Home Staging. Designs. Life.

So I staged 2 La Mancha Millbrae on Monday and finally got a chance to process and upload all the photos and testing RealBird out!

It was really easy to upload all the photos and it's actually faster than uploading via VFlyer. I do wish both of these applications have a feature to post multiple photos concurrently. That will save me a lot of energy and time. When I uploaded the photos, it appeared to be distorted and fuzzy. But when I checked the done flyer, they all look fine. What I like about RealBird v. VFlyer is that RealBird has a slideshow feature, which I think I will start using on my own website (oy, more uploading!) for before & after photos. It is not as magical as RES of course where you can add music & captions, but I think it looks pretty darn good for its purpose. And it's FREE (music to my ears). You can also post it to your facebook account, in addition to craig's list. 

But the great thing about vFlyer is that it's cross industries where RealBird is real estate industry specific. 

Here is what the vFlyer ad looks like in Craig's list

Here is what the RealBird flyer looks like in Craig's list

Here is the embedded slide show via RealBird (or see on my blog menu on the right)

Here is the application of the RealBird Slide Show on my site www.staged4more.com 

Have a chart here (let me know if it is incorrect or anything you want me to add)

I have also been impressed by their customer services. Upon signing up, I actually received a real live person call to see if everything is working great. I also love them contacting us via AR directly to add a "home stager" category since we generally are like orphans in the industry and always have to check "the others" box. ;)

And thanks to David C's original post I Put My Listings on RealBird Tonight, So Should You!

And SUPER THANKS TO JULIET, because she was the one who got their attention to add stagers as a new category! 

Here is a link to RealBird's AR post: RealBird flies free

Starting last Wednesday, on Wednesdays are a 5-part series on Dealing with Common Seller Objections to Staging. The series will cover:

1. "I don't believe in staging"
2. "My kids are preventing me from staging"
3. "Me and significant other both work and we have no time"
4. "I don't want to pay for it"
5. "I am too busy to keep the home staged"

People may say, "Cindy Lin, you are a single gal and you have no children, of course it is easy for you to say this and that! You have no idea what we go through!" Well, what people don't know is that I have worked extensively with children from various ages when I was working for City Year Washington DC of AmeriCorps. Throughout the year, I:

• As an Executive Director of Camp City Year, I directed 15 camp staff members, 29 high school "volunteers" (more like forced volunteers by their schools to perform community services) and 100-120 campers from pre-school to 6th grade during camp
• While working as the Executive Director, I worked with problem children who were sent repeatedly to time out, which included:
• children who were violent: I had children broke into fist fights, they scratched each other with nails, punched each other. I had a girl who beated her classmate with her purse. I had a teacher's child stabbed someone with craft scissors. I also had conversations with a child's mother that explained violence was taught on purpose as a defense mechanism because in her neighborhood it's incredibly dangerous, that violence is the only defense.
  
• children who would try anything to get out of class: I had a child who peed himself on purpose several times to get out of the class. He wanted attention because he knew that we would have to call his mother for clean change of clothes, and she just had a new baby. He wasn't getting the attention that he wanted. I also talked to lots of little kids who had stomach aches but mysteriously disappeared once we offered them medicine or a shot.
  
• children who just couldn't help themselves: I had a trouble child whom I spent hours on the phone with his mother. Her child was extremely unruly, I saw him every session for some behavioral problem. I later found out on the phone that he set a fire to the neighbor's house.
• Developed and co-taught an 8-week interactive substance abuse and HIV/AIDS awareness curriculum to 1128 4th-6th graders in 15 District of Columbia Public School System (DCPS) schools.
• Revitalized, acted and delivered skit shows to 3163 DCPS 4th-6th graders.
• Educated 15 kindergartners in Beacon House Ready Set Read, an after-school literacy program.
• Worked as part of a street team that distributed safe-sex materials and education to high school kids.
  

True, I may not have a child myself, but I imagine most parents don't deal with 7 kindergarten kids crying all at the same time, while 3 kids running around with scissors trying to escape from you and think it's funny that you are chasing them and tell them to stop, and the other 5 is coloring the walls and destroying the books at the same time. Nor dealing with 35 unruly students in a classroom setting while teaching a very adult-sensitive curriculum that was highly redtaped by the school board. Nor dealing with students who told me they were going to pop me a cap to my face. Or high school and college kids telling me that they need an extra large condom instead because they are much more well endowed than normal males. 

My service year at City Year taught me a great deal about communications. Sure I was the "teacher" in the classroom, but it was my students who did most of the teaching. I learned through attempted andexperimented many different communication methods:

• Be very honest. Kids know when you are lying to them. Just because they are 5 years old, doesn't mean they are dumb. They know when you treat them like a dumb kid, they won't like it and they will act out according to it.
  
  
• Be structured & organized. Kids respond to structures. The interesting thing about traveling to different schools was that the schools where the children were unruly, screaming constantly back at you, and refused to listen were usually the schools where we showed up on the first day, the school administrator completely forgot about us or their administration was very disorganized and kept us waiting for a long time before they figured out what classrooms we were going to. If we arrived at the school where the school administrator not only came out to give us a tour, expressed their excitement about our work, and gave us an organized breakdown of the classrooms, etc., the school children were usually much more polite and listened and responded to the curriculum well. They also showed higher test scores when they take the exit exam/questionnaires. They retained the information much better than schools that had unorganized administration.
  
