Emma Vargas, Simply Staging

A house is made up of many spaces, some are impossible to mistake for anything else because of what they have in them, such as the kitchen and bathrooms. However, a house also has spaces that can be whatever you want them to be. Who says that rooms have to be what the builder originally intended them to be? The house belongs to you now, so you can do what you want with it and use it however you wish.

As a Staging Professional, I've seen homeowners do some pretty wild and imaginative things with their extra rooms. For example, "formal" living rooms across America (I'm only an expert in my area, but I'm guessing that it happens everywhere else too) are being used less and less for anything but formal living. Instead today's younger generations prefer to use these spaces for other, which to them seem like more, practical reasons. I've seen living rooms turned into billiard rooms with gorgeously amazing pool tables, dart boards, beer signs, bar tables and even a complete bar, some were very tastefully done mind you. Another one was turned into a full gym with high-end exercise equipment, mirrored walls and a sauna - yes, I said sauna. How about a large dream office for the individual who works-from-home? Yup, I've seen that too. Or a kid's playroom, with giant plastic jungle gyms and other large toys (everywhere) - this is one that I see a lot. How about a music room? Or an additional bedroom? Or for the homeowner who just doesn't know what to do with their "formal" living room - a great big blank nothing room that somehow turns into the storage room! Yup, I've seen those too.

But, and this is a big one, when it comes time to sell a home, you really do need to consider what makes most sense for the majority of the prospective buyers who might be interested in seeing your home. The intent is to get as many people to see your "for sale" house as possible, so that you can increase your chances of selling. In recent years, it is estimated that between 80 to 85% of all buyers in search of a home start their search on the internet. If you plan on selling a house that has rooms that have been transformed into something outside of the norm, you could be unintentionally confusing the very buyer that you are trying to sell to.

How you live in your home, is your business. But when it's time to sell it, you have to consider changing your rooms back to their original intent, especially if you want to sell it. Your chances of creating a home that appeals to the majority of buyers on-line and in person will drastically increase if you do. And if you don't, you could possibly be sabotaging the sale of your own house.

Below is an example of a dining room that just didn't make sense. Right away there was something odd about this room upon entering it. There's a fireplace in the dining room, which for California, isn't normal; the kitchen nook and breakfast areas were right next to the formal dining room (not seen here); and notice the light way above the table - many things just didn't seem right about this room. The biggest problem for me was that there were 3 different eating areas all next to each other - kind of confusing for me, so I knew a buyer would probably be confused as well. I was able to figure out that this was probably at one time the family room. Would the buyer however, be able to figure that out? Maybe, they'd have figured it out, and maybe they wouldn't. Those that didn't, would have walked away from this house wondering where the heck the family room goes and why there were so many eating areas? They'd be dazed and confused.

Why would you want to daze and confuse a buyer? So here's what we did to help sell this house, Simply Staging recommended we move the dining room back to where it belonged, even though the homeowner thought we were crazy. You see, to her, it was much more important to have the formal dining room where it was. She'd known the dining room to be the dining room for so long that she couldn't see it any other way. So, out went the dining room and in came the family room, back where it belonged. We used what little extra furniture the homeowner had left and in the end, we managed to accomplish our goals. We removed the confusion of where the family room went and why there were 3 eating areas right next to each other.

In the end, this house never did sell, but it wasn't because it didn't look great, it was only because this homeowner only had the house on the market for less than a month before deciding that it wasn't a good time to sell. That's the excuse that the homeowner told all of us anyways, but I kind of heard it through the grapevine that part of the reason why they didn't move is because after we made the staging updates, they found out that they loved their house after all. They left the family room right where we put it and loved the way their house looked again.

Simply Staging has been offering Home Staging Solutions for both the "Vacant" and the "Not So Vacant" homes in El Dorado County and The Greater Sacramento area for more than 4 years. For a free proposal, give us a call at (530) 417-1337 and see what it takes to get your home "Sell Ready".

Simply Staging is a Premier Home Staging Company, serving the Greater Sacramento Area for more than 4 years. Our Professional stagers will prepare your home for the Real Estate market and prepare it right for you the first time so that it gets noticed by potential buyers and sells quickly.

Simply staging has mastered the art of preparing a home "for sale" through years of experience, we know what works and understand what doesn't. A buyer will simply walk away from a home that isn't prepared correctly in this over-inventoried market. If the home doesn't look good on the Internet, it'll just be another home overlooked by the almost 90% of home buyers that now use their computer for searching a home as their first stop for shopping.

It is critical that a home's decor be updated but tastefully neutral, inviting yet not too personalized, spotlessly clean and clutter-free. Why? Because this is what buyers want - PERIOD! Achieving this is no small task and this is where our staging expertise comes in handy. Not only do we know exactly what to do, but we will put together a plan of action and do it for you within a few days, so that your home can be ready for the market without hassle and worry. Or if you'd prefer, we can give you the knowledge in a detailed report with all that you'll need to do yourself to get the home ready - either way, we are here to work with you and help you all along the way. We are your home resource and experts when it comes to getting your home prepared for the Real Estate market.

