these. There were five rooms that were empty. We virtually staged them for you. There were some rooms that had some clutter, we decluttered them, and we're delivering all the pictures that you were expecting, but we did give you these virtually staged by AI images. There's no extra charge for that. It's just how we differentiate ourselves as a photographer. - Oh by the way, if you are specific about what your needs are for virtual staging, we do have human stages. Would you like that? - Yeah, that is exactly how I would approach it. You could almost run the images through, pick out ones that you think look good enough, and then add them in and do just that. "Like, oh, well, this is something that we do that sets us apart from the competition" or "something that we do that's kind of fun." And really just tell them like, hey, we're really embracing AI, this is where we think the future is. We know it's not 100% yet but if you want us to tweak it some more, here's what it would cost. Or something along those lines. But really I think the key is curating which ones you send back, because if I had just taken this, and then I sent one or three, without reviewing it, people would be upset. They would be, well, why did I pay you and you put a dining room table in my front yard or you put it in my living room. Like, that type of thing. Or whoa, this just doesn't quite look right that they would be more off put by that. And I think you would've more complaints than anything. So, but if you went through it, and you were just, all right, these five pictures look pretty cool, and here you go. You just get those, I think that would be a pretty good approach. - And for a photographer at 65 cents you're talking about less than $3.50 for five images to build some goodwill with a client or potential client. - Yeah, definitely. - Certainly under $10. - Yeah, and if you have the ability to upsell them into better packages too, or more profitable packages, how about how we phrase it that way? - Yeah, so my last question. We've been talking at a very tactical level. I just want to just elevate it to a bigger picture. You are an early adopter of lots of technology, in particular, for real estate agents/brokers, but in general, you're interested in what's new. What are your thoughts about the future of [www.WGAN.info/VSAi]? Do you have any sense of where it's going, what it will be capable of, or maybe at least some of the hurdles that it's likely to overcome, so that a year from now, if we were doing the same show, it was, "oh, the world has changed in 12 months. It's amazing." - Yeah, I mean, all things, it's baby steps. If we look at the first iteration of anything, it was okay, well, it's rather crude, but it evolves and it gets better and better as it goes. And if I look at something Restb.ai that's AI image recognition and all the crazy things that they're able to do where they can kind of tell the quality of the home, and then compare and know that this is the kitchen and compare things, I think the same is going to be come true with the virtual staging. We could get to a point where it's almost taking a picture with your iPhone or with whatever camera, and then it's something in post that's happening automatically where we're doing color grading, we're doing HDR, we're doing all this, but in that process, the system is recognizing, "oh, hey, this looks it's a kitchen." Oh, "I noticed that there's something on the counter. Would you remove it?" And kind of Adobe's been advertising a lot with our new Photoshop features, how it's just so easy. Click Here. And then regenerate, regenerate, regenerate. All a sudden it appears that I have a beautiful girlfriend next to me, and I kind of think that's going to be the future. It's okay, it's a guided process. I got it back, and it's making recommendations to me like, "wow, this looks like it's a bedroom, but I don't see a bed. Do you want me to put in a bed?" Okay, well what ...? The rest of the house is this style? Should we match that? And it kind of takes a lot of the user input out. Instead of asking questions, it's kind of guiding you, and then you're more just verifying, but then using voice or text to give it feedback. And so instead of just hitting regenerate, I would say, "hey, you put a dining room table in the living room. Please replace that with a couch." And it would know ... Okay, this part, this is this part of the room that's that part of the room and fix it for you. Or, well, that's a lot of couches. Normally, people just put one couch in that room and then you get an image back, it's just one couch. So here's where we are now. I think in the future, it's going to be more prevalent, and it will be less distinguishable. We would look at an image and think it's real. Whereas right now a lot of this stuff is very easy to tell. And that's true with human driven virtual staging too. If you've been in enough homes, you know exactly what to look for, as far as shadows and proportions and dimensions and stuff. Like, wait a minute. So it's just going to continue to evolve. - Brandon, thanks for being on the show. - Well, thanks for having me. Always fun to catch up. - We've been visiting with RE/MAX Results REALTOR and Doyle Real Estate Team leader, Brandon Doyle in the Greater Minneapolis, Minnesota area. I believe you also cover Wisconsin. - The brokerage does. I personally, just Twin Cities, but... - Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul. For Brandon in the greater Minneapolis area, I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum. And you've been watching WGAN-TV Live at 5.
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WGAN Podcast | REALTOR Brandon Doyle: 1st Impressions of Virtual Staging AI20199