Home Staging services provided in San Francisco bay area, based in San Mateo County

As the housing market continues to bounce back, it is becoming more and more competitive for sellers. Help your home sell faster by captivating buyers at first glance with impeccable curb appeal. Here are seven ways you can make your house stand out from the competition:

Groom the Garden

Unless there’s snow on the ground or it is dead winter, there is no reason your landscape shouldn’t be lush and colorful. Incorporate color with annual plants, planting them throughout the yard as well as in window boxes and in pots flanking the front door. Landscape designer Sherri Silver recently told FrontDoor.com that planting artificial flowersis never acceptable. If it’s too cold for plants to survive, Silver recommends adding fresh mulch to garden beds to brighten them up. Be sure to pull any weeds and get rid of any dead leaves and debris before your first showing.

Think Like a Buyer

In order to make your home memorable for buyers, you have to think like one. Inspect the exterior of your home with a critical eye, making a list of anything that doesn’t look as good as it could. Are you missing a few roof tiles? Is your landscaping covered in dead leaves and debris? Does the front door look dull? Make note of anything that needs to be cleaned, repaired or replaced.

Update Lighting

A well-lit yard changes the welcoming aura of a house. Take an inventory of your landscape lighting including replacing any bulbs and cleaning the fixtures to ensure your lighting scheme is balanced and polished. If extreme weather has gotten the best of your fixtures, replace them with new outdoor lights at Kichler Superstore, which offers a variety of styles including path lights and wall-mounted lanterns. Create a few focal points with lighting, drawing attention to the front door and landscape features such as a unique tree or sculpture.

Replace Front Door

The front door sets the stage for whether or not buyers feel welcomed into your home. If your door is over 10 years old or has excessive wear and tear, now is the time to upgrade to a new door. Opt for a steel, fiberglass or solid wood door. Online, Fox News real estate experts note that it’s best to choose a new door that conveys a sense of security, which is an important selling point for home buyers.

Refresh House Numbers

Replace your house numbers if they are difficult to read, dingy or faded. Consider hanging them in a different spot where they will be more visible. If a potential buyer has trouble finding your house because they can’t see the house number, you may have a strike against you from the start. When selecting new numbers, consider the style of your home and get numbers that complement that style.

Wash Windows

Sparkling clean windows are a must when welcoming potential buyers into your home. If hiring a professional isn’t in your budget, you can mimic their technique to get similar results. You’ll need a bucket of hot water, a window scrubber, various sizes of squeegees, liquid dish soap and a few surgical towels. Surgical towels are better than other towels because they are lint-free, highly absorbent and won’t leave streaks. Check out the Family Handyman window washing guidefor step-by-step advice and tips.

Clean the Driveway

Sweep dirt and debris from your driveway and hose it off using the highest spray setting. If it still looks stained, rent a pressure-washing machine to scour away stains and refresh the look of your driveway.

This post is a guest post contributed by digitalpros.com

Every year, home owners like to change up the interior design style of their house to reflect the trends of the time. With so much emphasis on energy efficiency, renewable living and the environment lately, it seems like the “go green” concept has become not only a social movement, but a design fad. There’s never been a better time to bust out the paint buckets and rollers and get with the green-frenzy. Decide on tones, grab some help from your friends and start getting your home ready for a fresh new 2013.

Ultramarine Green

A gigantic aquarium in your living room is great for ocean fans, but all of the planning and upkeep just might not be worth the hassle. Instead, go with an ocean theme, and use aquamarine tones to paint cabinets, wall sections, or to use as window treatment themes for your shades. You can accessorize your house with all kinds of sea-related imagery such as seashells, coral reef parts, sea glass and starfish. Buy mirrors and deck them out in green and blue buttons, sea glass and bottle caps to give a rustic, stranded-island feel. Hang the mirrors on your wall to compliment your new ocean-themed room.

Chartreuse

If you’re going for fun this coming year, try Spring-inspired chartreuse. It’s bright, upbeat tone makes it the perfect candidate for those looking to have an open, airy, welcoming vibe. Using chartreuse on selected wall panels in your foyer, kitchen and living room will send guests a very welcoming message, making them eager to spend time in your home. Using it on concrete walls alongside your garden can be a perfect compliment to your greenery.