  
• Stand your ground. Once you let an inch slide, they will try to take the whole foot. If I let Roger goof off during this tutoring session or do less homework than usual, he will try to negotiate the same thing, if not more the next session.
  
  
• They are fearless, tough negotiators who got nothing to lose. They have nothing to lose, the worst thing is that they will hear a no. And they will be persistent. They have all the time in the world, whereas you don't. They know that and they will want to wear you out. They will use any tactic to do so, and they are not afraid to use it. Have you see children tripped and fell in playground, and then secretly scanned the surrounding? If they saw an adult watching, they started cryingimmediately. But if no one else saw it, they stood up and carry on with their play. Fascinating, huh?
  
  
• Be fair. Children are very sensitive to fairness. If I give an extra snack to someone, you will see 10 more children coming back asking for an extra one too.
  
  
• Communicate very directly, to the point where there would be no confusion. The worst thing you can do is sending them mixed signals, especially in teaching children what are good behaviors and what aren't. This is why your message must be very clear and direct. Show them if you need to in person. Do it with them make sure they understand that this is what you would like them to do.
  
  
• Be consistent. You MUST BE CONSISTENT. Again, this is about not sending them mix messages. If you do not maintain consistency, then they will find loopholes to disobey you. I am a prime example of this. As a child, I knew where the loopholes were because my parents were not on the same page on a lot of things. I got away with a lot of stuff hee hee. (But in my defense that I was the oldest child, so I have to break every rule anyway). This also goes back to the point of being organized & structure. You are basically training them a schedule and behavior patterns. My friends actually trained their newborn baby when to sleep and when to wake up and be fed. It's truly an amazing thing to watch. We were at a house warming party and they brought their child. He was sleeping like a rock where in the next room people were screaming and laughing.
  
  
• Stroke their ego. Like any adults, kids too love to be acknowledged and their egos massaged. Public humiliation is HUGE in a child's world. At the after school program, me and my teaching partner once experimented with the gold star system but we actually take away kids' stars when they misbehaved. Oh,did it backfired! Once we took away those stars. Kids were screaming twice as loud and hid under tables, wouldn't come out. At the Camp, finally an adult staff made this sign "I am on time-out" and made kids who were repeated offenders wore it. The adult staff also made the children stood in the hallway where everyone walked by to go to the next class. I saw significantly less children came back the rest of the day. Kids were teased "haha, you are on time-out. nanananana~" Kids were crying when they stood there suffering public humiliations.
  
  
• Respect -- treat them with respect to teach them respect. That includes respect for you as a parent, the guests in this home (buyers) and respect your home.
  
  
• Enlist help when you need to. You cannot by everywhere at the same time. When you need help, ask for it!

"How do these apply to staging when I have small children?"

Often times when I get asked a lot is that sellers have young children and they can't keep it organized. Or they have teenagers and are attached to their homes, schools and friends, what to do?! A lot of it is really about mindset & attitude, which will influence your attitude about your sale, and consequently affects how motivated you are to sell the house, or how motivated for you to keep it on the market. Here are a few tips that can help you stay on point while utilizing the communication methods above.

1. Plan ahead, get them involved. When you decide that you are selling, it is probably a thought process in the making. It's not often where you woke up one morning and suddenly decided that you need to sell. If you know down the line a year from now, you may be thinking of selling and moving, let you kids know. Start talking to them about it and start preparing for the possible objections that you may encounter in your selling decision. Additionally, set your intention -- what are the expectations for everyone in the family. Knowing what you are expecting will help to eliminate fear. They may be too young to understand what exactly it is going on, but they understand the sense of belonging. They wan to belong and feel included.
   
   
2. Prep them on the process, eliminate fear. One of the most emotional factor in a sale is FEAR. Whether it is your fear that your home won't sell for a profitable price or counter offers being accepted. Your family members will have the same emotion as well. It's a stressful situation to begin with, and selling with children (young or pre-teen or teen) can be significantly more stressful if your children are not on board with it. They usually object to it because of the fear of fitting in, fear of losing friends, fear of not able to adjust into the new environment. So talk to them, communicate why you are relocating and it's never too early to talk about money with your children to talk to them about investment. Once you prep them with the why and the how in the selling process, you help to eliminate any fear or element of surprise when you sell.
   
   
3. Set ground rules. Set a clear boundary and communicate it directly. When you have your home staged, it only makes sense to keep it staged, because you invested in it, correct? Children can be messy people, so create systems in advance to help them to stay organized. Pack up 80% of things that your children don't need, but don't do it by yourself. Involve your children in the packing process. Let them keep a few key and favorite toys will help them be more emotionally ready to face this selling challenge. Set aside a block of time, ask them that what they would like to keep and would like to pack. Tell them they can pick ___ (stick your own # here), and ask them to decide. During the living in staged home process, keep things organized by providing a system, such as different storage baskets that can help them organize their toys & books, etc. Teach them to put things away right after they are done with it. It will be less work on your part, and also give them a sense of responsibilities and participation in this effort.
   
   
4. Set rewards for following ground rules. Set rewards. Celebrate small victories. It will help your children to get excited about the day-to-day grind of organizing, it will also give you more time to bond. A client of mine take her 2 boys to a barber that gives them ice cream after the haircuts. They are extremely well behaved during the haircut and keep perfectly still during it because they know there is a chocolate ice cream cone coming.
   
