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

OMG! We are in the WALL STREET JOURNAL TODAY!

This is very exciting!!! A client called us this morning and said: “Do you know you are in Wall Street Journal today?!”

See below for the WSJ mention! Or click the link to read the article: Best Way to Sell a House: Desperate Times, Desperate Measures

October 2010

The Examiner

Team Staged4more had a great time at the WCR San Mateo’s chapter’s annual wine event this year. And it was such a pleasant surprise to see us in the newspaper the following Sunday in Examiner’s real estate section! [click on image below to see the larger fine print]

August 1, 2009

CBS 5 News

Our founder and General Manager Cindy was filmed on CBS 5 News for our sister company EcoJoe.

Crazy, Crazy Week: 88 King Street SF & HGTV

This week has been a very hectic one.

Basically any day before Tax day on Tuesday was INSANE. By 3pm on 4/15, my office looked like a bomb had exploded and there were paper and envelopes and tax return forms everywhere on the floor and all over my desk. Right after I finished up with taxes, I jetted over to San Francisco to my furniture vendors to pick up some inventory.

Then off to leadership meeting with the lovely ladies at pow.wow women’s network and had some fantastic networking time afterwards at Candy Bar. (LOVE their desserts! You should definitely try: Chevre Cheesecake coconut sorbet / nicoise olive caramel, Blood Orange Baked Alaska candied fennel / honey comb. May I just say that Fourme D’Ambert Panna Cotta caramel dates / cinnamon toast is a must on my list from now on. I have never had cheese panna cotta, but it worked so divinely with the caramel & cinnamon toast.)

Wednesday I staged #1106, 88 King Street, San Francisco. Very beautiful building with great finishes and awesome outdoor spaces & pool. It also is situated right across the street from the AT&T ball park. I didn’t realize Wednesday was game day until I got there and seeing all these Giants fans down the street. Game day parking made the job that much more interesting — me and my assistant spent 1 hour to re-park our cars. We actually spent most time loading and unloading, shuttling stuff through the 2 towers and looking for parking than the actual staging time! Moments like circling around for 45 minutes for parking, or paying $3 for 1 hour meter parking really make me feel blessed I now live in peninsula where we have ample parking without the worrying about meter maids.

Here is a preview of what we did on Wednesday, more before & after will come later:

Afterward I had a really fun meeting for planning RE BarCamp with Brad Coy of San Francisco Real Estate Services, Eric Bryant of Geek Estate Blog, RE Coach, Staycee G. of Green Valley Prudential, Pat Kitano of Transparent RE blog. It was really a great and exciting time to talk about social media, real estate. (Staycee, if you are reading this, you SO have to come to BarCamp now!)

RE Bar Camp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees. Visit the wiki for more information.

Today, was a rather insane day. I staged 1.5 houses for HGTV (why 1.5? Long story, that’s another blog ).

Overall it went well, but I completely spaced out and forgot my camera. It was stressful but colorful and interesting. Hey, I am just always happy to be staging. I will post more before & afters soon!

Cheers,

Cindy

How to Earn an Extra Income by Becoming a Home Stager (Cindy’s Guest Blog @ FreeMoneyFinance)

While FreeMoneyFinance is taking his sweet vacation, I am guest blogging several blogs on Staging:

If you missed the previous entries:
*Quick & Cheap Tips for Selling Your Home

When FMF first suggested this topic I was frankly a little hesitant to write it. I have been a professional stager for about 2 years now and have seen quite a few newbies who never took off in their businesses or stagers left the business after couple years. It’s a high turnover business, like any job in real estate industry. The main reason for such high turnover is that people don’t have the right expectations coming into the industry. HGTV has made it very glamorous and seemingly easy to do, but the daily grinds of running your small business, liabilities issues, administrative tasks, taxation issues, inventory upkeep, time management and personnel management, prospecting, marketing, PR, etc. can kill any aspiring professional very easily. I have seen quite a few jumped into the industry and had no clue what they were doing whether in staging or running a small business or both, and consequently hurt themselves and their clients along the way. In the long run, that does hurt the industry and made it difficult to work with clients sometimes when they have the misconceptions or already got burned by previous bad staging experiences.

That said, it is actually very easy to become a home stager, that’s why there is a significant increase of stagers on the current market.

Unfortunately there are neither ethics nor regulations that set standards for stagers. That means essentially anyone can print up a business card and set up a website then call herself/himself a stager. Working as a stager can be good money, as we have seen on shows like Million Dollar Listings where stagers charge $30,000 to stage a home (Although in general, that’s not the case. It varies by market.). It is also fabulous to work for yourself. It certainly is a creative job.

