Here’s a money saving home staging tip: hire a professional home stager for a home staging consultation and then do the recommended work yourself.

By calling Moving Mountains Design for an occupied house staging consultation, you’ll get expert advice and house selling tips at an affordable price:

1. Verbal Home Staging Consultation – We’ll walk through your home , inside and out,  and discuss the work that needs to be done to get your home in market ready condition. We can make paint color recommendations, suggest the optimal furniture layout and discuss what items need to be pre-packed or donated. You can ask any questions, show us carpet samples and paint chips you may have picked up. You take all the notes. Do the suggested work on your own schedule.
2. Comprehensive Home Staging Consultation – We walk through your home with you (including exteriors) and outline the work that needs to be done to get your home in top market ready condition, same as above.  Afterwards, I’ll email you your  custom and very specific comprehensive home staging consultation report. Your report will contain all the recommended changes and tasks that we discussed. In addition, I’ll include information about how to prepare for open houses and showings, how to stage your closets, how to stage your garden, how to stage your garage, and how to stage your kitchen cabinets. Once again you save money by doing the recommended work yourself.

Once you’ve completed all or part of the suggestions in your Home Staging Consultation, the Moving Mountains Design team will come in and complete any portion of the work you would like. Our services are completely a la carte. The more work you do yourself, the more money you will save. 

 Here’s what a recent Pasadena home staging consultation client had to say:

…The best decision we made in this whole process was hiring you. It’s no exaggeration to say that we couldn’t have gotten any of this done without you — we didn’t even know where to begin.

We also offer cost-effective interior design, decorating or redesign consultations. Many homeowners are not planning on moving in the near future, but want to redecorate or refresh their current interior decorating. Once again, you can do all the work yourself, do some of the work and hire us to complete the project or hire us to complete your project while you put your feet up and relax. We can handle everything from light redecorating to full-on kitchen and bath remodels (we only work with licensed and insured contractors and sub-contractors!)

To schedule a home staging consultation appointment, call (626)441-8975 or send me an email at Michelle@MovingMountainsDesign.com.

Moving Mountains Design – We know what makes homes sell!™

Here’s the sales timeline for this Arcadia home we staged, located at 975 Hampton Road, Arcadia:

• Staged on July 14, 2011
• Listed on the MLS on July 15, 2011
• Entered escrow on July 31, 2011
• Sold (closed escrow) on September 2, 2011!
• List price $2,380,000
• Sale price $2,300,000 (almost 97% of asking price)
• Number of offers: 3

This house sold fast. This house sold for 97% of its list price. The homeowner was thrilled with the difference home staging had made in the sale of her home.

Call Michelle Minch today to learn how staging your Arcadia, Pasadena or Los Angeles home can help you sell faster and for a higher price. 626)441-8975.

Since WWII, the trusty Swiss Army Knife™ has been the go-to tool for soldiers, campers, fishermen, construction workers, even Hollywood Bowl goers (mainly for the corkscrew and for slicing cheese:o). I even have a Swiss Army Knife™ in my home staging tool kit!

The Swiss Champ™ has 35 tools or “features” and there’s not a lot you can’t fix or attend to with a Swiss Champ™ in your pocket.

The more experienced the home stager, the more tools she is likely to have at her disposal.

I like the think I’m the Swiss Champ™ of home stagers. Like the problem solving Swiss Army Knife™, Moving Mountains Design can be the solution for many home selling difficulties:

• Need advice on how to add umph to your front yard to enhance curb appeal? A home staging consultation will cover that
• Need a recommendation for inexpensive carpet, granite counter-tops, reliable movers or storage? I’ve got several to choose from in my contact list
• Don’t know what color to paint your living room to appeal to more buyers? I know the perfect color
• Not sure if your furniture will help or hurt the sale of your home? I can assess your furniture and let you know if I think it will advance your goal to sell your home for top dollar
• Is your home vacant and feels empty with no furniture? I can provide a few rooms or a whole house of furniture, artwork and accessories to make your home look like a model home
• Don’t have a real estate agent to list your home? I’ve worked or interacted with 100′s, all over Los Angeles, Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley and I know who does a good job
• Not sure if you should spend the money on remodeling your house for sale? I can tell you which upgrades should  help with a faster sale or a higher selling price
• Do you need to sell your home fast and as-is? I work with real estate investors that can close escrow in as little as 1 week for all cash – no banks, no mortgage approvals, no appraisals

If you’re the listing agent, I can help you with:

• Photographing your listing after staging. I’ll provide professional quality photographs of the homes we stage for use in marketing
• Writing your marketing materials
• Sending an email blast to 1,800+ real estate professionals on my mailing list
• Convincing your client of the importance of doing certain repairs, upgrades or staging in order to effect a faster sale at a higher price

As you can see, an experienced home stager has a lot in common with the trusty Swiss Army Knife™.