   
5. Stay on point and focused. It's easy to slack off and easy to lose the focus. Set reminders for yourself and remind yourself your intention -- why you are doing this in the first place, what were the expectations and responsibilities that in your initial plan? Keeping the home staged is hard, but you need to make keeping your home staged part of your routine to help to make it work. If it just becomes something that you do everyday like brushing your teeth, it will be much an easier process. You need to keep to your boundaries and the expectations that you set in the beginning.
   
   
6. Get them involved in you home buying process. You are not the only one moving, are you? That's why you are reading this post ;) Bring your kids to homes you are considering buying, let them share the excitement of starting in a new space, pick their new room. Make the transition exciting for them to help them feel motivated to keep the home staged.
   
   
7. Keep reminding the why and the benefits of this whole process.

I know having children can be a trying experience. You are already exhausted from work and the last thing you want to do is to make sure they don't mess the staging up. But know that this is only temporarily and your efforts will bring you equity. This too, will pass. Having a game plan before you sell will help you to transition into selling process easier. Also setting reasonable expectations will help you to eliminate objections from your children. More importantly, ask for help when you need it. Enlist family and friends' help to babysit while you pack or help to keep an eye on things. Work with your realtor and stager, if they are any good, they should work with you on this to help your transition through the process. Also communicate with your stager about your concerns. Your stager should work with you in terms of how to make this easier. 

I personally don't do a lot of decor stuff when I redesign. I focus really on paintings to change the ambiance because those are the stuff that won't get changed during day to day living. I do tie ribbons on nice towels in the bathrooms so they know not to use them.

I ask my sellers to get

*a shower caddy -- so all they need to do is chuck it in the cabinets

*shower the night before open house so it doesn't look like someone just took a shower which sometimes can repel people

*put the show accent pillows out in the living room when it needs to be shown (i only put out 2)

*I ask what their living habits are and where they eat, so if they eat at their dining room table, the set up is very minimum. They can either eat around it haha or recreate it themselves. 

*I only put bedskirt if the bed needs it. I left their sheets if it's in good condition which most of time they are. I only bring in the "show" comforter and the matching bed pillows for them. All they need to do is take those out from their closet before show time and cover their existing sheets. 

*I also asked them to pack up a lot of items that they don't need right now. Because they are moving anyway, might as well pack now! ;) 

I hope this post, although lengthy, will help you. Feel free to share your personal experience and any criticism on this matter!

Happy selling,

Cindy 

Cindy Lin is the proud owner and principal designer of Staged4more Home Staging & Redesigns, a hands-on, customer satisfaction oriented staging and redesign company that offers flexible solutions to cater to individual seller's needs. Staged4more serves all San Francisco Bay area. To see before and after photos of Cindy's work, read her blog, ask her questions, visit www.staged4more.com 

If a random stranger emailed you to add him/her onto Friendster, Facebook, Myspace or any other social network you belong to, would you do it if he/she has a cute mug like this?

Well, an internet security company, Sophos, did tested it to 200 random facebook users, and 41% of people agreed to become Facebook friends with Freddi Staur (anagram of I D FRAUDSTER), leaking personal data.

Sophos Facebook ID Probe findings:

In the majority of cases, Freddi was able to gain access to respondents' photos of family and friends, information about likes/dislikes, hobbies, employer details and other personal facts. In addition, many users also disclosed the names of their spouses or partners, several included their complete résumés, while one user even divulged his mother's maiden name - information often requested by websites in order to retrieve account details.

As social networking become very common and acceptable even in business world, our identity become fairly transparent. Through blogging people can catch glimpses of your personality or even aspects of your personal life or your clients. Privacy is becoming a very alarming issue when it comes to identity theft.

Here are a few Cindy rules:

• When I post before photos of a staging project, I blur the faces of the people in the photos, ESPECIALLY if a child is in the photo to protect sellers' privacy and avoid potential lurkers finding out who lives in an owner-occupied home
• I don't add anyone I don't know as a friend on any social network, especially strange single men who keep pestering me after I emailed back politely and asked "Have we met?"
• I don't  reveal where my real residence is. I use ups mailbox service where my business address still appears to be a real address. Once you put your real address out there, there is potential that new clients can come by and just want to meet you.
• I don't reveal my personal email address.

I think by working in such a people-friendly business like real estate, it feels hard not to be friendly and welcoming to further my network. However, like any real relationships, whether online or in person, it still needs to have boundaries and authenticity for it to be successful and fruitful.

Cheers,

Cindy 

Starting today, on Wednesdays are a 5-part series on Dealing with Common Seller Objections to Staging.

The series will cover:

1. "I don't believe in staging"
2. "I have young children and I cannot stage"
3. "Me and significant other both work and we have no time"
4. "I don't want to pay for it"
5. "I am too busy to keep the home staged"

"I Don't Believe in Staging"

Staging is a very easy keyword to plug into listing presentations nowadays. Many media outlets have praised the wonder of home staging and its potential to sell the listings at potentially higher price, which results higher commission and equity for agent and sellers. It is also a true guarantee that good staging will move the listings off the market sooner, whether it is a hot or cold market.