Jade

While aquamarine has more of a turquoise tone, jade is a bit on the lighter end. This relaxing, mint-resembling type of green looks great with white, brown, blue, cream and gray. Houzz recommends using jade in bathrooms or spas for a cool, soothing and sophisticated look. Your guests will be sure to feel enchanted when entering your elegant jade palace for some laid-back lounging. You can also incorporate the color around your Zen garden. The way it can shine among those dark chocolate browns, onyx and and deep greens can be magical.

Army Green

Army green is fun as it can evoke feelings of national pride and also be used as a way to make your house look earthy, daring and jungle-like. Go for an army green bedroom theme with dark greens, dark browns and tans. A few grays and whites will contribute nice touches to the theme as well. An army green headboard alongside a tan wall, with green and brown bedding can look fun and camouflaged while also sophisticated and classy.

Olive

Olive is warm and fresh, as well as deep and exotic. Something unique about olive is its ability to look mysterious while still having a cool, fun light-heartedness to it. You have our permission to go crazy with this color in your home. Create a swingin’ lounge atmosphere by painting selected living room walls olive, while giving your cabinets a cream color. This look goes great with a wide variety of styles, especially wooden floors and steel kitchen surfaces. You may even be inspired to shake up some martinis for your guests. 2013 is sure to be the “Year of the Olive!”

These ideas for adding touches of green to your home should give you a good start. We encourage you to go green in both interior design and development, and show your guests that being earth friendly can also mean being artistic and creative. There’s no better way to liven up your house than with the color that resembles life itself.

***This is a guest post by DigitalPros

Professional home staging is the key for home sellers to get a competitive advantage in real estate markets of the world that are performing not so well. Home staging draws more prospective buyers to your house by turning your “OK” place into a “wow” house.

All home sellers want to get the best price for their homes and reduce the time on the market. You can do just that by turning your house into a show home by downplaying its weaknesses and highlighting its strengths.

For sellers, who want to sell their home quickly and at the maximum price, they have to dress their property up to enhance its presentation and appearance. For this purpose, they will have to think like buyers. Here are a few quick ways of tips for reducing your home’s time in the market.

Change your attitude

When you have decided to sell your home, you should stop treating it as your home. Think it was an investment and now is the time it is going to encash. Adopt “you attitude” i.e. keep yourself at the place of your buyer and identify how you can move on to better things that may appeal to your buyers.

Make your house bright

It’s natural that we all get attracted to bright and well lit up things, so make sufficient lighting arrangements in every room by adding lamps and lighting fixtures. When buyers visit the property, make sure to open all the blinds or curtains. If you have dark walls, which absorb light, a floor lamp would be a good investment that lights up the entire room.

Make your house look spacious

You can make it look bigger and better even if your house is not spacious through some space optimization tactics. Identify which rooms need repainting and then paint them in fresh and neutral colours. Do not go for the dark colours for entrance and livings rooms because they make your property look smaller in size. Moreover, depersonalize your property by removing your personal things and use right size furniture according to the size of the space.

Depersonalize and clean your house

Spend a lot of time in de-cluttering and cleaning your house. Remove all unnecessary items like utensils, appliances, kitchen items, books, photos, racks, stands and other things that make your house look small. Clean all the things thoroughly for instance, if your carpet has not been washed for ages then it is a wise idea to get it dry-cleaned. Also dust fans, windows, ceilings, and cupboards properly.

Fix structural issues

Broken, chipped and missing tiles, door locks, windowpanes, handles and moth-eaten furniture can ruin any deal for you in a fraction of a second. This is the main point of consideration for the buyers because they never want to spend extra money on repairing and maintenance. Take out the time to fix all such structural issues, which you never had time to fix before. If you are offering a serviced property, make sure to check out if all the fans, air conditioners and heating equipments are in good shape.

