In this week’s founder interview, we’re bringing you Young Kim from Bella Virtual Staging.

Without further ado…

Who are you and what do you do?

I am the founder and CEO of Bella Virtual Staging. It’s a pleasure to meet you and thank you for the opportunity to share my insights about virtual staging. I come from a tech background and have been involved in several tech startups.  I started Bella Virtual Staging back in 2019 and we now service around 4700 clients in the USA and Canada.

What problem does your product/service solve?

Virtual Staging solves several problems that may be related to traditional home staging, which has been statistically proven to help with property sales and is a fantastic tool for real estate professionals, however it may come with some potential challenges.

The average traditional home staging cost can run you a couple thousand dollars to several thousands of dollars, not to mention a monthly furniture rental fee and a moving fee depending on the company. Bella Virtual Staging actually started off as a conventional staging company and pivoted to only virtual staging in 2019. Virtual staging is definitely a cost effective alternative to traditional staging. We charge about 30 dollars per image. The average order cost for our clients to fully stage a property is around 200 dollars, compared to several thousands of dollars for conventional staging. For tenanted units, traditional staging is often not an option as there are still tenants occupying the space.

I’m sure many real estate professionals can relate to this, photos of the furniture and clutter from tenants can do more damage than good when marketing space. With our virtual staging services, our designers can photoshop out all unwanted furniture and clutter and then insert furniture and accessories that make the space more attractive to potential buyers. Time and flexibility is another important problem virtual staging solves.  The coordination and availability of furniture with traditional home staging can be challenging at times and can take several days or weeks to prepare for. With virtual staging, we need about 1 to 2 days to get the first draft out to our clients. We also offer unlimited revisions to ensure our clients are ecstatic with the work we’ve done, which may not be an option for traditional staging without incurring extra moving fees.

This is not to say virtual staging is a better alternative to traditional home staging, however it does have its benefits and advantages. Both virtual and traditional staging are tools to help potential buyers visualize how nice the property can look with the appropriate furniture and accessories.

What are you most excited about right now?

The application of technology and innovation in real estate and being on the forefront is super exciting.  With our clients who have never tried virtual staging before, there is usually a lot of reservation to adapt new technology into their marketing. Once their property sells and they come back to us saying their listings had multiple offers, they are so grateful and happy to have discovered virtual staging. This is so rewarding and encouraging to our team to hear these success stories.  We believe in so much of what we do, we offer a free trial to any real estate professional wanting to try out virtual staging for their properties.

What’s next for you?

At the core of Bella Virtual Staging, we are a technology company.  We are in the midst of fine tuning and launching a new platform which will incorporate AI and other bells and whistles to help our clients market and sell better. We will keep you updated on that when it comes closer to the launch date for an exclusive preview.

What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?

Personally, I am interested in helping hardworking families who are struggling in business and need that extra helping hand. I come from an immigrant family that struggled financially when moving to Canada, and my parents started a business that failed miserably. Partially due to the language barrier and limited resources available to them, they went into a vicious cycle of going into debt and trying to keep their business afloat.  It was a very difficult time for our family, and I empathize with any other families going through the same thing.  I would love to be in a position where I can guide and help others through whatever difficult times they are facing with their business.

Thanks to Young for sharing his story. If you’d like to connect, find him on LinkedIn.

We’re constantly looking for great real estate tech entrepreneurs to feature. If that’s you, please read this post — then drop us a line ([email protected]).