However, not every time the seller is willing to go for it. They hear about all these great things about staging, they are not completely sold. In this blog, I am going to cover 3 reasons why sellers resist staging or fundamentally do not believe in staging and several remedies that agents and fellow stagers can take to persuade sellers in investing in staging.

Here are 3 reasons why sellers don't believe in staging: 

1. Seller was burned by staging before. I once dealt with a seller who was very against staging and thinks that basically it's a bunch of bull**** and was not afraid to tell that in my face and his agent's. Through the whole conversation (actually more like he screamed profanity to me), the seller was extremely agitated and aggressive toward his frustration about being asked to stage. He took it very personally that the agent and the stager, me, were dare to question his taste of furnishing and accessories. It turned out he had staged his home for sale before. The staging not only was overpriced, the result also wasn't great.
   
   
2. Seller feels weary and emotionally drained about the selling process. I got an emergency call recently from a realtor who had used me to redesign one of his listings before. He called on Tuesday and wanting to put the home on the MLS for broker's tour on Thursday of the same week. We met Tuesday at 4:30 and although the home had great furnishing pieces that I could work with, there were still a lot of clutter and personal items everywhere. It also needed accessories. Both of the sellers worked and have very young children. I submitted the proposal and contract once I finished the day and set up assistant to come for staging the next day. On Wednesday morning I got an email to discuss the proposal. We went back and forth with the sellers over the phone and sellers were still not sold on staging. The realtor was really pushing for it since it is a very tough market now in San Francisco Bay Area and they had just submitted an offer to buy another home. He knew staging will help to sell the home, even thought the home is in a great neighborhood, good size lot, he felt there are no guarantee with the housing market nowadays. But he couldn't convince the sellers to because they were already disheartened by the whole process.
   
   
3. Seller was not properly educated what staging is, what does it entail, and how much of an investment it could be financially and emotionally. Going back to the case in #2, the sellers also had unreasonable expectations of staging. They thought that with 2 people redesigning and staging the home for whole day plus accessories rental will only cost $300-$400. (300 dollars?! I can hear my fellow stagers scream at their computers now) Moreover, the sellers were not willing to keep the home staged since they have young children. They don't see the point of it.
   

Here are a few solutions that may help to ease the seller's objections:

1. Set the intention for both you as a real estate professional and your seller: What are we doing here? TO SELL THE HOUSE! Right? Once we used the word "sell," we are entering the process of selling a product. Start by setting that as the intention of your meeting with the seller. This is the first step to help sellers to start emotionally disconnect from their home. After all, once you put it on the MLS, it becomes a product that will open its door to the public. Position yourself as their professional that will help them transition to selling process. You are there to help them, you are not there to be their paperwork monkey.
   
   
2. HAVE A PLAN AND TIMELINE -- Mega corporations like Coke and Nike spend months and tons of money to plan any product launch, and the same should go for you. Have a cohesive plan up front, be prepared to help the sellers to walk through the proper steps of marketing their homes to sell. Line up all the vendors on your calendar. You wouldn't schedule virtual tour before staging, correct? At the same time, you need to give your vendors advanced notice to prepare so they can do the best they do when they show up at your door. 1-2 days are considered short notice and you may not get your desired booking dates. So start early. It never hurts to start early and be prepared, but being unprepared will cost you money. And pad yourself for emergencies. Construction tends to run longer then the contractor tells you, so be prepared. That usually will set everybody else -- stager, virtual tour videographer, etc. back. Once you prepared your sellers, they are equipped to deal with setbacks and unpleasant surprises.
   
   
3. Educate, educate, educate! We as real estate professionals are ENGROSSED with real estate lingo, jargon and a bunch of other stuff. We talk real estate all day and all night long until our significant other just wants to reach across the dinner table and put that dinner roll in our mouths. But the sellers don't know, or they know some but lack an overall understanding what selling process can entail. It can be emotionally draining, it can be physically challenging. For us, it's something we see everyday and we become so used to it sometimes we come off as being insensitive to the sellers.
   We have to educate our sellers -- why staging can help them grow their equity and how it can potentially help them sell. Staging packages the home properly so it will appeal to the mass buyers. Here is a great example of it and I use this sometimes when I talk to sellers.
   
   
   "If I were to give you a $20 bill, which one would you take? This wrinkled and crumble one with Jay's love on it?"
   
   "Or This new and crisp $20 dollar bill?!"
   
   
   
4. "Yes, yes I hear all these, but MY SELLERS DON'T LISTEN TO ME!!! I have explained...." Well, believe it or not, I learned a lot from my students when I taught kindergarten for a year. Sometimes you have to explain it differently, shed another light on it and make analogies that your seller can understand. Say your seller loves cars, ask him "If you sell your car would you just leave all your trash in the car and left the car dirty and put a sign on it?" "No, I would detail it." "Well, the same with your house!" Or your seller may be single, ask "Before you go on the date, would you shower and put on your best outfit?" "Yes!" "Well, the same with your house!" Again, we as real estate professionals know these stuff like the back of our hands, but our sellers don't. We need to be able to help them to visualize it in order to achieve the results that they want.
   
   
5. Make a check list that sellers can follow: I have seen agents giving out lists that are 10 pages long. I can just feel the sellers' excitement when they got that list! Like any GTD (getting things done) tools, you need to break these things into smaller bites so these tasks, together, don't look intimidating and helping the sellers to look for reasons to quit. One of the things that I always give out for redesign jobs is a check list of reminders. Let the sellers know that it is NOT difficult to keep the home staged even with small children. Several of my clients have done very well even with young children and others on the way. All they need to do is follow the list. 