Here are a basic ways you can earn side income as a stager:

1. Write consultation reports: Consultation reports are basically DIY reports for the sellers. You will visit the home, write down detailed notes and instructions for transforming their home, and have the homeowners stage the homes themselves. You can also include a visit so you can make sure the homeowners are staging it according to your instructions, moreover, they actually did it. Sometimes sellers don’t feel motivated to stage it so they may only do part of it. Unfortunately, the entire home is for sale, not just “part of it,” so it’s good to pay a visit to make sure they actually did what you said they should do.
2. Redesign homes to live/sell: You have seen it on HGTV and basically you come into the home and use their existing furnishings and accessories to stage. When sellers are strapped for cash, you gotta use what they’ve got. Many believe that staging is about moving all the furniture out and then moving in stager’s furniture. NO. Staging doesn’t have to be costly and I personally don’t believe that the sellers should spend more than they should to get their home sold. It’s a waste of monetary resources and everyone’s time. Sometimes when homeowners don’t have accessories at all, or theirs are outdated, I do bring in my accessories to style the homes. This happens when young couples know that they would be moving in couple years, so they purposely didn’t buy anything to decorate the starter condo/home. Or senior citizens who haven’t updated their homes while they live there. I also encounter sellers who have very personal décor, such as religious symbols, nude paintings, etc. where I generally will bring in home accessories as well to neutralize the home to appeal to a broader range of buyers.
3. Click to read more at FreeMoneyFinance

A Preview of my Speech at Hire A Businesswoman Week Presented by IVWCC

It’s so cool that I got invited to speak at the first semi-annual Hire-A-Businesswoman Week (September 17 – 21, 2007) presented by the International Virtual Women’s Chamber of Commerce for women who have been in business for 5 or more years that are looking for business support and new clients to guide their company through the growth and expansion stages.

I am on schedule for Wednesday, 9/19/2007, The ABC’s of Moving Out, Moving Up, or Just Plain Moving to present the segment “Staging Your Home to Make it Sell Quicker.” During the segment, I plan to touch on important ideas behind staging, share my real life experiences working in the trenches and examples of staging to counter some common staging myths on the current market.

View the slide show via slideshare (audio coming soon)

[slideshare id=112833&doc=stage-your-home-to-sell-quicker-hire-a-businesswoman-week3054&w=425]

I am in tomorrow’s San Francisco Chroincle!!!

I am so excited. I randomly got interviewed by a chronicle reporter awhile ago and I thought that was the end of it… Little did I know, a surprise came in the form of an email. YAY! I am in the Chronicle tomorrow! I am setting my alarm so I will get a stack of papers tomorrow. Haha!

I am SO excited! My little company is growing

Here is the whole article in case you are interested: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/04/01/STAGE.TMP

Stagers: Ready for prime time
Updating furniture and interiors can pay off when it’s time to sell your home

Chuck Green, Special to The Chronicle

Sunday, April 1, 2007

When it was time to prepare her Mission District duplex for sale, Sue O’Callaghan gritted her teeth and reluctantly took the advice of those who said she needed to give it a new look.

To enhance the marketability of their building, O’Callaghan said, she and her son were encouraged by their real estate agents to make a number of changes, such as replacing her antique furniture with pieces of a different style. “They said, ‘If you’re going to put (your property) on the market, you’re going to have to make it a lot more marketable by updating certain things,’ ” she said.

O’Callaghan, 68, a retired gift shop owner who now resides in San Diego, didn’t heed their advice without some reservations. “I resisted because I didn’t want my stuff subjected to possible damage — and I think it’s really good-looking furniture. I’ve had my oriental rugs for years and they aren’t cheap. I knew I was being stubborn. I dragged my feet and moaned.” The building sold five days after it was listed. “We got our money,” she said with a chuckle. “I heard plenty of ‘I told you so’s.’ ”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 39 million Americans — or about 14 percent of the population — changed addresses in 2005. While that is one of the lowest rates in more than 50 years, long-distance moves are becoming slightly more common, the bureau reports.

Even though staging her home ultimately paid off for O’Callaghan, San Francisco resident Michele Spitz and her two siblings couldn’t be persuaded to go the same route to sell her parents’ home after they died. “We were encouraged to consider painting and removing carpets and what have you,” she said. “But it’s quite a luxurious home on Marina Boulevard. It’s dated, but it’s a unique property on a unique street.”

