2149 Basil Lane, Los Angeles (IN ESCROW)
$929,000
This inspirational Bill Mack contemporary architectural on a rare, private cul de sac just east of Beverly Glen features a 2-story tall wall of glass looking out across an open, sunlit living room and dining area to a large landscaped patio and deck surrounded by tall trees, tranquil canyon views and sky. Listed by Elyse Gunter of Coldwell Banker.

1925 S. Beverly Glen #27, Los Angeles (SOLD)
$519,000
This sophisticated split level townhouse with soaring ceilings in the living room is just moments from all that Century City has to offer. Listed by Deborah Bremner of Coldwell Banker.

2011 Ashland, Santa Monica
$1,375,000
This stunning contemporary craftsman home, listed by Megan and Stacey Valnes of Sunset Park Realtors, is open, airy, light and bright and will entice any buyer.

1749 Wellesley Dr., Santa Monica (PENDING)
$875,000
Turn-key traditional on an over sized lot. Oozing with vintage style & charm but updated for modern living. Listed by Jennifer Field of Teles Properties.

840 20th St. #3, Santa Monica
$849,000
Exquisite north of Wilshire townhome with designer finishes throughout and a private rooftop deck. Listed by Mike Schwartz of Coldwell Banker.

2329 Castle Heights, Los Angeles
$929,000

With hardwood floors and plantation shutters throughout, this classic home exudes elegance at every turn. Listed by Trevor Thomas of Bankers Realty Exclusive, Inc.

If you have sellers that are “on the fence” about putting their home on the market and want to wait it out for a few months, send them this article from the LA Times.

Housing industry consultant Steve Harney says that prices may drop 5-8% as banks unload anywhere from 3 to 8 million foreclosures in the second quarter of 2011.

But here is some good news:

“Harney is among those who believe that the worst is generally over for the market, and that the inventory mess and lending issues will work themselves out in 18 months or so as pent-up buyer demand begins to reassert itself.

Meanwhile, he said, selling earlier this year will probably net a better return than late.”

Click here to read the complete article.

Some of the highlights include:

· List in early January to take advantage of post-holiday home shoppers

“If you hit the ground running and you’re a fresh listing that has done everything right, you’ve got the best shot.” – Louis Cammarosano, general manager of HomeGain.com

· Price it right from the start

“The longer something sits on the market, the more price reductions you might have to make and the more potential buyers will assume that there’s something wrong with the home. So more often than not, it’s best not to try testing the waters with a higher price.” - Louis Cammarosano, general manager of HomeGain.com

· Get the house ready
There are two factors that predict how quickly a home will sell and for what price: PRICE and CONDITION.

In our market, homes in the $1MM and under range are often selling within the first month if they are staged and priced to sell. There is a lot of competition out there, so if your seller is serious about selling quickly, she must make sure that her home stands out from the competition (in a good way).

A well-staged home will feel spacious and inviting. It will appeal to your target buyer (whether it is a family, a young couple or retirees). It will be neutral enough to allow any buyer to envision him or herself living in the home, but will never feel bland and forgettable.

Gone are the days when sellers on the west side of Los Angeles could just put up a sign in the yard and have their property sold within days. In this buyer’s market, it takes a lot more to get a home sold. You as the Realtor know what the best price is for your listing. Let a professional Home Stager help you determine the best way to show the home off in its best light and attract your target buyer. Working as a team, we can get it sold!

I am very proud to announce that Stage to Sell has been nominated for the Real Estate Staging Association (RESA®) Industry Award for RESA Professional Stager of the Year™ for the West Region.

Fabulous stagers from all over North America submitted their before and after photos for consideration, and I am humbled and honored to be counted among the finalists.

The finalists will be judged by a panel of industry professionals, and the winners will be announced at the RESA Home Staging International Conference, January 24th in Las Vegas.

It may sound cliche, but it really is an honor just to be nominated!