Got more tips to share? Feel free to comment below and add your 2 cents!

Happy selling,

Cindy

Cindy Lin is the proud owner and principal designer of Staged4more Home Staging & Redesigns, a hands-on, customer satisfaction oriented staging and redesign company that offers flexible solutions to cater to individual seller's needs. Staged4more serves all San Francisco Bay area. To see before and after photos of Cindy's work, read her blog, ask her questions, visit www.staged4more.com

I came across this today on zillow about fakefurniture.com, which sells white, cardboard-shaped furniture ranging from beds, couches, chairs to dressers to help filling the vacant space. You can get

a lovely dining room table like so

for $53.65

Need a office desk? You can own one like this 

for $52.83

You can even buy a 3BR home!

Three Bedroom House
Fill a 3 bedroom home with furniture. A great way to help a buyer visualize what could be! Includes Twin Bed, Double Bed, King Bed, NightStand, Armoire/Entertainment Center, Triple Dresser/Buffet/Credenza, Desk, Corner Table, Cocktail(Coffee) Table, Dining Table, Dining/Desk Chair, Club Chair, Love Seat & Sofa.

$499.00 Price
$189.22 S&H

TOTAL:
$ 688.22 

Once the home is sold, just remove the accessories atop the cardboard furniture and fold them back up until you need them again. They are easy to transport and store. 

hmm... Frankly my clients will fire me if I stage their homes with these cardboard boxes. Although pushes come to shove, if the sellers are really strapped for cash, I suppose I can stage with cardboard furniture. But not at this price tag! I can just paint the cardboard myself, which I have seen Roger on "Sell This House" did for one of the homes where they were really strapped for cash. He painted all the cardboard boxes white and made furniture for the home...

What are your 2 cents? Would you find a staged home with cardboard furniture appealing to you?  

Cheers,

Cindy 

I found this website recently and have been having massive fun about this. I know we had a little debate here on AR in regards to to have toilet paper or not in staged homes (to see Janice Sutton's post: To toilet paper or Not toilet paper.. that is the question!). But just in case you love having the toilet paper in your staged home, here is a website that is full of origami fun. Courtesy of Origami Resource Center.

I wonder if these are looks we can duplicate with towels? But towels are a little bit soft for retaining the shape. Maybe we need to slip it some little blue pill? 

How shoe string budget are you to wear a wedding dress made entirely out of toilet paper?!

HAVE FUN! 

Blog Action Day is a blogger initiative that together, we bloggers around the world wide web voice our opinions or donates proceeds of a day to support the biggest issue that our generation will face -- environment. Protecting the environment is a huge cause nowadays. Everything we do or the choices that we make has an impact on our environment and which creates dire consequences that we cannot reverse.

As a stager, there are limited things that I can do actively, after all, most buyers respond to new/like-new furnishing and accessories and we do create a lot of waste through the process of staging. But I do what I can. I encourage the owners recycle their furnishing through various organizations like goodwill, salvation army, etc., to reduce the amount of things that end up in the landfill. I also encourage homeowners to consider green alternatives when they clean their homes, paint their homes for sale. Another way I can contribute to the cause is by writing about it so my community knows about it. 

Blogging has been a great platform for me to voice my opinions working in the real estate industry, working as a stager, running my own business, and also express my issues and concerns. Along the way, I met wonderful people that I otherwise would have not met in my lifetime. So friends, Let's participate in the Blog Action Day!

Here is the 411 on Blog Action Day:

On October 15th - Blog Action Day, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone's mind.

In its inaugural year, Blog Action Day will be co-ordinating bloggers to tackle the issue of the environment.

What Each Blogger Will Do

Bloggers can participate on Blog Action Day in one of two ways:

1. Publish a post on their blog which relates to an issue of their own choice pertaining to the environment.

   For example: A blog about money might write about how to save around the home by using environmentally friendly ideas. Similarly a blog about politics might examine what weight environmental policy holds in the political arena.

   Posts do not need to have any specific agenda, they simply need to relate to the larger issue in whatever way suits the blogger and readership. Our aim is not to promote one particular viewpoint, only to push the issue to the table for discussion.

2. Commit to donating their day’s advertising earnings to an environmental charity of their choice. There is a list of "official" Blog Action Day charities on the site, however bloggers are also free to choose an alternate environmental charity to donate to if they wish.

And that’s it.

If they choose bloggers can also promote the initiative itself. However they are also free to simply post on topic on the right day or discreetly donate to a charity without publicizing Blog Action Day.

To find out more about blog action day, visit http://blogactionday.org/ 

The secret is out! Staging is taking the real estate world by storm. It used to be that I only get called by the agents, now I get call by home sellers before they hire a real estate agent and they ask for my opinion on what to look for when I hire an agent. Home owners call me and ask for my opinions how I can stage their homes so they can be most open house ready. The sellers know they need to stage, but they don't know why. Does every home need to be staged? Why should a home be staged? When is the best time to stage?

