From drab to fab in San Rafael... another Marin home staging success! Picture it SOLD! Home Staging
June 29, 2009
Before: All buyers see in this formal living room is the olive green paneling and outdated fireplace. Everyone loves grandma's house but it doesn't scream Buy Me!
After: We added color and jazzed up the space with transitional furnishings. Now, buyers can see this room's potential.
Before: In combination/"multi-purpose" rooms (like this one with family room/eating area), it can be tough for buyers to imagine where the furniture goes. 
After: Now buyers clearly can see where everything goes - and can be assured that everything fits! Plus, adding furnishings with color and texture detracts from the room's brown-and-white color scheme.
Before: The dining room is clean and has lots of light, but all buyers see is a project! There's tired wallpaper, bland carpet and an old light fixture.
After: The furniture immediately updates the room and this dining room is transformed into a pleasing space to buyers.
We give free staging bids! Let's give your house the best chance to sell. Your competition is staged - shouldn't you be?
Fireplaces are a great selling point, so if your house has one or more, you're off to a good start in terms of creating an inviting atmosphere for potential buyers. Fireplaces are usually the natural focal point in any room, so you'll want to make sure you give them lots of attention when staging the room. However, you don't want to overdo it! Dramatic yet simple is what you're going for.
Design tip: Odd numbers are pleasing to the eye, so aim to have 1, 3 or 5 items above the mantle (this could mean one large picture or mirror by itself OR one large picture or mirror flanked by a pair of decorative objects OR three pictures of varying sizes leaning against the wall with 2 decorative objects on the mantle). Keep in mind, these are just examples and aren't the only design choices you can make.
Common mistakes:
*Clutter! When there are too many items on the mantle. Less is more.
*The picture is out of scale with the size of the fireplace, either too big or too small.
*The picture is hung too high (if it's a large picture, the bottom of the frame should only be a few inches above the mantle.)
The pictures you see in this post are a few of the diverse fireplaces we staged in 2008!
If you still need convincing that home staging adds life, color and warmth to empty homes, these pictures may do the job!This was a staging project I did this week in San Rafael. The home is vacant and I was charged with staging the living room and adjoining dining room. As you can see from the Before pictures, the rooms were very beige - beige carpet, beige walls, beige fireplace. These are the first rooms you see when you walk into the house, and they are central in the home's floorplan. Left unfurnished, potential buyers would have very little to get excited about. Many people cannot envision a home's potential, especially if the home is on the cosmetic 'fixer upper' side. When homes are left empty, buyers tend to focus on the flaws - because there's just nothing else to look at.
Home staging aims to create a warm and inviting atmosphere in every home so that buyers can 'emotionally connect' to the house. Since home buying is a very emotional process, this step is key when marketing a property.
As you can see from the After photos, we added color, style and some drama to the space so buyers have that "Oooh, wow!" reaction when they walk through the door.
We can do the same for your house or listing! Just contact Picture it SOLD! Home Staging for a free staging bid. It's an investment you're likely to get back many times over.
The new year may bring new motivation for starting home improvement projects. But before you break out the sledgehammer, take a look at the results of this year's Cost v. Value Report by Remodeling magazine. The newly-released 2008 version shows you what kind of return you can expect to get on your investment when you sell, whether it's installing new windows, remodeling your bathroom or putting on an addition.
The results of this year's report underscore the value of curb appeal. For the second year in a row, the report found that exterior remodeling projects return the most money as a percentage of cost. On a regional level (San Francisco), wood deck additions and all types of siding replacements (upscale fiber cement, midrange vinyl, and upscale foam-backed vinyl) returned between 75% and 97% of project costs upon resale.
In addition to wood decks and siding, window replacements and kitchen remodels also returned a relatively high percentage of remodeling costs in the San Francisco region. All types of window replacements (high-end and mid-range wood and vinyl) returned more than 93% of costs. A minor midrange kitchen remodel returned 95.5% of costs.
Here is a link to the full report: http://www.remodeling.hw.net/2008/costvsvalue/division/pacific/city/san-francisco--ca.aspx
If you still have questions about what projects will get the most "bang for their buck" in your city - even your own neighborhood - Picture it SOLD! Home Staging can help. We serve Marin and Sonoma counties and specialize in home staging, home preparation, marketing and redesign.
Many buyers today are looking for homes with open floorplans. That is, fewer walled off spaces in the primary living areas. For example, on its main level a house may have one large room that combines the living room, dining room, kitchen and breakfast area. This is often called a great room.
In homes with open floorplans like this, where there are no full walls between the kitchen, living room and dining room, staging plays an especially important role in getting the house sold. The pictures you see here are of I house I staged this week in the Marin County city of Novato. It's a beautifully rebuilt country home with all new everything! But the quality finishes alone are not enough to sell this house. That's because wide open spaces leave too much to the imagination! If the rooms are left empty, potential buyers have a difficult time figuring out the function of each space and envisioning where the furniture is supposed to go.
As a seller, you want your house to "make sense" to potential buters. If people start to question the layout, they are likely to rule out your house and move on to the next. Keep in mind, too, that empty rooms look a lot smaller than furnished rooms. Also, without furniture, buyers tend to focus on the home's potential drawbacks instead of its positive features.
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Picture it SOLD! Home Staging and Redesign. We are professional home stagers serving Marin, Sonoma and the San Francisco Bay Area. We are based in Marin County, CA.
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