Now you would think I would know better, seeing as how I posted this article back in 2008, warning other stagers to make sure their properties are “Stage Ready” before they show up. However, even the most experienced of us can sometimes slip when the agents and sellers are in a hurry to get a property staged and on the market.

So it happened (twice) that I found myself and my crew at a property that was simply not ready for us.

A couple of months ago, we were asked to stage a property that had been in the middle of a big remodel when the owner ran out of money before s/he could finish it. Our client purchased the home with the intent of quickly finishing the work and flipping it. While most of the construction seemed to progress fairly quickly, there were some issues with the electrical that the inspector refused to sign off on. Until he signed off, they couldn’t have electricity at the property. I informed the client of the reasons that we can’t stage without water and power and he assured me that the water would definitely be turned on in time, but that he wouldn’t have confirmation on the power until closer to the staging day. When I pushed him on this, he responded that the contractor knew my schedule, so I shouldn’t worry. Famous last words!

We arrived to the job site to find that not only was there no electricity (so we couldn’t steam any of the bedding or turn on any of the lights to take photos when we were done), but the contractors were actually still working. They were just beginning to install a large Jacuzzi tub in the master bathroom. The tub itself (which was quite large) had to sit inside the master bedroom while the workers  poured the concrete and waited for it to set before they could install the tub. Unfortunately that meant that my furniture delivery guys couldn’t get the bed, dresser and nightstands into the room!

After much back and forth, we compromised with the workers. They would move the tub into the very large master closet so we could install the furniture and stage the master bedroom. Unfortunately we still didn’t have power, so we couldn’t steam any of the bedding in the three bedrooms. We took photos, but they were taken with natural light only since none of the overhead lights or lamps worked.

After almost two months of me checking in weekly with the owner about when we could come back to do the steaming and photos, we finally got the go-ahead that they had power this week. We showed up on Wednesday only to find that, once again, the power was off (though it had been fully functional just the day before). The sad part is that the owner has paid for two months of staging rentals and hasn’t had the full effect of being able to show the property in its “best light” – pun intended. The Realtor has continued to hold open houses and to do showings, despite the lack of power, and the good news is that there may already be an offer on the table! That would be a wonderful result for this seller and I certainly hope it goes through. But lesson learned – or so I thought…

A mere month and a half later, I was asked to stage another property that was in the midst of a major remodel. In fact, this is what it looked like on the day I went to preview the home.

But the Realtor assured me that they would be ready for us in 8 days, which was how long we had before the staging date.

The good news is that we arrived to both water AND power! The bad news was that we also arrived to a house FULL of workers – electricians, painters, and more. The kitchen was full of appliances waiting to be installed. The tile guy still needed to grout the tile in both bathrooms and the kitchen, and there was a bunch of electrical work that still had to be done (fixtures installed, half-hot outlets set up, etc). To their credit, the construction crew was as accommodating as possible. They really tried to stay out of our way so we could work. But I had a four-person staging crew plus two delivery guys, and for much of the day, we were stuck waiting for workmen to finish so we could stage.

Luckily both of these stagings turned out great in the end, but let it be a lesson to other stagers not to repeat my mistakes. Confirm and reconfirm in the days leading up to the installation. And make sure you have a backup plan if you walk in to a construction site. You’ll be glad you did!

With all the craziness in the Los Angeles real estate market, I have been very busy in the past few weeks. So much so that, in order to fit in a client who needed some help selling her home, I arranged a consultation for a Sunday afternoon. When my client came to the door, she seemed quite surprised to see me. “Did we schedule a consultation for TODAY?” she asked. “Isn’t today Sunday? Why would I do something like that?” I reminded her that we had picked a Sunday because of my busy schedule and, though very flustered, she invited me in to wait while she finished up a class with a student (she teaches music to children). When she came back she began to explain why she was so discombobulated. Here was her situation…