Staging, essentially, is packaging. It's that red little bow that gets you excited at Christmas morning. You look the glistening shine of that red ribbon and you are tickled with joy because you know inside the box is something you have been waiting for. And the unknown potential of the gift excites you. Similarly, same goes with buying a home. Put yourself in the buyers shoes for a second. It's exciting, you look at home after home until you wear your agent out. You are buying your dream home, you are buying a home that can make all your dreams come true and see them realized in-- those walk in closets you have always wanted, the blue pool you want your kids to jump into during a hot summer day, and the green grassy lawns your future grandchildren will run on. Buyers want to pay the littlest money to buy the biggest, newest and prettiest house on the block and in the neighborhood. They want to have a house warming party where guests can't stop gushing about how great their new home is and how jealous they are about your new dig. So... Where does staging come in from all of this? Staging bridges the gap by helping the buyers realizing the potential of their future dream home.

Say you go look at a starter home that has a tricky floor plan, where there is a really wide hallway in between the living room and the kitchen, but everything else is great and fine. Cute neighborhood, great lot, small backyard, just a good size for a young couple. But you don't know what to do with this odd room. You will feel crazy cramped when you put a china cabinet there. It looks like a ridiculously large hallway but a tiny room that you can't do anything with. The vacant space doesn't speak to you. All you see are the dead flies in the corner of the room, every cracks on the wall, because there are nowhere else to look but down, literally. Your dream home is fading away and you quickly veto this house in your head. The rest of the home tour, you said no, no, and no. You, as a buyer, already put this home on the death sentence before you saw the rest.

Say this home is staged. Things may be a little bit different. You walk into the space, oh, there is a nice little dining set here. That looks fun. It looks intimate. Ah, how about an intimate dinner for 2, or a fun family pizza night with the young one. It's possible. There are possibilities.

Let's look at scenario 2. You walk in the home with dark moss green carpet. Oh my goddness. What is this? Ack, leaving now. The home looks outdated. But you may not know the back story behind it, where the seller lived here for a very long time until he was widowed recently. He is selling because he is moving to a senior community where he can meet other people and have an active social life. The home had gold foil mirrors and popcorn ceiling, the decor was outdated but he didn't care. It was his home, somewhere that happy memories happened. He was used to how the home looks. It was a pair of old shoes, comfortable and homey. But buyers don't see that, all they saw was the green carpet & the gold mirror tiles.

They didn't know the seller was financially strained. It took a lot of money to get the gold mirror tiles off the wall and removed the popcorn ceiling. It also took longer than they anticipated to get everything sanded down, primed and repainted. By the time they had finished removing the mirrors, scraped off the popcorn ceiling and freshly painted all the walls and ceiling, re-did the bathroom, they had hardly any funds left. They had several phone calls back and forth with their stager and the stager worked with their budget and recommended to stage the key rooms only instead of the entire home. Once the furnishing went in, the green carpet was not such an eye sore. It broke up the sea of green and people was able to see pass through it.

So, why staging? As you can tell from the stories of two real clients of mine, you can see that staging can help the potential buyers realize the space, the potential of the home, and not focusing on the less desirable traits of the home. And as you can see for yourself, the best time to stage is before it is ready to show, meaning you will only want to put a home on the market when everything is absolutely ready. Staging is about transforming a home into a listing, which becomes a product that opens its door to the masses. The sellers & agents should consider staging prior to putting the homes on the market and will NOT open their doors to the public until the listings are absolutely ready to make its winning first impressions. Well known author Malcolm Gladwell of The Tipping Point, wrote about the power of first impression in his follow up book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. He uses several real life examples to theorize that it only takes that first few blinks for the impressions to be set. Once the impression is set, people had a innate sense of directions that will guide them to see if they will accept or reject this product. So make that "blink" count.

You can truly find anything on the internet. Today I found the report How to not get tricked by staging — and potentially save $5,645 when you buy your home (PDF; 1.23 MB) published by National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents.

The gist of the report is that staging is the enemy and a good buyer's agent must steer the buyers away from staged homes, or teach them to look past all the tricks that stagers use to make the home look better than it really is. The National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents strongly feels that  staging has become the media darling of real estate industry, with mainstream TV channels such as HGTV running its shows like Designed To Sell to convince people the power of staging. It also has been a dominant topic in the real estate trade magazines and other publications. All these have been campaigned in seller's favor. So NAEBA feels that it must address the buyers' needs by exposing what staging really is and how the buyers can consequently save money when they see past the staging.

In the report, NAEBA outlines "The dangers of home staging from your position as a home buyer"

"NAEBA recommends that buyers remain cautionary about staged homes. In the real estate profession there are an abundance of stories of buyers seeing a staged home, becoming emotionally attached to it, and then paying over market value for the home. This is exactly what you want to avoid as a buyer. The emotional attachment can end up costing you thousands of dollars.

