So after 3 months of sitting on the market and $100,000 in price reductions, the seller finally agreed to stage it.

One of the issues with showing this home empty was that the second bedroom was directly across from the dining room and had no door.

Downstairs Bedroom Before Staging (open to dining room)

According to the agent, most buyers of this floorplan had sliding doors installed to wall off the room and create privacy, but this one had not been upgraded in that way. So as potential buyers finished their tour, they inevitably asked “Where’s the 2nd bedroom?” When the agent pointed out the open space across from the dining room, which was visible from most of the downstairs, buyers balked.

The space also felt a bit cold, as modern spaces can tend to when they are not furnished.

Our first task was to create a division so that the second bedroom actually felt like a bedroom. We accomplished this with a simple room divider to create privacy. Adding bedroom furniture, as well as a desk, also helped buyers envision how they could use the space.

Downstairs Bedroom After Staging

Next we added warmth with furniture, art and accessories.

Did it work? Well, after 3 months on the market, this place is now in escrow! I call that success.

Living Room Before

Today it’s a whole different story. Now no buyer could say this space doesn’t exude warmth.

Living Room After

If you are selling a vacant home in Los Angeles, and buyers aren’t biting, call Stage to Sell, your Los Angeles Home Staging Professionals, to add warmth and bring in those offers!

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!

Recently a client called me about Staging his designer decorated 2-bedroom condo in West Hollywood. The catch was that he only needed one bedroom and a patio Staged. The rest of the home had beautiful furniture and looked great. The 2nd bedroom, however, had become a sort of catch-all storage room and lacked the appeal of the rest of the home.

So we brought in a daybed and desk setup, as well as art and accessories, to show buyers how this room could be used as either a guest bedroom and/or a home office. We were even able to use a couple of the seller’s own pieces as accents in the room so he didn’t have to put them in storage.

Here are the before & after photos of this guest room and the small patio we Staged as well.

Guest Bedroom Before

Guest Room After

Patio Before

Patio After

*Did you notice how I said that the “short answer” was yes in the first paragraph above? Well, here’s the fine print… The rental companies I use have a minimum monthly rental amount. So, for instance, if you just needed a sofa and nothing else, we probably wouldn’t be able to Stage it for you (well we could, but you’d still have to pay the monthly minimum even if you only needed 1 piece). However if you need at least two rooms worth of furniture, we can make it work! Incidentally if it’s just a bed that you need, we do carry camping beds that we stack on a frame and dress to make them look like real beds. These are in our own Staging inventory, so we don’t have to go to an outside rental company…hence no minimums!

The townhome had been painted and remodeled, so we had a great canvas to work with! Unfortunately the awkward layout of the living room, a not-so-neutral paint color, and a seemingly unusable loft space above the second bedroom were making it difficult for buyers to fall in love with the home.

Living Room Before

Without furniture, the living room felt tiny. The awkwardly placed fireplace didn’t help. Our first order of business was to make this space feel large enough for a regular living room set so buyers could see themselves entertaining in the space.

Living Room After

Properly scaled furniture made the space feel open and inviting and didn’t shut off views to the dining room. Relocating some installed surround sound speakers in the niche above the fireplace allowed us to put in a 46″ faux plasma TV so buyers could imagine themselves snuggling up in front of the TV for a relaxing evening at home. And with furniture in the space, the built-in wine cabinet didn’t feel like an afterthought.

Master Bedroom Before

This bedroom was fairly large and had beautiful built-in cabinets (not shown), but the purple color on the walls felt a bit too taste-specific for most buyers.

Master Bedroom After

Since there was no budget to paint, we brought in a black, white and silver color scheme to neutralize the space.

Guest Room Before

The guest room was small, mainly because of the spiral staircase that took up a good chunk of the usable space.

Guest Room After

By using a daybed with a smaller footprint, this guest room now feels spacious and functional.

Loft Before

What buyer wouldn’t love to have a bonus room in a 2-bedroom townhome? Unfortunately the sloping ceiling made this room feel like its only possible function could be storage.

Loft After

Luckily Stage to Sell came to the rescue with some properly scaled office furniture that gave this space a whole new lease on life!

Well our hard work has paid off. This townhome is now in escrow with a backup offer!

Congratulations to the owner and Realtors on a quick sale.

It was very timely since I encountered this very issue while previewing a beautiful new construction home in Sherman Oaks just last week. The developer built 2 gorgeous, side-by-side, high-end homes with luxury upgrades and beautiful finishes. The homes were identical in layout, but the builder wanted to Stage only one – the less desirable one. Why was it less desirable? Was it smaller? Did it have fewer rooms? Ummm…no. This one was less desirable because of the next-door neighbor.

