Stager vs. Stager

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)

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SOLD! Heap of Good News!

We have been working very hard to keep up with the market lately, houses are moving very fast these days.  In little over two weeks since my last SOLD blog entry, we now have a heap of sold properties that needs to be announced.

  1. La Paloma, Los Altos Hills: This is a $7,000,000, 6 bedroom, 5+ bath, three level estate situated in one of the most prestigious neighborhoods in the Bay Area. Salt water pool, waterfall, you name it, this place has it! (SOLD in 7 days!!)
    La Paloma 1
  2. Cherrybrooke Common, San Leandro: Our investor friend has done it again! David fixed up this cozy 4 bedroom single family house, had us stage it, and sold it all within a month! (SOLD in 2 weeks!)
  3. Tyrella Ave, Mountain View: A charming townhouse conveniently located close to the thumping Mountain View downtown, with easy access to Highway 85, 101 and 237 (SOLD in 8 days!)
  4. Aruba Ln, Foster City: Only steps away from the water, within miles away from the happening San Mateo downtown (Sold in 1 month!)
  5. Williams St., Palo Alto: Freshly renovated, cozy home near Stanford (SOLD less than 2 weeks!)
  6. Campbell Rd., Los Altos: Very functional layout, this home sitting on a large lot walking distance from the Village (SOLD in 6 days!)
  7. Firebird Way, Sunnyvale: Move in ready, bright home with Cupertino School (SOLD in 7 days!)
  8. Terra Bella Dr. Cupertino: A home in the Monta Vista area of Cupertino (SOLD in 11 days!)
  9. Saranac Dr. Sunnyvale: A spanish styled gated single family, with glistering pool and large backyard (SOLD in 11 days!)
  10. Kensington Cir. Los Altos: Long private driveway leading to this magnificent home hidden behind mature oaks, wrapped around floor plan puts focus on the HUGE backyard and its olympic size pool (SOLD in 7 days!!)
  11. Sold!

  12. Blackwood Terr. Sunnyvale: Large townhouse located near the center of Sunnyvale (SOLD in 2 weeks!)
  13. Kennewick Dr. Sunnyvale: Cul-de-sac home on a 13,000 sq ft lot! Pool, BBQ, garden, new roof… new owners can move in and enjoy this gorgeous home right away! (SOLD in 5 days!!)
  14. Orchard Ave. Mountain View: Across the street from Castro st, downtown Mountain View!! (SOLD in 7 days!)
  15. Live Oak Ave. Menlo Park: Charming home with two kitchens! and large basement in the Allied Arts neighborhood, two blocks away from downtown Menlo Park (SOLD in 18 days!!)
  16. Hayfield Ct. Saratoga: Over $4,000,000 worth of reasons, this resort-like home is located in a gated community in Saratoga, with easy access to the highway-85. Huge windows throughout the house, stone outlined pool and a full size tennis court makes this a magazine front-cover worthy dream home! (Sold in 2 months!)
  17. 9th Ave. Menlo Park: A private-like drive leads up to this spacious two story home (SOLD in 5 days!!)

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A Little Update

Haven’t updated this blog in two weeks, if it wasn’t for the automatic Twitter digest, this page would have been static for the past half month! What a shame, as we have done a lot of exciting projects in March!!

2009 has been fast paced, and March has been especially exciting! We worked on brand new construction on a historical lot in Los Altos, new homes in Pacifica with great views of the ocean, fantastic condos in Palo Alto, and huge mansion in the hills of Saratoga… all these and many other memorable projects all throughout the Bay Area!

I spent few hours to pull out and organized some photos for these projects, and used them to updated our main site’s front page, the Before & After section, as well as the Portfolio section of this blog. I just love looking at the before & after photos, the transformation is always amusing to me! I need to put up more of them on our site…

Okay, that’s it for now, just wanted to write a quick update. It is going to be another busy week ahead, we just got the words over the weekend that few more properties (we staged) are sold! Love hearing these great news!!

Happy Monday everyone!

Before

Before

After

After

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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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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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