Empty homes benefit from Staging as well. A house with no furnishings can appear to be cold and uninviting to the potential buyer, it takes a lot of guess work for them to envision what their things might look like in the empty spaces. Remove the confusion and doubt, stage a home with real and quality furnishings so that the buyer falls in love with the house.

Home Staging takes unique skills, an eye for detail and an understanding of buyer behavior. Although many believe they can stage with no training or experience, the results can be disasterous. Staging includes:

• Creative arrangement and space planning of room furnishings to show-off more square footage
• Drawing attention to the positives and detracting from the negatives by offering solutions
• Artful placement of accessories to enhance the home, being careful not to over do it
• Color consultations, and small budget project upgrade recommendations
• Creating a beautiful surrounding with an inviting, yet neutral atmosphere
• Use of space clearing, decluttering and organizing recommendations while home is listed
• Depersonalizing a house so that it allows the potential buyer the ability to mentally move-in
• We provide the labor and general handyman services if necessary
• Provide the seller assurance during a very stressful time that everything that can be done is being done to get a home ready
  

What it is Not...Staging is not about having to spend a lot of money on redecorating or costly home improvement projects. Staging can be accomplished using the home's existing furnishings and decor, and for less money than most would think. Staging can be applied to any home regardless of it's size, condition or location.

Contrary to what some people believe, Staging is not just a technique that is beneficial to high-end homes, it can be applied to any home which is going up for sale. Every type of home can benefit from
staging.

Why Choose Simply Staging?

We have a network of partners that will assist in all aspects of getting your home ready such as handyman services, painting, cleaning and window washing

We work within your budget and your deadlines. Tell us when you need the job done and we'll make it work.

We have over 4 years experience in the staging industry and a proven track record

We have an ever growing inventory of quality furnishings and accessories. Our rental rates are a lot more reasonable than larger furniture rental companies and we don't have long-term contracts that you have to hassle with.

Our goal is to get your house noticed right away so that it sells fast and all this without having to spend a lot of money doing it.

No Job is too small or too big, too cluttered or too empty - at Simply Staging we offer a wide variety of services to fit almost every need.

Simply Staging offers Home Staging and Design Solutions for homes in the Greater Sacramento area and El Dorado County. For a free proposal, give us a call at (530) 417-1337 and let us help you with your Real Estate Staging and Design Dilemmas.

A home owner had recently given me a call to help them prepare their home before they put it on the market sometime after the holidays. With 4 kids, ranging from ages 3 to 13, a large and loveable but untrained dog, 2 cats, and 2 busy career minded parents - What's a home owner to do? Where to start? Call a home stager for a Consultation, of course!

After meeting with me for the first time - the clients had their task list and a planned strategy in-hand. "Wow!" Is the reaction that I got from the seller, "We didn't think there was going to be this much to do." Yes home seller, you have a lot to do to get your home ready. Please follow the plan and your house will look amazing and appeal to the widest buyer market as possible, which will increase your chances of selling your home faster and possibly for more money.

The parents, the kids and even the dog (sort of) - all pitched in to do their part. Here's where my problems started with the 13 year old Teen. "Why are we doing this?" he'd say. "This is SOOOOOOOOOO Stupid. Why do I have to put all my stuff away and clean-up my room every day? I don't get why we are doing this!"

I tried, the parents tried to explain why, but to no avail. He would roll his eyeballs at anyone who tried. Thankfully, he did what we asked, but oh boy, was he hating "the stager lady" for bringing this misery into his life. His parents apologized for his behavior and I just chalked it up to hormones. As long as he cooperated, I was fine with him hating me.

Fast forward a few weeks later; mom, dad, 3 kids, the dog and "the stager lady" (that would be me); we're all sitting on the staircase of the house admiring the completed and final results of our accomplishments - the teen is not home thank goodness. The family was proud, they loved it and we knew the house was going to sell fast, as it looked a thousand times better. In walks the 13 year old teen with a skateboard in one hand and a friend behind him. His friend says "Dude. What happened to your house?" and here's what 13 year old teen said "Bro, this is the Stager Lady who made us change everything. Doesn't our house look off the chain all tricked out like this?" The friend came back with "Yeah dude, this place is crunk!"

I looked at the parents with my jaw hung open and they did absolutely nothing! What awful thing did that kid just say about me and my staging work!!!!???? I was so mad, but I'm a professional, so I left and assumed the parents would handle the situation later.

When I got back to the office, I naturally Googled "Teen Slang" because I just had to know what that awful kid said, and this is what I found.

• Off the chain (adj., cool) - very attractive. Da bomb, really good, delightful.
• Tricked Out - v. to adorn with accessories or make better. To take an average or below average object and increase its value by adding premium or above average modifications.
• Crunk (adj., awesome)

Hmmmmmm? Maybe I should change my company name from Simply Staging to "Simply Tricked Out". Probably not, but I owe that kid a big apology and it would go something like this "Like dude, my bad. I didn't realize you thought staging was tope after all. Thanks for the compliment home skillet."