Staging also tries to minimize a home’s shortcomings. This almost always includes using small furniture to make a room look larger, particularly small dining tables and chairs and small bedroom furniture. Watch out for it! Additionally, the survey results indicate that stagers and/or home sellers often use furniture and wall stager had brought in some very nice window coverings. Unfortunately they covered up a broken window that ended up being the buyer’s problem. Often when you see a staged home you might get the impression that if the home looks this good now, it must have been well maintained. This is often false and a potentially dangerous assumption. Many times staged homes take advantage of the staging to cover up deferred maintenance issues and improper construction and repair issues. Do not assume that an attractively presented home has been well maintained.  "

At the end of the report, NAEBA also points out "'Know your enemy' resources from some of America's top staging professionals:

http://www.stagingdiva.com/ Debra Gould’s website 

http://stagedhomes.com/  Barbara Schwarz’s website 

http://www.recreatinginteriors.com/ Mary McDonald’s website 

http://www.homestagingresource.com/ Audra Slinkey’s website 

http://decoratedtosell.com/ Calie Waterhouse’s website "

I suppose it's a form of flattery that we stagers are considered as public enemy #1 by National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents. While I agree with certain parts of the report such that sellers will be able to sell their home faster and potentially for more money, but a lot of it I do not agree with.

The report spent a lot of time explaining that sellers use staging to mask fundamental flaws such as foundation cracks, stains, leakage, etc. which I considered as HIGHLY UNETHICAL on a stager's part, and illegal may I add (at least in California). It is NOT my job as a stager concealing fundamental flaws of the home, nor I should do it because not only I am open myself, my agent client and my seller client to liability and lawsuits, it is something that sellers must disclose while selling. Additionally staging is geared toward buyer's benefits as well.

The staging will help buyers to realize the home's potential by staging tricky floor plan and using furnishing to help guiding the buyers to realize that just because of the room is small, it doesn't mean this is a total waste of space. Moreover, staging helps buyers' agents by assisting the clients finding the home that they want. It will help to add to their commission by closing a higher priced sale. The report also pointed out that buyers get so distracted by the staging, they don't noticed details such as cracked windows or cracks on the wall and they end up buying the house. Excuse me, but isn't it buyers agents' due diligence to notice these types of things as well? And seller must discloses these on the contract (at least in California). Moreover, staged props are generally removed by final inspections. Things such as cracked windows, carpet stains, should be visible in plain sight.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. To view the report, go to  How to not get tricked by staging — and potentially save $5,645 when you buy your home.

It's no secret that I read blogs daily. But most of you probably don't know that I read at least 100 blogs per day. I often read 300 blogs or more daily when I get a chance. "How the heck can you read that many blogs?" "Well, I scan for the important points. If it is an interesting (keyword: interesting) story or antidote, I pay a little bit more attention."

As an avid blog reader, scanning is very important and crucial to make life easier on myself and also able to get some other things done and occasionally, like any small business owners, go out and have a life once awhile. So please please pretty please, write with style. Not only with literally style, stage your blog with style so your readers actually will read the entire thing and will absorb some information at the end of the blog.

• Write in bullet points. Like simplicity is appreciated in staging, it is so in real life and especially in communications. Bullet points make everything easier to read. It makes information easier to consume. 
  
  
• STOP WRITING IN ALL CAPS. Like we use bold & loud colors to accent the room, we don't "punch" the room with colors. We don't recommend overwhelming accent wall colors for the entire home for a good and specific reason. We ask for neutral colors. Similarly, in writing... When people write in all cap, even if they don't mean to, but I feel their "angry" words screaming at me through the screen. Caps do mean "scream" in internet language, so let's stop screaming and actually communicating.
  
  
• Stop writing in all bold, it makes it difficult to read. Bold should only be used sparingly, like hot peppers. It helps you to accent your article, not dominating it to make it too hard to absorb.
  
  
• Look at  your article from a different angle. It's true that PC & MAC read and display things differently on the screen, same with your post. I have found that sometimes when you copy and paste your written blog post onto the blog platform, it copies it with all bold print. It makes the eyes very hard to scan and read. Chances are it will get very quickly scanned and disposed. Keep in mind that different platforms display your articles differently. So test your blog sometimes to make sure it is displayed in a format that is pleasing to the eye to actually develop your readership.
  
  
• Leave some space. You don't have to jam all the words together to make your post look like you actually wrote something. Leave some white space to let the readers' eyes rest, like you would when you stage or install artwork in your home. Would you put up paintings on every single piece of walls and cover every inches of white space? I think not, right? Sometimes less is more, and white space too can creates balance and harmony.

At last, make your conclusion obvious. When I read that many blog posts a day, I only read bullet points, first few sentences and the last few sentences. I scan the middle very quickly to see if there are actually anything juicy in the meat of the article there. I hope these tips will help you deliver better results to your readers and also I thank you for sparing my eyes from reading all bold prints. Happy blogging!

Cheers,

Cindy 

There are actually TWO DWR events this weekend in San Francisco!

First is its sample sale. You can get 75% off on furniture which is pretty awesome. For me personally it's a hit or miss. I loved the one in Palo Alto and I did end up buying a lot of accessories that I use for staging there. But the last one in SF warehouse was a little bit disappointing.

Here are a few tips:

*Get there EARLY. And I mean at least 1 hour before the sale starts, because people start lining up at 1.5 hours prior. But you don't need to get there THAT early. We were there 1 hour prior and we were the 10th in line. Half hour before the sale starts that's when you start seeing everyone around the block.

*Bring friends. It will suck being in line for 1 hour by yourself. Also the sale is going to be CRAZY meaning people will be aggressive over that piece of chair you have been eyeing for over a year and now is $500 bucks off. It will be useful having friends sitting on or laying across your favorite couch to hold it for you.

*STAY CALM. I know it's very easy to get too excited but stop standing there oogling over your new find, get your hands on it ASAP and make sure a sales person writes down your item and ticket it as SOLD.