She had, just the day before, held a garage sale to both get rid of some of her excess clutter and to help with her dire financial situation (she’s likely headed toward a short sale). She had gotten up at 5am and didn’t finish until 11pm. In total, she had made $80. She was exhausted, stressed, and – within minutes of sitting down to tell me all this – she was crying. First I asked her to take a breath. I told her that in my profession, I meet people in every type of financial situation. I told her that selling is never easy. It is always stressful and emotional, but doubly so when you are being forced to sell. She seemed to feel better just from hearing that I understood. I asked her to trust me. I told her that I had only her best interest at heart and that I could help her out this bad situation. I told her the homes I’ve Staged in the past month have been selling in multiple offers, many in their first week on the market. She seemed to relax a bit, so we began.

As she walked me through her house, I immediately realized that her biggest problem was room-usage. She had a 4-bedroom house which had 2 offices, a recording studio and an enormous music room, but only 1 actual bedroom. She also had no dining space. With all these offices and music equipment, the house felt cramped when it was actually pretty big.

I immediately got down to work…First we had to take the computer out of the living room, move the table (which was being used as a desk) over and set it up as a dining table. We had to remove the oversized coffee table in favor of a smaller one (she had something usable in one of the bedrooms). We had to remove one chair, and we had to move the large TV cabinet out of this small room.

On to the bedrooms – we simply didn’t have enough of them! But there was an office that she barely used anymore. I asked her to remove all the office furniture in the room, including the desk, chair and some temporary shelving that had been screwed into the walls. I told her to set up the futon from the garage as a bed, and to use one of her extra tables as a nightstand. Then she only needed to open up the curtains to let the light in, remove the old dirty rug, and suddenly she would have another bedroom. She loved this idea and seemed to get excited as we moved on to the next room.

This room was technically a bedroom (and a large one at that), but it was currently being used as a recording studio. It was an unfortunate situation, but it could not be helped as this woman was not in a financial position to shut down her business while her home was on the market. By removing some more shelving, storing a portable keyboard in the garage when it wasn’t in use and moving a small sofa out of the room, buyers would be able to visualize where their bed could go and could easily envision the space as a functional bedroom. She was really getting excited now!

We moved on to the next room. She had all the pieces in place. The furniture just had to be rearranged slightly to fit the space better, and then we were on to the biggest issue – the master bedroom. The master had been turned into a music room for her students, with a huge grand piano taking up the back half of it. The closet doors had been removed and she had any number of beautiful and exotic musical instruments filling the space meant for clothes. There were about 5 or 6 odd chairs sitting around, making it look sort of like a waiting room. There was also an awkward door that lead directly into another bedroom, which made it not feel as private as a master bedroom should. But this room was BIG! It could fit a grand piano – mind you – without feeling cramped!

Now would be a good time to mention that this woman had an interior designer friend who had already come over to help her figure out how to best showcase her property for sale. Though I love and admire interior designers, they are in the design business, not in the Real Estate business like I am. They know what looks good, but they don’t get into the heads of home buyers to figure out what a property needs in order to make it SELL.

This woman’s well-meaning interior designer friend had suggested that she move her grand piano into the room she was now using as her bedroom and move her bed into what was supposed to be the master bedroom. Now without having seen this house, you might think that would be a good solution. BUT…there were a couple of problems with this idea:

1) Due to back problems, this woman slept in a twin sized bed with special mattresses that helped her condition. Putting a twin bed (or even a full-size futon which she had in another room) into a bedroom that was large enough for a grand piano would have looked ridiculous and never would’ve sold buyers on the space…and

2) The room she was using for her bedroom was IN NO WAY large enough to fit a grand piano! Though it was a very nice-sized space for a bedroom, with that monstrous piano in it, it would’ve felt too small for even a twin bed. It would have been literally wall-to-wall piano.

But I had an idea… Since her formal living/dining room was small, since she didn’t have a bed large enough to fit the master bedroom, since she needed her piano to remain in the house while it was on the market, AND since – with our adjustments – buyers would see they already had 3 other bedrooms in the house, we were going to transform that master bedroom into a spacious and buyer-friendly family room!

