Congraz Jan!
Dear One Two Six,
We appreciate your talents in making my brother’s old home sparkle! 240 people went thru the (first) open house over two days and we received 5 bids, four above asking.
Jan (home owner, Mountain View)
Congraz Jan and happy Thanksgiving!
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Happy Customer
Vivian, Your team did a good job staging the house. The furniture really captures the colors of the painted and the brick walls and the carpet. They also make the house look more homy. Thank you for doing a great and prompt job.
– Andrea, Home Owner, East Palo Alto
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Vanity Award
We received an email from the US Commerce Association a week ago, notifying us that they’ve chosen One Two Six Design for the “Best of Palo Alto Award” in Home Design & Planning Services category.
One Two Six Design, Best of Palo Alto Award
Woohoo~~!! Yippeeee~~!! (for the next 5 mins)
Finally when the excitement subdued, and calmness settled back in, we realized… wait a minute, “Best of Palo Alto”? But… we moved from Palo Alto to the present Mountain View location more than 5 years ago. US Commerce Association? Who are these people?
Intrigued, we followed the link provided in the email, the web site open with instruction on how to obtain the award plaque, for a fee… Something didn’t feel right, if someone really want to give us an award, shouldn’t they give us the plaque for free?
Have to say, these people have came up with a very creative way to grab your money, hats off to them. In the world that’s full of spam mails, at least US Commerce Association’s spam comes with a vanity award.
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Picture Perfect
By onetwosixdesign
and has no comments yet.
Picture > 1000 Words?
Here is what one of our clients had to say:
Thank you Vivian,
Your photographer is amazing – he makes this old house become new!!
It is so clear, crispy and freshen!!I will have to use the team of you and Victor for the other not so perfect listings :-0)
I understand that my request gave you and Victor more works – but it is the BEST reference evidence when I needs to recommend you to my other clients – thanks again!
Well done Victor! (www.victorlinphoto.com)
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Spiritual Money
Robert Kiyosaki (Rich Dad Poor Dad) wrote in his book Before You Quit Your Job about the three kinds of money: Competitive money, Cooperative money and Spiritual money. For the detail in explaining their difference, please read his book, it is well worth your time.
One Two Six Design, we are a staging company, and obviously we make money by selling our staging and related services, and yes we have many competitions, so the money we earn, according to Rich Dad’s definition — Competitive money.
Staging has gained a lot of popularity recently, mostly hyped up by the TV shows on HGTV and the likes, there are also countless number of web sites now selling “How to Start Your Own Staging Business” courses. But if you stop and ask any seasoned stager, you will hear that staging is no way an easy business. The pay can be good, but our cost is also high, the result is beautiful, but the process is also very labor intensive. Fortunately, besides the physical monetary compensations, we are also awarded by the more important Spiritual Money.
Selling a home is probably one of the most important decision most of us make in our lifetime. Our home is our safe haven, generally it is also where majority of our hard earned money went to. In the rocky economy of today, selling one’s home is often a reluctant choice, a forced decision. Just two days ago, we de-staged a townhouse in Fremont after it was successful sold in a short time and at a reasonable price. The owners were a couple with two young children, the husband was laid off by his previous employer and was forced to move back to his home country in Asia looking for a new job, leaving his wife and their two school-aged kids here taking care of the house. The wife was so thankful to us, for helping their home get sold, the close of escrow means they no longer have any financial baggages and the family can finally reunite to start a new life.
We love hearing stories like this, this is what Spiritual Money means to us. Selling a home is not just about the numbers, there are a lot of emotions to it. We are part of the team that helps people with their most difficult decision, and we work hard everyday for it.
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Realtor In Tear
By onetwosixdesign
and has no comments yet.
We received this email from the realtor for one of the houses we staged today:
Oh my goodness Vivian and team,I cried when I looked at these pictures – what a difference!!!!Thank you thank you thank you!Yours sincerely,Amelia (Coldwell Banker – Los Altos)
Wow! What a heart felt note! Thank you Amelia for making us part of your team!
