Home Staging Blog

When a new client calls me for the first time with questions about home staging, they often wonder what we provide when staging a vacant home.  I usually go through the basics with them verbally and then direct them to one of our real estate shows to give them a visual idea of the transformation.

It surprises me though that sometimes, even when I describe the services provided, and they see the photos of an empty house and then a home with furniture, art, accessories, plants, etcetera that they still don’t understand what services a stager provides.

“So do you bring in furniture?”  Yes.  “Do you bring in plants and stuff?” Yes.  “What about towels and bedding?”  Yes, are you looking at the same photos I am?   ”Oh, so you bring all that?”  Yes, that is the work we do.  “Ah, I see now.”

Of course, the services provided can vary depending upon the project and the budget.  Some homeowners prefer simple stagings or vignette stagings that create an inviting ambience without using complete sets of furniture.  We often use a combination of fuller staging and vignette staging in different rooms of the same home, focusing fuller staging on more important rooms and vignette staging of additional bedrooms and such.

All vacant stagings begin with a visit to the property.  Read the rest of this entry »

We all love comfortable homes, right?  We like to come home, sit down in our favorite spot, kick back, relax and put up our feet.  When guests come ’round we want to be sure we have plenty of seating and, especially during the holidays and special celebrations, we want to make sure there are plenty of chairs at the dining table.

But when you are putting your home on the market, you are going to have buyers coming in and out of your home, and if you’re lucky, there are going to be quite a few of them there at the same time.  One of the last things you want is to have them dodging your furniture or each other to avoid collisions.

So if your home is occupied, chances are that quite a bit of your usual pieces of furniture and accessories are going to be stored elsewhere while your home is on the market.  Take a walk through your home as though you had never been there before.  Is there a clear path to get from room to room?  Can you see out the windows or is there a piece of furniture blocking the view?  Can you actually open the door to the backyard? 

  

Who would know there is a door leading to the backyard?

  

Now you can show off this selling feature!

On the other hand, if you have a vacant property that is being staged, resist the temptation to insist that it be filled with furniture and accessories to the point that it feels like your own living room.  There is a difference between staging a home for sale and the way you live in it daily.  While a lived in home needs extra storage pieces for china and personal collections, these pieces often feel heavy and take the buyer’s eye away from what you are selling, the home.

Stage a lifestyle, you don’t need to fill the home to suggest what awaits…

Read the rest of this entry »

Wow!  It’s been busy and have I got some staged homes to share with you!  There are a few here in various parts of Los Angeles, in different sizes and shapes.  If you are in the market to buy a home, check these out, they might be just what you are looking for.  And keep checking back, we’ve got a couple more in the works that will be hitting the market soon!

First, there is a great two bedroom, two bath condo in Playa del Rey.  Then, we’ve got a two bedroom, two bath plus a den in La Crescenta with an orange tree in the back yard.  And finally there is a three bedroom, two bath home with a great back yard in Northridge.  The agent’s contact info is on the details page the real estate show, so if you have questions, please, do be sure to give them a call.

I have a feeling it won’t be long ’til we have these posted under our Home Staging Success Stories!

You know how I love success stories, and this home staging success in Hermosa Beach happened so quick I haven’t even had time to put together a real estate show for them!  Within the first week of listing their home, they are in Escrow!

These homeowners had their house for sale last year too, but it wasn’t the right time for them then.  This year, they prepared their home by giving it some fresh paint, updating the light fixtures and faucets, and installing new carpet.  Not to mention the hard work of packing up and moving out some of their personal items that are best stored out of sight while buyers are checking out the place.

We then staged their home using a combination of their existing furnishings and added some new furniture and accessories from our inventory to give them a fresh, hip look.  We created a new seating area and relocated their dining room and well; we’ve got a success on our hands!

We’ll get you some photos to show you their transformation so you can see how you too can get your home in tip top shape to get it sold quickly.

Great job homeowners!  And a job well done by your agent too!

Tuesday I posted some recent Home Staging statistics from my client’s recent sales.  And while the large majority of my clients do sell their homes just as quickly and with pretty much the same success as the stories I mentioned in that post, not every single story ends the same.

There are times when we have picked up the staging when the homes have not sold.  Pricing a home correctly is vital to getting it sold quickly.  And having it priced correctly at the beginning of the listing is where you need to be.

We often get called in to stage homes that have been sitting on the market for months.  Most of the time, once the agent holds a new Broker’s Open House and people have a chance to see the home staged and get excited about it; they sell within the first month of staging.  That’s when the agent becomes a believer in staging and recommends staging to all their listing clients, and they understand the value of having the home staged before it hits the market.

But if you have a home that is overpriced, it doesn’t matter how good it looks.  If you have received nothing but “low ball offers”, maybe the market is telling you something.  Even worse, if you haven’t received a single offer and no one is even coming to look, you had better take a hard look at the prices of the homes in the neighborhood that are selling and ask yourself if you need a price adjustment.
Read the rest of this entry »

It seems everyone has been asking me for home staging stats lately.  I have to admit, I have not been keeping a formal log other than in my head.  I love to post success stories, so from here on out, I will include the stats that go with the success story.

You may remember not too long ago, I posted a story about staging a home in Pacific Palisades.  Well, now I can share the success story with you as promised. 

This view home listed back at the beginning of January 2007.  We staged it mid April 2007 and it was in Escrow by mid May 2007 and closed Escrow on June 1st, 2007.

