We are proud to say, here in the Silicon Valley, you are never more than few blocks away from a house that had been staged by us.
Here is a graphical look at the homes we have staged in the past two years.
2010 Transactions
2009 Transactions
Not everyone has the luxury of moving out before putting their home on the market. Especially in tough economy, we are seeing an increasing demand to stage occupied homes. We try to work with owners’ existing furnishing, thus saving them the money from renting furnishings from us. Occupied homes are tougher to stage than vacant homes, the design process is more involved since we’d have to consider the owner’s furnishing and make sure the staging is practical to live with.
Here is an example of a condo in Mountain View we recently staged. The property was previous on the market, staged by another staging company, and after more than half year, it was still on the market. Then… the Realtor was changed, and we were asked to freshen up the place. We removed some of owner’s bulky, dated items, brought in few contemporary furnishings, injected brighter colors here and there, and voilà! The place was sold in a week with multiple offers at almost $30,000 over the listing price.
Does staging really work? 
Our staging combined with our complimentary eye-popping photography/virtual tour service give you the winning edge!
Here is the comparison between the previous stager’s work (left) and ours (right):
(More info on this property, here is the virtual tour)
2009 Transactions
Shame on us for not posting anything here for so long, we are letting the Twitter tool to do all the hard work posting our Tweets summaries week after week.
Well, we have been quite busy, staging, designing and putting together a brand new site: CandidHome.com!! Yes, we have added a brand name furnishing retail business to our services. Our goal is to offer great products at low internet price but with comprehensive retail service. There are already over 2000 items on the site, and we are adding more constantly! Updating the site with new items is a time consuming task, so please visit us often.
Unlike other furniture retailers who’d charge you $75 just to drop off the bulky sofa you order on your driveway, our experienced movers will deliver it into your home, set it down easy at the spot you want, and we’ll do this for only $3/mile, even FREE if your order is over $1000 and live within 10 miles from us. Too many choices, not sure what to get for your living room? Don’t forget, we have been staging for over 10 years, let us help you to design the perfect place you call home! Talk to us at 650.425.7724
CandidHome.com Screenshot
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.
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.
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.
One Two Six Design - Your one stop shop!
Juan is our Mover/Installer, and he is One Two Six Design’s very first employee. We celebrated his birthday at the end of Jan, and on March 15th, we’ll be celebrating again — his 10 year anniversary with the company!!
Star Employee Juan (left) Celebrating His 31st Birthday
In his 10 year tenure, Juan has helped staged well over 3000 homes all around the Bay Area; He knows the every short cut and back road from Peninsula to East Bay and can point out homes he help staged at almost every intersection. Juan has an amazing memory and is the master of our warehouse, he knows exactly where to find anything, and can pull out any specific painting from our collection of ~1000 prints stored along the 120′ long wall!
Juan’s experience is a huge help to our business, he remembers which painting looks well with the furniture the designers picked and can literally stage a home all by himself! It is hard to find anyone who works harder than Juan. He is always punctual, always upbeat, and always pays attention to safety and details. Juan and the rest of our team of designers and installers are the soul of our company, they are One Two Six Design, they are the reason why we are still around after 10 years!
Thank you Juan for you hard work and dedications!
