Despite a tony address and priceless views, this one bedroom condo on Manhattan Sea's side was not getting much traffic when it went on sale this summer. Things changed when the empty apartment got a digital makeover. There are now several offers close to the asking price over a million dollars, according to Broker Arehocarf, a house debt property.

The owner of this apartment doesn't live here. She is living in the Middle West right now, so for her to coordinate bringing furniture and the stage and meet with him and pick things out, it just, it becomes very very complicated. So this is a low cost but also sort of like a low hassle alternative.

So for example, the empty one bedroom looks quite small in this photo, but when furnished digitally, looks much more inviting. Huss Stand says web traffics up at least 20% on listings with virtual staging.

We have sort of a module that the brokers can go in, and fill out, you know, what's her furniture they want, the clolor, accessories, wood panel, etc. And we have all different sorts of like, stylistic selections that we can choose from.

Real staging is expensive, often costing thousands of dollars. Companies like Virtual Staging Solutions.com offer their services for just a couple hundred dollars. And with the real estate market still suffering, business is growing, cofounder Denies Miler:

Right now we actually start to getting into our developers. We are saving them literally thousands, because they don't have them stage all these apartments that they have in the large complexes, and we are saving them quite a bit dollars because we are showing living spaces whether it be for a single person or a family, we do every type of demographic.

Virtual staging is still a relatively new tool for the real estate business, but if it continues to deliver results, it could become a standard way to make buyers feel more at home.

Bobbi Rebell Reuters.