Living Room Before

Do these blinds scream luxury home to you? No, they didn’t to me either. First thing on the list to go: vertical blinds. For budgetary reasons we could not install custom window treatments (especially on the large bay window in the front of the room), but simply removing the dated blinds helped immensely. We used inexpensive tension rods to add drapes to the side windows and left that beautiful bay window free and clear so buyers would be able to see the Observatory when they looked out.

Living Room After

On a side note, there was an issue with buyers having to look at the busy traffic passing by out the bottom half of that front window. Solution? We brought in two ultra-high-back chairs to block the lower half while opening up the beautiful hillside views above.

Bay Window View

As I continued my preview of the home the next thing I noticed was the powder room and its dueling vanities.

Powder Room Before

See that cute built-in vanity? Now granted it’s not the latest in bathroom decor, but it was clean and had some charm. But what’s up with the other vanity that butts up against the first one? It makes this room look like a botched makeover. I suggested they rip out the wood vanity and replace it with a pedestal sink. After all this is a powder room – no storage required.

Powder Room After

Now isn’t that better? We used the homeowner’s stool that had been relocated to the kitchen, some art and decorative accessories to bring out the room’s charm.

If you follow my blog, you may already know one of my many mantras: “Paint the paneling!” So you can imagine what I thought when I walked into this bonus room near the pool. This was a huge room with an attached bath and laundry room and a separate entry. A perfect place for a mother-in-law, a guest or a renter. But with all that dark paneling and the outdated ceiling fan it was completely unappealing.

Guest Suite Before

They painted the paneling and replaced the fan with a ceiling mounted light fixture and voila! Now, I would never have chosen white as the color – too stark. But hey, at least they painted! With furniture, art and accessories, we’ve just added tons of value to this space.

Guest Suite After

These were all relatively simple and inexpensive changes that made a HUGE difference in the saleability of this home.

The result?

We finished Staging on the Sunday of July 4th weekend. They had their first offer by that Wednesday and another shortly thereafter. We have already picked up our furniture less than a month after the initial Staging because the buyer was so anxious to move in!

The agent, Randy Troup of Coldwell Banker Brentwood West, often hires me to do Staging Consultation reports for his sellers. I preview the property and spend a couple of hours giving the sellers detailed recommendations of low-cost things they can do to (using mostly what they already have in the home) to Stage their property for sale.

I met with this lovely couple and gave them quite a list! Their home was actually quite beautiful to begin with, but there were many things I recommended they do in order to enhance its appeal to buyers. For instance, though the home had plenty of square footage, it only had one actual bedroom inside the house (there was a guest house out back). The second room inside the home was being used as an office, despite the fact that there was a full suite of offices (which housed the client’s landscape design business) off the garage. So my first recommendation was to transform this office into a usable bedroom. We brought in a camping bed which the owner Staged with her own bedding, and we brought in a dresser from another room to complete the look.

Guest Room

This home also had a huge laundry room downstairs. Unfortunately it had a concrete floor and felt very cold and industrial. So we brought in a rug that was rolled up in the storage area and some unused storage cabinets (which the homeowners Staged with some of her folded towels and laundry supplies) to make this space more inviting.

Laundry Room

One of the most important transformations, however, was in the kitchen. Though the kitchen was quite large, it was a bit labyrinthian in its layout. In the very back next to the back door, the owners had a HUGE china cabinet that reached from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. It was chock full of their extra dishes, vases and other items that wouldn’t fit into the kitchen cabinets or in the dining room. As I pointed out, having a huge piece like this in the kitchen (rather than in the dining room where we might normally expect it to be) clues buyers into the fact that there might not be enough space in the dining room. In truth it wasn’t the square footage that was lacking in the dining room, but the fact that the room’s walls were actually curved! Though the unique shape gave the room a beautiful look, it precluded the owners from putting any sizable storage pieces in the space. So rather than draw attention to something which might have been viewed as a negative, we removed the large cabinet and added a small table and chairs in its space, creating a new feature… eat-in kitchen!

You can't see it very well from this angle, but the table and chairs are in the back of the kitchen on the right.

The homeowners worked really hard to prepare their home for sale, tackling every “to-do” on my Staging list. They did it all themselves and though they were a bit exhausted, I assured them that all their hard work would pay off. Well, I was right!

In the first 10 days on the market, they had 6 offers on their home. They have since moved on to their new Palm Springs abode and are true believers in Staging to sell!

(Photos ©2009 PostRAIN Productions)

Yes I said 500 square feet! The home consisted of a tiny living room, a small bedroom and bath and a surprisingly large kitchen (for such a tiny home).

Now if you’ve ever read any of my other posts on Staging loft style spaces, I’m always saying there are 3 important things that buyers are thinking about when they walk into a small or an open floor plan type space:

1) Where will I eat?

2) Where will I watch TV?

and

3) Where will I work?

If you can’t show a buyer a space for each of these 3 things they are never going to purchase the home.

Well you may have noticed I didn’t mention a dining room in this place, so #1 was something to be tackled.

Though the kitchen was relatively large and did have a bar for a couple of stools, that wasn’t a comfortable or realistic space for eating an actual meal. So we had to utilize some of the already small living room for a dining space. You’ll see in the photo below how we accomplished that by using a small scale drop leaf dining table and 2 chairs in front of a beautiful window.

Dining Area

Now for #2 – the all important TV…

There wasn’t much of a choice as to where to place the TV in this home. There was only 1 wall that was long enough to hold a sofa, which meant that the TV would have to go opposite that wall. Luckily there was enough space on that wall for a console table and a 42″ plasma.

Living Room TV

On a side note, as if this wasn’t a tough enough room to Stage, on the opposite side of the sofa you’ll notice a heater vent which stuck out into the room so the sofa could go no further than this heating unit, effectively cutting off some usable corner space. On the up side, it’s a convenient place to set down your drink.

Living Room Sofa

So this is how the entire room (including living/dining and TV space) looked once it was Staged.

Living/Dining Room

Now for the last crucial element for Staging a small space…a place to work!

Since there is no 2nd bedroom in this bungalow, a full home office space was out. Luckily the previous owners had given us something to work with:

Master Bedroom

Built-In Office

This cabinet was built for a small TV (in fact the top shelf was built on a slant which made it very tricky to get my vase and plate to stand up straight). But on the bottom there was a pull out keyboard tray and a space for a small chair or ottoman. Home office space – check!

Since I know you’re dying to see the rest of the home, here are a few more photos. As I mentioned the kitchen is quite large and the bedroom and bath were a good size as well.

Though this was a challenging space to figure out, I was very pleased with the outcome. What might have scared buyers off when it was empty is now a completely livable, warm and inviting home. It just needed a touch of imagination!

Well it was a great success! There were 10 seniors who attended, and they all gave me wonderful feedback and said they learned a lot from the presentation. One in particular was ready to sell in the near future and had several specific questions.

At the end of the presentation, I had one of my Realtor partners give a 5-minute introduction to our next seminar (scheduled for Saturday April 4th at the Keller Williams office in Santa Monica) that will cover the following topics:

• how the sales process is different in a buyers’ market
• how a pre-sale inspection can save you thousands of dollars
• creative pricing strategies
• offering seller incentives that movtivate buyers
• strategies for selling when your mortgage is more than your house is worth
• bullet-proof ways to pick the ideal buyer,

and of course…

• how to properly prepare your home through staging

All in all I was very pleased with the outcome of this seminar and hope this is just the first of many that I do at local Senior Centers!