Virtual staging has a place. If a home is already under contract with a fast closing, if a listing needs to go live before furniture can physically arrive, or if a seller is truly out of options, I get it, and I've recommended it myself as a last resort. But I want to be honest about something the marketing around virtual staging doesn't say out loud: in most cases, it doesn't actually help sell the house. It just helps the listing photos and MAYBE helps get people in the doo

For a few years, Phoenix sellers didn't have to think much about presentation. List it, price it right, and multiple offers showed up by the weekend. That market is not the market we're in right now. As of mid-2026, Phoenix has settled into something closer to balanced-to-buyer's territory: median sale prices sitting in the $458,000–$460,000 range, homes taking somewhere in the mid-50s for days on market, and roughly a quarter to a third of active listings carrying a price re

Here's an awkward truth about selling a home: the person whose job it is to sell your house for top dollar is often the same person who has to keep a good relationship with you afterward. That's not a knock on real estate agents. Most of them are working hard for their clients. But think about it from their seat for a second. You've just hired them. You're excited, maybe a little emotional, definitely attached to the home you've lived in for years. Now imagine they have to lo

People don't buy homes with a spreadsheet (okay maybe investors, but that's a topic for another day). They buy them with a feeling. You can have the right square footage, the right school district, the right price per square foot on paper and still lose a buyer in the first ninety seconds because the house didn't feel right when they walked in. This is the part of real estate that's hardest to put a number on, and it's exactly where vacant homes tend to struggle most. The Vis