So this home sat on the market vacant for 3 1/2 months, we staged it and it was in Escrow within one month and closed within two weeks after that. 

Not bad. 

I have to say great job on the part of the sellers.  They had a home that they had in great shape.  It was clean, freshly painted and landscaped, staged, they priced it right and got it sold.  

And I guess I should mention that it sold within $10,000 of its 1.495 million dollar list price as well.

Congratulations to all involved!  I love success stories!

More Stats…

Multiple Offers in Playa del Rey

Staged Home in West LA in Escrow in 2 Two Weeks with 8 Offers

Two and a Half Million Dollar Beverly Hills Condo Sold to First Buyer to Visit Property After Staging

Getting rid of clutter is a big topic today when it comes to home staging and getting a home ready to sell.  But it doesn’t just apply to home staging.  Living with clutter is a debilitating state to be in, it slowly eats away at you.

I’ve been helping someone deal with this issue over the past couple months.  It isn’t always an easy issue to tackle.  There are professional organizers that can come in with a crew and go through every thing you own and get you in top shape quickly and efficiently.  They will have your home categorized and organized and ready for you to enjoy.  But sometimes that is a process that is a bit too tough for someone to handle all at once.

So we started a piece at a time.  First we dealt with the years old storage lockers.  We completely emptied them and went through every item that had been stored.  It is amazing the things that you might find valuable enough to place in a storage locker and pay to keep for years on end.  But when you come back and go through everything, you wonder why you ever put it in there.

Once the storage was cleaned out, we dealt with the garage and a spare bedroom that had been unusable due to clutter storage.  Again, everything dragged out onto the driveway, gone through, items to keep neatly packed, items to gift boxed up, items for yard sale and charity so divided.  Trash cans lined up for the morning and the appropriate persons called to pick up large items for removal. 

Next the two day yard sale.  A lot of work, but a fun way to get to know the neighbors.  After we finished, we loaded up and took everything remaining to charity.  When we got back I asked, “Well, do you feel lighter?”  I got a beaming smile back at me, “Yes!”

This person now has made her life so much easier on herself.  There is a freedom that comes with letting go of clutter and sometimes the process of going through the steps of gathering and sorting and then actually letting go effects your emotions as well as your surroundings.

By eliminating all this clutter, she is now ready to redesign her home in a healthy manner to make the changes she has wanted to bring into her life.  If she were looking to sell her home, she would now be ready to see where we can start to get it staged to showcase what she would be selling, the home. 

If you are finding yourself feeling overwhelmed and heavy, take a look around your home.  If the clutter is creeping up and taking over, consider the cleansing process of going through and getting rid of it.  You and your home will feel lighter and healthier as a result.

Part I -Collections

Part II-Driveways

Part III-Paint

Over the past couple years, I’ve had to deal with content theft.   You know, someone thinks it’s a good idea to copy and paste web pages and then put their name and logo on them and call them their own.  Most often, once you give them a call and email and ask them to remove the stolen content, they will do so quickly.  Some will argue and say they have no idea what you’re talking about and will need a bit more “in your face” clarification of the issue, but in the end, they agree that it would be in their best interest to just write their own copy and remove the “borrowed” content.

But what about when you can’t contact the content thief?  This is my problem today.  Someone has decided that my blog is interesting enough that they are copying every post, along with the photos and are using it as their own.  They have their own header so that it appears to belong to them and they were nice enough to put me on their blogroll as their “Home”.  What really burns my butt though is that their site is full of G ads!  They are everywhere!  Talk about taking advantage!

My webmistress and I have exhausted all possiblities we can think of to contact them so that we can send them a cease and desist letter, but (are you shocked?) we have no way to reach them.  All contact info that we are able to find for them is a dead end.  Everything comes back undelivered.

So we thought perhaps we should post the letter here.  Then when it gets copied onto their site, they will have the opportunity to read it for themselves.  Of course that would be assuming they ever check the blog other than to see how much they have collected from the ads they have running there.

If anybody has a suggestion that perhaps we have not already pursued, please let us know.  We’ve spent the past week trying to figure something out and have now resorted to writing this post.  I’d much rather be writing about the homes that are closing Escrow this week.  Bad enough that they are stealing content, but stealing from the marketing efforts of all the people running G ads just adds insult to injury. 

Cease and Desist Letter:

Dear theredlionbozeat,

It has come to my attention that you have made an unauthorized use of my copyrighted work entitled Get Staged 2 Sell Home Staging Blog (the “Work”) in the preparation of a work derived therefrom. I have reserved all rights in the Work, first published in January 20, 2006, [and have registered copyright therein]. Your work entitled Real Estate-news blog is essentially identical to the Work and clearly used the Work as its basis. It is in fact a copy from my blog.

As you neither asked for nor received permission to use the Work as the basis for Real Estate-new blog nor to make or distribute copies, including electronic copies, of same, I believe you have willfully infringed my rights under 17 U.S.C. Section 101 et seq. and could be liable for statutory damages as high as $150,000 as set forth in Section 504(c)(2) therein.

I demand that you immediately cease the use and distribution of all infringing works derived from the Work, and all copies, including electronic copies, of same, that you deliver to me, if applicable, all unused, undistributed copies of same, or destroy such copies immediately and that you desist from this or any other infringement of my rights in the future. If I have not received an affirmative response from you by June 12,2007 indicating that you have fully complied with these requirements, I shall take further action against you.

Very truly yours,

Nickie Rothwell