Spitz, who has worked in real estate marketing and sales support for many years, said she didn’t see the need to plunk down $15,000 or $20,000 on upgrades. Her instincts proved correct: The house was on the market for only 3 1/2 weeks before it was bought by someone who had previously lived in the neighborhood. “Granted, she’ll probably gut the house, but even if she hadn’t been the specific buyer, the home had shown quite well,” Spitz said.

The contemporary house had been gutted by her father when he purchased it in 1990, so it needed some updating, she said. Spitz said they rearranged some decorative items and removed some small pieces, but they were generally content with the home as it was.

“We didn’t depersonalize it like most people would,” she said. “There was an entire photo gallery on the top floor, and we decided to keep those photos.”

At first, the agent thought the photos might be distracting, but after several showings, she agreed that they added warmth to the home.

Despite Spitz’s success, Britton Jackson of Zephyr Real Estate in San Francisco, said, “When a place looks pretty, potential buyers will like it more than when it’s vacant or decorated to the sellers’ taste.” However, she added, “There’s a much more important reason to stage. San Francisco’s housing stock doesn’t follow a pattern like you’d see in the suburbs with the living room, dining room, kitchen and family room on one floor and the bedrooms upstairs. When they’re vacant, our Victorians and Edwardians can be confusing. People often wonder if a room is a bedroom, a second living room or a dining room. Staging helps to define the space and give potential buyers one idea of how to get the best use of the space.”

The main reason Karl Park agreed to stage his town home in Sausalito is that he had watched other properties in the area languish on the market. “I knew there were other units in my area on the market that sat for several months and went through successive price reductions. I decided if I was going attract a quality offer and sell my unit in the shortest possible time, I’d have to make changes,” said the 50-year-old, who invested $25,000 to $30,000 in upgrades, including placing linoleum flooring in the kitchen and one of the bathrooms, a maple hardwood floor on the entire main level and carpet in the lower living room.

“I didn’t have a burning need to spend several thousand dollars on the floors and I liked the way the house looked, but a potential buyer might not have. I knew (the work) would get the townhouse in the condition where it showed better than others in the area,” said Karl, a service manager for a car dealership, who put his unit on the market late last year and received an offer a few days later.

Burning need or not, Cindy Lin, owner and principal designer of Staged4more in Burlingame, said a staged home “helps potential buyers to move in mentally and slows down the buyers during the touring process and helps them remember the listing.” More importantly, she added, staged homes look better online, where most people start their house hunting. According to the National Association of Realtors, 80 percent of buyers shop online before actually seeing a home.

“A staged home photographs better than a vacant one or a non-staged, lived-in home because it’s more edited and styled professionally to appeal to a broader range of buyers and to showcase the pluses and spatial relations of the listings through the photograph,” noted Lin. “So staging will help to move buyers to the open houses and increase foot traffic. A staged home also sells faster in any market, no matter hot or cold.”

Even while dealing with the loss of their parents, Spitz said, she and her siblings remained resolved to sell their home as they saw fit and believed in its marketability. “Overall, this was an extremely emotional experience. But we were confident it would sell, even in a slower, less-motivated real estate market.”

Working with whatever mind-set her clients might have, Sarah Kowalczyk of McGuire Real Estate in San Francisco said she tells sellers the consequences of not making changes “Staging can often overcome problems with a home by visually offering solutions that would be difficult to conceive, such as how a space can be used,” she said. But, she added, “care must be taken of course to not overimprove for the price point.”

Karl, who plans to remain in the area, didn’t acquiesce to every change proposed by his stager. “I didn’t agree with the paint scheme the stager proposed for the main part of the house,” he said. “I preferred warmer colors.”

And O’Callaghan wasn’t at all shy about expressing her point of view. “It was a totally new concept to me and difficult,” she said. “But as much as I knew I was going to be inconvenienced, I figured let’s see how it works out. I’d suggest to anyone to just get it done and get your money.”

This article appeared on page K – 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle

woohoo! we are on curbly.com

What is Curbly? It’s a Web community for people who love where they live. Curbly is the best place to share pictures of your home, find design ideas, and get expert home-improvement advice.Everyone should have a happy, beautiful home. With the right tools and

know-how, every person can create a place that fits their personality. Curbly helps you bring out the best in your home.

To read about our Q&A for DIY home owners, go to Stage Your House to Sell for More. We also have been picked up by The Consumerist: Shoppers Bite Back. Yay!