This is a photo taken from the top of the beautiful winding stair case to the second floor. Nothing was spared in construction of this home!

As you can see this home is very light and bright and makes extensive use of lots of windows.

Notes from the listing agent:

Gorgeous South Facing 2012 Brand New Home located in a great location of Arcadia. This home features 4 bedrooms suites and 4.5 baths, library,living room, formal dining room, and large family room looking into a spacious and private yard. The kitchen has professional stainless steel appliances, beautiful granite counter tops as well as wok room and breakfast nook. This home has a spacious family room for cozy everyday living and a wet bar on the side. There is one bedroom suite downstairs perfect for in laws. The master suite has a huge walk in closet and beautiful bath decorated with imported Spanish tiles, jacuzzi tub, and dual sinks. Other features include : balcony, upstairs loft, 2 car attached garage,laundry room and powder room. Highland Oaks Elementary/Foothills Middle School (enrollment subject to the School District’s availability)

This beautiful home is located at 319 E. Haven, Arcadia. MLS # A12019583. Listed at $1,628,000. For more information, contact the listing agent, Rebecca Lau (626)318-1796.

Click here to see photos of our other Arcadia home staging projects

Click here to see photos of our other Luxury home staging projects

We staged this very nice 3 bedroom, 1 bath home in La Crescenta for a real estate investor we work with often. She knows the value of working with the right home stager (The last home we staged for her went into escrow 1 week after staging and is set to close shortly).

I love to show off the details of homes we stage. I really like the tile our investor used, so I did a detail photo for her to use in her marketing.

Here’s the real estate listing notes from the MLS:

STANDARD SALE ~ Move quickly on this affordable yet completely remodeled and upgraded home located in the award winning Glendale Unified School District. If you are looking for move-in condition, this is it! The brand new custom kitchen boasts stainless steel appliances, granite countertops, and new cabinetry. This beautiful home also has brand new Milgard dual-paned vinyl windows, new copper plumbing, new furnace, and a new roof. All the rooms are accentuated with custom paint, new flooring, and striking white baseboards. Additionally, the bathroom has been completely redone from top to bottom. The detached garage offers additional workspace and storage to suit everyone’s needs. There is also a new custom deck offering a perfect outdoor living space to sit and enjoy the mountain views. Front and back yards have new grass, automatic sprinklers, and landscaping for your private backyard living.

This home is located at 2919 Frances Ave. La Crescenta, CA. MLS #S687580 and is currently listed at $465,000.

Moving Mountains Design provides big, beautiful professional quality photos of all the homes we stage.  We want the homes we stage to stand out, both on the internet, the MLS and in the marketing materials. We provide these photos free of charge to the homeowner and the listing agent when you hire us to stage.

I don’t know about you, but I’m always impressed when someone puts in a little extra effort to boost the curb appeal of a home. It makes the home more memorable, and implies that the homeowner has taken extra special care of the home.  I thought it would take a lot of measuring and planning to create a stripe pattern in a lawn, but it turns out, its not that difficult to create those stripe patterns in your grass. You can do it with a standard lawn mower, or even a rake,  just by pushing your mower (or raking) in the pattern you desire. The goal is to get the grass to lay over in one direction or another to create the pattern. Grass laying over towards you will look lighter in color, while grass laying over away from you will look darker. The longer the grass (2″ is optimal) the more distinct the pattern.

You can get more impressive results, with some professional tools like a “grass brush” attached to your mower.

Here’s a video I found on a website VanWall.com, a lawn and garden equipment website:

Not many homes have lawn or grassy areas as large as a professional baseball or football stadium or a golf course, but this technique will work with smaller lawns as well.

I can’t overstress the importance of curb appeal when selling your home. The first place home buyers will see your home is on the MLS or on other real estate listing websites. 99.9% of the time there will be photos of the front and back yard (or at least there should be). Any effort you expend to make your home stand out in the sea of pictures on the MLS is a good thing and should result in more showings.

©2012 Moving Mountains Design

In late December 2011, I was hired for a home staging consultation for a home located off Beverly Glen, just blocks from Los Angeles Country Club. My home staging consultation was a Christmas gift from the husband to his wife. What a thoughtful Christmas gift! The home had been listed for several months in 2011 with no sale. They were tired of their house sitting unsold, so they decided to make the leap and hire a home stager to help them get their home ready for sale.

This past week, the homeowners let me know that they had completed the list of recommendations I had made, and they were ready to put their home on the market. They must have worked night and day, because everything looked great! The homeowners had done an awesome job of following my instructions. As the homeowners were planning to live in the home while it was on the market (occupied home staging), and their furniture was quite lovely, we staged using a mix of their furniture (I brought in a daybed), my lamps and accessories.

As you can see, this home has beautiful Spanish Revival detailing, yet it has been tastefully remodeled to incorporate modern living and technology.

Here’s info from the listing agent:

Beautiful classic Spanish home that has been tastefully updated. This home features three bedrooms upstairs and two plus den/family downstairs with hardwood floors, custom lighting, newer kitchen with granite, stainless steel appliances, remodeled second floor with spacious master suite with beamed ceiling and steam shower. Garage converted to art studio and work shop. Outdoor landscaping installed in 2010 with extensive play area, outside kitchen, pergola, fountain, fencing and landscaping.

Located at 1627 Pandora Ave. Los Angeles 90024, the first open house will be on Sunday, with the Brokers’ Caravan on Tuesday 1/31/12.

For more information, contact the listing agent, Murray Weisberg, Sothebys Realty at (310) 481-6260.

Do you have a Los Angeles or Pasadena home you want to sell quickly and for the most money? Call Michelle @ Moving Mountains Design (626)385-8852, Los Angeles’ best home stager!

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It seems to me, anyone seeing those photos on-line is not going to be in a rush to purchase those homes.

Since more than 80% of home buyers are searching on-line before going out to look at homes, the photos your real estate agent posts on the MLS are of the highest importance in driving home buyer traffic to see your home.

Did you know that Moving Mountains Design provides big, beautiful, professional-quality photos of the homes we stage, for use in marketing the home on the MLS and print marketing? You can check out our photos in our home staging portfolio or in many of our blog posts. Whether your home requires vacant home staging or occupied home staging, when we stage a home, or provide a home staging consultation, we work doubly hard with  home owners to ensure that their home appears at its best, both online and in person. We want your home to sell faster and at the highest price!

Would you like to get an estimate for staging your home? Just click here: How much does home staging cost?