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!™

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?

Kitchens are one of the most important rooms home buyers consider when evaluating homes to buy.

A kitchen remodel can be expensive, dirty, stressful and time consuming. When buying a home, home buyers want a move in ready home, not one that’s going to cost them more money and stress.

During the home staging consultation, I made several suggestions regarding their kitchen:

• Paint the cabinets white (they had a medium brown wood stain). This would brighten the kitchen and freshen tired cabinets.
• Change the cabinet hardware to better reflect the style of the home. Cabinet hardware is like jewelry for your cabinets.
• Replace tile counters with granite or a solid surface quartz material (the homeowners had already researched the cost of granite counters)
• Replace the old sink and faucet with a new stainless undermount sink and stainless modern faucet.
• Remove 2 cabinets that had been added in an earlier remodel and didn’t match the style of the other cabinets. This also opened up this galley kitchen.
• Clean out cabinets so they were half empty and neatly arranged.
• Clean off kitchen counters of everything except what they needed to use every day (coffee maker, toaster, etc.) while their home was on the market.
• Remove window treatments that made the kitchen feel dark and small.

Here’s what the kitchen looked like before:

And here’s the kitchen after the minimal (and cost effective) remodel and home staging:

The floor tile was not changed and the walls were not repainted, thereby saving money. The kitchen now looks fresh, bright and updated. It looks clean and a pleasant place to prepare meals. And, while the kitchen is updated, it blends well with the architectural style of the home.

To see the curb appeal transformation of this home read Curb Appeal & Home Staging

Some of the changes we recommended as part of the home staging consultation:

• Remove a wall of built in cabinets that were not part of the original construction, didn’t match the architecture and made the home feel smaller
• Remove carpet from 2 bedrooms and a hall to reveal the hardwood floors beneath
• Refinish the hardwood floors
• Paint all rooms from a palette of colors provided during the consultation
• Paint the dark wood kitchen and bathroom cabinets white
• Add granite counters in the kitchen
• Remove some cabinets from the kitchen that were added after the home was built and didn’t match the existing cabinets
• Extensive landscape and garden clean up

And here’s the finished product:

In addition to a large living room and dining room, the home has an enclosed light-filled sun porch which can easily accommodate more casual seating and a casual dining area or game table.

The home has 3 bedrooms and 1.75 bathroom, plus guest quarters over the garage with another 3/4 bath.

OPEN HOUSE SCHEDULE:

Thursday, March 10, 2011 – 10 am until 2 pm
Thursday, March 10, 2011 – 5 pm until 7 pm Twilight Open House
Saturday, March 12, 2011 – 1 pm until 4 pm
Sunday, March 13, 2011 – 1 pm until 4 pm

The listing agent is Irina Netchaev, Keller Williams Pasadena. She can be reached at (626)629-8439. MLS#22149279.

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"Handyman Special"

Today’s Los Angeles Times had an article written by Kenneth R. Harney titled First-time Home Buyers Turn Fussy:

Picky, picky, picky. Are today’s first-time home buyers passing up great deals because they insist on flawless “move-in ready” houses requiring little or no changes — even at the starter-home price levels at which shoppers traditionally have been willing to factor future fix-ups and renovations into their offers?

Or are they simply reflecting market realities? They see record inventories of houses sitting unsold, they have plenty to choose from, and they may not have the money, time or inclination to do fix-ups after making the purchase.

According to the article, a Coldwell Banker survey of 300 first-time home buyers, “87% said finding a move-in ready house is important”. 87%! That’s a significant number of potential buyers.

I often tell my home staging clients “When you put your home on the market, you are entering it in a beauty contest. The best looking homes, in the best condition sell faster and usually for a higher price.” Home buyers today are more sophisticated about what to expect in homes on the market, in part thanks to shows on HGTV and other lifestyle cable channels. They’re more selective. The market is full of homes at all price points. They have lots to choose from.

In addition, home buyers don’t want an “allowance” to make repairs. They will look at the adjusted lower price as the starting point for negotiating a price that reflects the condition of the home. Are you pricing your home $5,000 lower to make up for the fact that the roof needs to be replaced. They’ll take that $5,000 and offer another $5,000 less. Most home buyers are scraping together every penny, to meet the new down-payment rules. They don’t have the money to do repairs or  the inclination to buy a home that needs repairs or is not in top condition. Why should they – they’ve got plenty to choose from.

Smart home sellers are making needed repairs, painting, replacing worn carpet and updating what needs updating to make their homes competitive. An experienced home stager can perform a comprehensive home staging consultation and create a list of what needs to be done to get your home in top selling condition. In addition, if you have any structural, mechanical  or maintenance issues you should consider hiring a professional building inspector for a pre-listing inspection. That way you are less likely to have the sale of your home torpedoed when the buyers building inspector finds something you should have fixed but didn’t.