Refresh your house

You can refresh your house without any need of remodelling by just adding new fixtures, changing faucets and the colours of the cabinets. Make sure that the bedrooms appeal to both the sexes and for that choose appropriate colours for the bed sheets and decorative pillows. Add pictures on the walls according to the scheme of the rooms, some fresh flowers and candles to make a home warm, cosy and welcoming.

Work on the entrance

Remember, first impression is the last impressions and at times, first look is all it takes for buyers to decide whether or not they’re going to buy the house. So, it is important that you tend to your garden, mow the grass, trim the bush and clear your sidewalk. You can also add some lawn furniture according to the size of the lawn. Properly sweep the main entrance, walkways, porch, railings, and steps and add beautiful potted plants to curb the appeal in the first look.

This post is written by Susan, a Dubai Property and real estate marketing expert. She writes frequently on the topics related to Dubai agencies and property management.

Color Trends and Inspiration

Chic Color Combo – Pink, White, and Grey I have never used a lot of pink in my home decor, even my four-year-old daughter’s room is mostly apple green, but right now I am loving the stylish combination of pink, grey and white. Using pink accents to pop out against neutral grey and white seems to create a look that is polished and playful. (And pretty close to perfection…)

Staging Industry

Accessorizing This polished brass vessel (below) holds a black candle from D.L. & Co. that is one of my favorites! Isn’t the skull super cool?? The scent of the candle is made up of opium poppy, a blend Madagascar vanilla, green pepper, pink lotus, and perilla absolute. It is just amazing! Available at Barneys New York.

Style Tips and Tricks

Fireplace Transformation As a renter, it’s so easy to forget that many people are taking steps to actively and dramatically alter the environment they live in. I love being reminded of this fact, and I’m definitely storing inspiration for when I live in a place where I can be a bit more hands on. I can’t wait! When Alice and her husband recently decided to renovate their apartment, the one thing they knew had to go was this 80s brick fireplace tucked into the corner.

Property of the Week

Unexpected Guests it’s been a shamefully long time since we’ve had unexpected guests, but today we’ve got a great one. i’m a big fan of our guest, laure joliet’s interior photography, and her fabulous sense of style, so i’m excited to share her 450 square foot apartment in Echo Park, Los Angeles. talk about small spaces, big style — laure’s 1920′s bungalow is all that and more. spared down and stylish, laure shares her cozy mid-century modern space with Hazelnut, her beautiful Abyssinian cat.

Local Faves and Raves

Why Buyers Buy in Bernal Heights I could talk about the inherent stability of the San Francisco real estate market, the concentration of single family homes in Bernal Heights…yada yada, but I’ve said that all before. Instead, I’ll just share my thoughts, as both a resident and real estate professional, as to why folks continue to choose Bernal Heights when shopping for a home.

A dinner table with no flare? Bare kitchen counter? Unwelcoming entry way? A unique centerpiece is kind of misnamed — it can liven up nooks and crannies, welcome prospective homebuyers, and bring together a living room with just the right placement. AND…here are some ideas to show that it doesn’t always have to be the ho-hum floral arrangement that you are used to seeing — be creative, you would be surprised at what things you can use to put together the perfect center stage, anywhere in a staged room.

Here are a few of our favorites:

Try a collection of like colored items: vases, nick-nacks, frames. They can give an otherwise boring (but beautiful) plant a little something extra.

Love this green idea: Recycle cans as flower vases for a charming and chic look. Freshly cut flowers in bright colors — and you can’t even tell that these veggies might have been last night’s dinner.

Candles are a classic centerpiece to dress up any dinner or side table — but adding gourds, pinecones, or anything from the outdoors can help add a seasonal theme to the staging.

A terrarium is a perfect “to-go” option — you can use this one again and again since it’s compact. Give it a name and it can be your new favorite staging pet.

These little ornaments are fun to make, can be custom made to match existing decor, and are cute to look at. In collections of two or three, you easily have a nice coffee table arrangement.

This “wish tree” might have been designed for a wedding reception — but think of the possibilities: you can use it to hang business cards (for the realtor OR the stager), small cards with a QR code to the house listing on the web, or even share happy home sayings for the home buyers!

Image Sources: HGTV, Bridalcheek, Barn Furniture,My Designology, Home Made Simple