Remember that small sofa that had to come out of the recording studio? And remember all those extra chairs that were in the piano room? We had everything we needed to make this space work. Suddenly the closet without its missing doors became the perfect spot for the oversized TV cabinet that was currently taking up space in the tiny living room. The loveseat and two of her extra chairs would go in front of the new TV closet, with an extra ottoman as a coffee table and a small rug she had lying around to tie the seating area together. The piano would remain in the back half of the room, showing buyers that in addition to there being plenty of room to hang out and watch TV in this room, there was also a really large space in back for a game or homework table, a kids’ play area, or even (gasp) a grand piano!

As our consultation came to an end, I noticed that the seller had a big smile on her face. I asked her if she felt a little better now that she had a plan. She said that she did and that she was so relieved. Whereas she had started our session in tears, by the end she felt confident that she knew what it would take to get her house sold and had the tools she needed to do it.

So here are some things I was reminded of today:

1) Staging is not just about design. I’m in the Real Estate business, not the design business.

2) Sometimes Home Staging = Real Estate Therapy. Some sellers need more than just a “to-do list” in order to prepare their home for sale. Some need reassurance, some even need a hug. All of them need a solid plan to relieve the pressure and stress.

3) Just because things don’t start off the way you planned, they may end up better than you could’ve imagined. Even if you show up to a job with a client in crisis, you just may leave with a confident and motivated seller who has the tools s/he needs to get the job done.

And THAT is why I love my job!

It’s a great tool for Realtors to use with sellers who may be on the fence about listing a home during the holiday season.

10 Reasons to List Your Home Over the Holidays

1. People who look for a home over the holidays tend to be more serious about buying.

2. Serious buyers have fewer houses to choose from during the holidays which, in turn, means less competition and more money for you.

3. Starting in January, the amount of listings will dramatically increase. With more properties on the market, there will be less demand for your particular home.

4. Houses show better when decorated for the holidays! Buyers are more emotional during the holidays, so they are more likely to pay your price.

5. Often, buyers have more time to look for a home during the holidays than during a regular work week, especially during winter vacations.

6. Many people want to buy before the end of the year due to tax reasons.

7. Traditionally, January is the month for corporate transferees to begin new jobs. Since these transferees cannot wait until spring to buy, you must be on the market now to capture that market.

8. You can be on the market and still have the option to restrict showings during the holidays for your special family occasions.

9. You can sell now for more money and set up a delayed closing or extended occupancy until early next year.

10. By selling now, you may have the opportunity to be a non-contingent buyer during the spring, when many more houses are on the market for less money. This will allow you to sell high and buy low!

This contest really struck a chord with me because when I became a working mom five years ago, I was amazed at how difficult it was to run both a family and a business. It is often a thankless job and the hours are quite long! Of course as any mom knows, we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Being a mom-preneur has given me a newfound respect for my own mother who worked from the time I was a baby, but always made sure I felt 100% loved, taken care of and special. Many moms don’t have the option to stay at home full time for financial reasons, and many choose not to for their own sanity (and that of their kids!). But regardless of their reasons, ALL working moms deserve recognition and respect for having two full-time jobs. That’s why I entered this competition and that is why I am so humbled and honored to have been chosen as one of the winners!

Thousands of moms entered and, like me, found that reaching out for votes to customers, vendors, friends, family and social networks was not only kind of fun, but it also gave us a new and unexpected way to generate positive buzz around our business. So many of you took time out of your busy days to vote for me once, twice, and in some cases every single day. Some of my followers on Twitter even re-Tweeted my requests for votes so that people I didn’t even know were out there voting for me! It was an amazing experience and one that I won’t soon forget.

I encourage any mom who owns her own business to enter this competition next year. As I have proven to myself, you never know what can happen!

Click here to read the full press release, and thank you again for making this dream a reality!