• My bad (n., my mistake)
• Tope (adj., cool)
• Home skillet (n., friend)

The moral of this story: Stick to your guns, do what you do best and know that even the most resistant kind can change their mind about home staging. I think this was truly the best compliment I've received to date - even though I didn't know it at the time. It looks like I might not be so hip on the teen slang, but I am a cool "stager lady" after all.

Simply Staging has been offering Home Staging and Design Solutions for homes in El Dorado County and the Greater Sacramento area for more than 4 years. For a free proposal, give us a call at (530) 417-1337 and let us help you with your design dilemmas.

I was called in to help a family in need, in desperate need of a home that had to be prepared for the Real Estate Market, a home that they were living in and needed to be sold. The house was big, beautiful, well maintained, and only 5 years old, but the homeowners had never really bothered adding or doing anything more to it after they bought it. What I mean is, the home was pretty plain, it still had the same builder white walls, the original builder installed landscaping, barely any pictures, miss-matched, but nice furnishings - the home was not bad, in fact it was very pretty, it just wasn't anything to get excited about. In fact, it almost looked like a vacant home.

For this family, decorating just wasn't a priority and was something that didn't fit into their busy lifestyle - and that's okay. For some, a home provides shelter, a place to sleep, to eat, to store their belongings and to call their own - that's it! There are more important things in life than having to worry about updating your furnishings, walls, curtains, etc... Some people just don't care whether or not their living room furniture goes together, or that their pictures are outdated - again, that's okay because the way you live in your home is your business, but when you need to sell your home - you've got to know that how your home looks becomes the potential buyers business too.

Thankfully, even though my homeowner's didn't care how their home looked, they did have enough sense to know that as a "home seller", buyers would likely pass up their home if they were to put it on the market "As Is".

What's a home seller to do when they know that they don't have any decorating sense? Hire a professional Stager of course. As home stager's, we care how a home is presented, we'll remove the worry and stress of preparing your home for sale, especially when this is not an area of expertise for you. Our goal is not just to ensure that your home looks fantastic, but to ensure that it looks fantastic to almost every potential buyer that sees your home so that they'll fall in love with it and eventually make an offer you can't refuse.

So if how your home looks is not a priority to you Mr. Homeowner, just know that when the time comes to sell your house, you must remember that it will be a top priority to the buyer. In these tough economic times, and in this "Buyer Real Estate Market", Staging your home can make the difference between getting a fast and exciting offer versus being on the market for many, many months without a sale.

Simply Staging has been offering Home Staging and Design Solutions for homes in El Dorado County and the Greater Sacramento area for more than 4 years. For a free proposal, give us a call at (530) 417-1337 and let us help you with your design dilemmas.

This is a cute and comical post written by Simply Staging for a term that we have affectionately named the "Decorating Paralysis" syndrome. We find that some homeowners don't do anything to the inside of their homes even though they really want to very badly. With a little help from our designers, we can cure anyone of this awful, but dreaded state of being.

How bad is it? Don't worry, if you've got it, it's not fatal - but sometimes it can feel as though you will die if you have to stay at home that way any longer. Thankfully, it's not contagious - but eventually you stop inviting friends over to your home or worse yet friends stop coming over, so it can begin to feel as though people are avoiding you. But it's really not you they're avoiding, it's your house.

Are you kidding me? "Decorating Paralysis" is not officially recognized as a term by any medical field, but in the designer community, we know exactly what it is and in my expert opinion, it is a very serious problem. Some might say that it's really not that bad to live with, but others find that if you live with it long enough it can start to drive you a little mad.

What are the Symptoms? A small percentage of the population can live with the symptoms longer than most, that is if you don't mind a house with blank walls, lifeless rooms, white wall colors, unorganized messes, wrong, mismatched or old furniture, and just plain bad placement. However, most of our studies (definitely unofficial) have shown that the majority of the population with "Decorating Paralysis" don't even realize that they have it, but they do eventually realize that they can't live with it much longer and have to change their ways. If they don't, then their house suffers, the family suffers and most of all they end up hating their home and sometimes start avoiding being there for very long periods at a time.

How do you know for sure if you have it? If you find yourself saying "I just don't know what to do with the things that I have in my rooms, plus I'm afraid to commit to large purchases for fear that it is the wrong purchase and I just can't decide on a wall color because I'm afraid that it's going to be the wrong color. Instead of doing anything, I end up not doing anything at all. This is a classic case of "Decorative Paralysis".

Recommendation: Why in the world would anyone want to live with "DECORATING PARALYSIS" when there is a well known and easy cure for it?

Pick-up your phone and call your local designer, right now! We can refresh your living spaces, help you decide on the colors that will work best with your tastes in mind and save you so much time and effort in deciding what furnishings and accessories to buy that you'll be amazed with the quick and almost effortless results. It's that simple! Using Simply Staging's creativity and expertise, we will create better flow and greatly increase the visual appeal of your home. So, please give yourself a special treat this holiday season and cure yourself of this awful, but curable syndrome. You'll love the new results, your house will have never looked better and you'll love having your friends and family over to your home again.

Simply Staging has been offering Home Staging and Design Solutions for homes in El Dorado County and the Greater Sacramento area for more than 4 years. For a free proposal, give us a call at (530) 417-1337 and let us help you with your design dilemmas.