I didn’t take a photo of the neighbor’s yard, but you can probably picture it. It looked like a junk yard, filled with old appliances, lumber and debris. And the home itself looked like it should’ve been condemned. It hadn’t been painted in decades, the yard was overgrown and it looked a bit like, well, a crack house. Hardly the sort of neighbor the buyer of a brand new luxury home would be excited about.

photo courtesy of yoyogod

Of course my Staging plan included large potted plants and window treatments to block the view of the neighbor’s home from the bedrooms and patios. But at some point a potential buyer will open the curtains or peer over the fence, only to find that their future neighbors live in a dump.

So what do you do if you are trying to sell your home and your neighbor’s house isn’t quite as presentable as you’d like?

1) Approach your neighbor about the issue in a non-threatening way.

Attempt to solve the problem amicably (I find this is always the best way to deal with any issue). The article suggests that it might be a good idea to tell the neighbor that a Realtor or potential buyer made a complaint.

2) Offer to help.

Have a solution in mind and offer to help with any labor or costs involved. Simply offering to rake leaves or take a bunch of old junk to the Goodwill may be all it takes to solve the problem. If you don’t want this to seem too personal, try organizing a neighborhood cleanup with all the families on your block. Rent or borrow a truck to take everyone’s extra items to the dump or donate them. Tackle unfinished yard projects and pick up trash around the neighborhood. If everyone is taking part your neighbor won’t feel singled out.

3) If you are uncomfortable talking to your neighbor, ask your real estate agent or home staging professional to make the initial contact.

It may be less threatening if the news comes from a third party. You could even ask your agent or stager to say s/he is speaking to them without your prior knowledge. I am not one to condone lying, but if you are trying to preserve good relations with a neighbor, this type of white lie may be unavoidable.

Once again, make sure your representative addresses your neighbor respectfully (without trying to pick a fight) and offers to help in any way possible.

4) If all else fails and your neighbor refuses to comply, contact the local code enforcement office or neighborhood association. This should be a last resort, as it’s much more pleasant to get a friendly call from your neighbor rather than a complaint.

Just know that you may not get any satisfaction going this route. Oftentimes what may seem like a code violation is actually not against any rules. And filing a complaint doesn’t guarantee a quick fix. Your neighbor could file an appeal or simply drag their feet.

Another important recommendation from the article:

Ask the homeowner before doing any work yourself!

You don’t want to be accused of trespassing.

For keeping your home safe in other areas of California, check out ADT Palo Alto CA.

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)

“I am happy to tell you that I got an accepted offer on the Pelham condo in the first week. It’s in escrow & inspection and I’m looking for a backup offer.”

It must have been fate that I hadn’t yet blogged about this project, because what better news to share than this Staging Success Story! It’s one for the record books. Though this was considered a vacant Staging (everything had been moved out before we came to Stage), my before pictures only show how this condo looked when I first previewed it.

BEFORE

First we chose new paint to lighten the walls, sheer curtains to let in exterior light and lamps to brighten the room. Next we completely reversed the furniture arrangement so that the fireplace was the focal point, while at the same time solving the problem of where to put the TV (which is of utmost importance to home buyers). Then we added art and simple accessories to appeal to all types of buyers. Lastly and most importantly, we showed this room as a living room – and ONLY a living room – with plenty of room for conversation and entertaining.

BEFORE

The dining room had both an adult table AND a kids’ table, both of which were covered with stuff. The chandelier was too small for the room, and the china hutch overpowered the space.

STAGED

By adding a console table in place of a kids’ table, we show that the space (although open to the living room) can be a large and functional dining room with extra room for a buffet or china hutch. Replacing the chandelier with an inexpensive larger one, and placing a mirror on the wall behind the table, makes the space feel bigger.

BEFORE

The master bedroom was pink and crowded and felt anything but restful.

STAGED

Painting the walls a neutral color allows buyers to bring in whatever bedding or art they already own, knowing it will work in the space. Replacing the tall and bulky armoire with a regular dresser and mirror brings the room down to scale and makes the bed the focal point. And lastly, replacing the huge chair that used to sit to the right of the bed with a smaller scale chair in the far corner of the room makes this room feel much more open and spacious.

BEFORE

The seller’s friends had told her to leave the expensive wallpaper in this tiny powder room rather than paint.

STAGED

I disagreed. Enough said.

BEFORE

This tiny room in the entry to the condo was confusing – was it a library, a home gym or a storage space?

STAGED

Now the agent can list this as a 2 Bedroom PLUS an office! Voilà – added value!

For more information and photos of this gorgeous condo, check out the property website.