*Have an objective. Sounds silly I know, but if you are there for a specific a couch or an item in general, your best bet is to run straight for it. Make sure you get what you want first and then shop for other stuff.

Here is the 411 for this weekend:

The other one is for all you knitting fools out there ;)

I used to live around the corner of the SF Fillmore DWR (such a lovely neighborhood, too bad it's too expensive for me now!) It's a lovely store, but just to warn you it's not a very large space and parking can be challenging on fillmore street. To park, find residential street parking on adjacent streets like Steiner, Scott, etc. 

The Ohio Knitting Mills Trunk Show runs from Friday through Sunday, August 10-12 at Design Within Reach, 1913 Fillmore Street (between Bush and Pine) in San Francisco. For more info on the event, you can visit the DWR web site here. - Link.

Ohio Knitting Mills trunk show

Friday-Sunday, August 10-12, ongoing event

Ohio Knitting Mills (ohioknittingmills.com)offers unique virgin vintage knitwear made from 1947-74. Made at the historic Cleveland, Ohio mill, this rare collection of never worn and one-of-a-kind fashion design artifacts will be shown for the very first time in the Bay Area. Join us for a preview reception, followed by a three-day trunk show. OKM provides "an authentic tradition of hard-working Midwestern American honest craftsmanship," and their pieces are a great complement to the mid-century modern classics of DWR. Ohio Knitting Mills head, Steven Tatar will be on hand to answer any questions. 

1913 Fillmore Street
(between Bush and Pine)
San Francisco, CA 94115
Phone: 415.567.1236
Fax: 415.567.5238
Directions: Click here

Hours:
Monday-Saturday
11am - 7pm
Sunday
12pm - 6pm

I came across this site recently that measures and scores how "walkable" is your community. By entering your address, nearby eateries, restaurants, shops, movie theaters, parks, etc. pops up on the map (a little bit like google map or yahoo) and also a score shows you how "walkable" your community is.

The website itself says that "We help homebuyers, renters, and real estate agents find houses and apartments in great neighborhoods. Walk Score shows you a map of what's nearby and calculates a Walk Score for any property. Buying a house in a walkable neighborhood is good for your health and good for the environment."

But here is my "beef" with the site. I find the scoring is very subjective and works well if you are a city dweller. I typed in a home address that is in a coveted burb neighborhood here in bay area because of its privacy and the surrounding (where you feel like you are walking in nature, not the hustle and bustle of the city), and homes in this neighborhood starts at high 1 million. But the website ranks it very low at the score of 15.

I frankly see that the tool is interesting if you are a city dweller who loves the urban setting, then this tool works for you. But how "walkable" it is, is very subjective to individual buyer who may value privacy and quiet far greater than the urban setting. Therefore by the definition of the site, not very walkable. The site also does not account for crime rates, etc. So in a more dangerous neighborhood like certain parts of the bay area where a lot of drive by shooting and gang violence occur, the home may still appear to be highly walkable and great under the website's claim. But obviously walking in an area where a lot of drive by shooting and robbings occur probably does not do any good for your environment nor your health.

The website is www.Walkscore.com Try it out and let me know what you think of it?

I am very silly I know... 

This looks like a great event to go! I am definitely organizing a group to see this. Let me know if you are interested ;) Just email me at hello@staged4more.com 

These Eichler's homes remain popular these days. His vision of suburbia pairs with Modern style with mass-scale scope. When it first began, people can buy these homes for as little as $8,000, which was a great affordable choice for young families. Today, these unique homes form an unique niche for real estate agents. You can view many different Eichler homes on websites like http://www.eichlernetwork.com/. A local bay area agent at Renee Adlemann has devoted to these homes. You can visit her site at http://www.eichlerforsale.com/

Here are an example of the interiors. 

 You can also go to http://totheweb.com/eichler/2006_remodel/index.html which is a great website on Eichler Designs.

2nd Annual Open Hearts Open Homes Fundraiser - September 15th & 16th

Hospice By The Bay will showcase Eichler homes and exotic cars during this 2nd annual event benefiting Hospice By The Bay.  Marin County leads the country with the largest number of Eichler homes.  For more information, or to purchase tickets, click here, or call (415) 526-5610.

I recently staged a home in San Francisco sunset area (where usually it's VERY foggy AND WINDY whew!) and it was a lot of fun. The sellers are very easy to work with and they have been good sports about cleaning & packing. When I arrived the redesign & stage, the seller asked if they should take down the drapes. I said yes, since the drapes were a little bit torn and tattered. When they did, I was pleasantly surprised by the HUGE difference! The paint color looks completely different (the sellers didn't repaint interior walls). The space looks much brighter and bigger once the drapes were gone which is really helpful since it is always foggy in the area.

Here are some before and afters to illustrate the point:

To see more before & after photos of this property, visit www.staged4more.com!

Staged4more is a San Francisco bay area real estate staging company that services our clients with flexible staging and living solutions that stages & redesigns vacant, live-in or transitional homes. No matter how big or small the job is, we are there 100% there for our clients to achieve the results that will help you transform and package your home into the shiny penny listing that sells faster & 4more money! To find out more about our services, see before and after photos, or book a free in-home estimate, please visit www.staged4more.com or call us directly at 650.293.7458. We look for the opportunity to serve you!