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Nice Words
I meant to post this a month ago, finally got around to do it today.
This nice note was mailed to us by the owners of a Los Altos home we staged back in March. We are always very appreciative of our clients who spend the time to send us testimonials. It puts smiles on the faces of our entire team!
Before the staging
After the staging
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47, 129185, $81,227,075
Numbers tell stories…
There are currently 47 properties on the market staged by us, totaling 129,185 sq ft, with the combined listing price of $81,227,075.
Although this hasn’t broken our record yet, we are getting close.
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Staging Diary: Clean Lined Eichler
We staged an Eichler in Palo Alto yesterday, it was a partial staging where we worked with some of the owner’s existing furnishings and add our own to make it ready for open house. Personally, I love Eichler homes, love its clean lines, the floor to ceiling windows, the abundant lighting and love its openness. The last thing we wanted to do is to crowd the house with furniture and accessories, the idea was to put just enough to highlight the architectural greatness, keep it simple, and keep it refreshing.
It was exciting to work on this project, and we get to use a new set of gorgeous contemporary dining chairs for the very first time!
Anyways, we really enjoyed this project and got very positive feedbacks from the Realtor and the owner!
The house looks GREAT! You/staging company did a wonderful job keeping it modern, and bringing in just the right items to enhance the house.
Thank you so much,
Sheryl
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Sold!! More Sold!!
More good news from our realtor clients, actually, we prefer to call them “partners” since we are working toward the same goal — to help home owners sell.
We recently staged a lovely 1300 sq ft condo a block away from downtown Mountain View. In less than a week, our partner called us to de-stage, yup, the place is sold!! Granted, the condo is located at a prime location, great looking boutique complex, functional layout and nicely remodeled. It is still amazing to hear how fast it was able to sell!
Mountain View Condo (Sold in 1 Week!)
On the other hand, last Tues we did a partial staging for a townhouse in East Bay. This was a challenging project. The townhouse was covered in floral patterned wallpapers dated from the 70’s, the owner also had a lot of heavy, bulky, solid wood furniture and a set of bright red leather sofa. To make it more difficult, the owner run out of storage space, so besides the bright lipstick red leather sofas, everything else had to stay… Well, we re-arranged the existing furnishings, brought in a set of lighter neutral colored sofa, art works and accessories to tie everything together… Again, we were very pleased to hear from our Realtor partner over the weekend that the place is pending!!
Crane Partial Staging Before & After (Sold in 1 Week!)
Crane Partial Staging Before & After (Sold in 1 Week!)
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Nice Words
Here are some nice words from a client (Mountain View) who we recently helped to stage her home for the market. This was an occupied staging, we added our furnishing and accessories to compensate her existing stuff to make it practical / livable and yet presentable.
It is always to hear nice words… 
Testimonial
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Staging Diary: Investor
We drove all the way out to Concord and Pleasant Hills today to stage two homes for one of our VIP client — David. Staging far away is always more troublesome: long drive back and forth, cost of transportation, potentially long hours and of course there is always the risk of forgetting things behind. We’d always double check, triple check ourselves before leaving the warehouse.
David is a real estate investor, and has been using us exclusively. He’d buy his properties at auctions, bring in his rehab team to remodel, call us to pretty-up the place and put it back on the market at very attractive prices. He is a straight shooter who knows exactly what he wants, and he is a believer in staging. In fact, he have even raised the listing price numerous times after our staging. To David, be able to sell fast and at top dollar is well worth the price he paid for our service. He does at least one house per month, it has been a privilege working with him.
Here are some before and after photos for the houses we did for David today…
Concord Home (4000 sq ft)
Pleasant Hills Home (1500 sq ft)
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$10,000,000
A $10 milion dollar mansion in Atherton… whew…
Can’t wait to start working on this project! It will definitely be challenging, but that’s the best part!
Stick around and we’ll tell you all about it, in few days!