Smart home owners, real estate agents and real estate investors have one in their pocket. Do you?

It depends upon how quickly you want to sell your home and whether or not you want the highest possible price for it. Several of the homes we’ve staged in the past few weeks are already in escrow or have closed escrow. One San Gabriel home we staged last month had been on the market for over 6 months before staging. It went into escrow 1 day after staging!

The professional home stagers at Moving Mountains Design work to ensure the impression a potential buyer takes away after viewing your listing to be positive and long lasting.

Even if a potential buyer claims to want a fixer upper, or handyman’s special, they are more likely to choose a home, and pay more for a home, that appears to need less work, than one that is dirty, smelly or cluttered. Most people assume that if a home is dirty, smelly and/or cluttered that the current homeowner either didn’t know how to care for it or didn’t care about caring for it. They assume that there is going to be a lot of hidden damage and deferred maintenance. The buyer assumes that they are going to have to spend a lot more money before they can even move in and their offer will reflect those assumptions.

We recently staged a home in Arcadia priced at over $2M. Even though the home owner, a real estate agent, knew the home would probably be torn down, she opted to have it staged. She knew that the better the home looked, the higher the perceived value of both the home and the land. She didn’t look desperate to sell and willing to accept the first offer. And she was right…the home went under contract 1 week after staging at very close to her asking price.

If you think that hiring a professional home stager isn’t worth the money, your probably don’t know about the knowledge, support and assistance Moving Mountains Design can bring to the home selling process.

Besides being professional real estate stagers we have backgrounds in interior design, marketing and merchandising. We know how to make a home look not just good, but as good as it can possibly look. We have the resources, people and knowledge to minimize a home’s negative points and accentuate the home’s most buyer friendly attributes. Michelle Minch, owner of Moving Mountains Design has had extensive training in color, furniture placement, traffic flow and design. A professional stager knows how to work the magic that makes a house feel like a home which will appeal to the largest possible audience of potential buyers.

Is home staging worth the money? Click here to read what some of our recent clients think.

This week, the Wall Street Journal gave one of the best reasons to put your home on the market right now: Expiration of the higher federal loan guarantees.  From the article:

As an emergency measure three years ago, Congress raised to as high as $729,750 the maximum loan amount that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and federal agencies could guarantee.

That made it easier—and cheaper—for borrowers in pricey housing markets to obtain mortgages, because the government guarantees that investors receive payments on those mortgages even if homeowners default.

What does this mean if you’re going to list your Los Angeles home for sale?

Very simply, it means it will be harder for home buyers to get a conventional mortgage (isn’t it difficult enough already?) if they will need a mortgage of more than $625,500. In higher priced markets, like Los Angeles and New York, the top guarantee limit will be $625,500. It will be much lower in smaller or lower priced markets. Government agencies, like Fannie Mae, FHA and Freddie Mac, stand behind more than 90% of mortgage loans in the United States. If a buyer needs a loan larger that $625,500, then they’ll have to get a JUMBO loan, resulting in higher interest rates, and possibly higher down payment requirements. These larger loans are also known as “non-conforming”.

The new mortgage loan guarantee limits are scheduled to take effect October 1.

Predictably, mortgage lenders will probably stop accepting non-conforming loan applications several weeks prior to the change in order to be sure they can close the loan prior to the October 1 deadline.

So, if you’re thinking of listing your Los Angeles home for sale in the near future, now would be the best time to do so.

You can read the full Wall Street Journal article here: Sellers Brace For New Mortgage Caps

Wondering why a home stager would be writing about mortgage news?

When listing your home for sale, the best thing you can to to assist in a speedy sale, for the best price, is to get a home staging consultation by a professional home stager.

A home staging consultation will provide you with a road map for preparing your home for sale so it is appealing to the greatest number of potential buyers. The greater your buyer pool, the greater your chance of selling your home quickly and more profitably.

If you need help preparing your Los Angeles, Pasadena or Arcadia home for sale, please call Michelle at (626)385-8852. We know what makes homes sell!™