OPINION: Is There a Catfish in Your Living Room? Virtual Staging Updates from RESACon 2026

I just got back from RESACon in Las Vegas, and one number kept coming up: $1.33 billion.

That is the estimated size of the virtual-staging market in 2026, up from $1.22 billion in 2025 and projected to reach nearly $3 billion by 2032. Clearly, virtual staging is not going away. (360iResearch)

For those who have asked, RESA is the Real Estate Staging Association, a professional organization for home stagers and redesigners. RESACon is its annual convention, where stagers, designers, photographers, vendors and real estate professionals come together to discuss what is happening in the industry and what is actually helping homes sell.

With virtual staging becoming such a large business, people often ask why I avoid using it.

My answer is simple: I do not want to catfish the buyer.

Virtual staging can make an empty room look beautiful online. It can add the perfect sofa, expensive artwork, dramatic lighting and furniture scaled to make the room appear larger. The problem comes when the buyer walks through the front door and none of it is there.

It is the real estate equivalent of using a dating-profile photo from 20 years and 20 pounds ago.

You may get the initial attention, but the person arriving for the date immediately realizes that what they saw online is not what showed up in person.

That is never the first impression I want to create for a buyer.

Once buyers feel misled, they stop emotionally connecting with the house and start looking for everything else that might not be real. Their eyes go from the empty room to the marks on the wall, the dents in the floor, the awkward corner and every other imperfection that the virtual furniture covered online.

Instead of imagining their life in the home, they begin conducting an investigation.

California has now recognized how easily digitally altered real estate images can confuse consumers. Effective January 1, 2026, Assembly Bill 723 requires real estate professionals to clearly disclose when an image has been digitally altered. Buyers must also be given access to the original, unaltered image.

The law covers more than adding furniture. It can apply when editing changes fixtures, appliances, flooring, walls, paint colors, landscaping, views, neighboring properties or other elements that affect how the property is represented. Ordinary photography corrections such as exposure, white balance, cropping and color correction are generally excluded when they do not change the representation of the property. (LegInfo)

CRMLS has also implemented Rule 11.5.2. For CRMLS listings, an altered image must be clearly identified as digitally altered, enhanced or virtually staged. The original image must appear immediately before or after the edited version.

CRMLS also makes an important distinction. Agents cannot use digital editing to add, remove or modify actual parts of the property in ways that violate truth-in-advertising rules. That includes changing items such as walls, flooring, cabinets, landscaping, utility poles or other physical features. (CRMLS Knowledgebase)

Virtual staging is not automatically illegal, and disclosure may make it technically compliant. That still does not mean it is the best marketing decision.

In fact, placing the original empty room directly beside the digitally furnished version may make the disconnect even more obvious.

Physical staging does something a digital image cannot. It allows buyers to walk through the experience.

They can see how a sectional fits without blocking a doorway. They can understand where the television belongs. They can confirm that a king-sized bed actually fits in the primary bedroom. They can feel the scale, flow and purpose of every room.

Most importantly, they can begin emotionally moving into the home.

That is why I avoid virtual staging and continue to believe in professional, physical staging. It is not simply about putting attractive furniture in a house. It is about controlling the buyer’s experience from the moment they see the listing online through the moment they walk through the front door.

The photography and the physical experience should tell the same story.

At the Roddy de la Garza Real Estate Group at Epique Realty, we partner exclusively with Immaculate Concepts & Intelligent Design to help prepare our listings for the market.

Through that partnership, we offer a 2.5% listing product (minimums apply) that can include professional home staging and market preparation. We also provide design, color and preparation guidance so the home photographs beautifully and shows as strongly in person as it does online.

We are also proud to offer qualifying clients professional staging that can be paid at closing with no exorbitant markup. This gives sellers access to professional preparation without requiring them to pay the entire staging expense before their home is sold.

We do not want buyers walking into a house and asking, “Where did the living room go?”

We want them walking in and saying, “This is exactly as good as I hoped it would be.”

No catfishing. No disappointing reveal. Just thoughtful preparation, honest marketing and a home that delivers on the promise made in its photographs.

That is how you protect buyer trust, create an emotional connection, and protect the seller’s equity at the same time.

Disclosure: Roddy de la Garza is a licensed California real estate broker, DRE No. 01995374, and a co-owner and partner of Immaculate Concepts & Intelligent Design. The opinions expressed herein are solely his own and are not made on behalf of, or intended to represent the views of, any other person, company or organization.