I had started a blog carnival earlier this year but wasn’t able to keep it up since life was getting a little bit crazy, also not that many stagers were blogging. But now it’s a little bit different. I have been seeing more and more stagers blog about their passion and love for staging and how staging can better the industry. So I want to bring the carnival back! To help establish a presence in the community and introduce staging to others.

The carnival will be in place every 2 weeks. And we will see how it goes

The 2nd Edition of the carnival will be published on Mondey, October 8th, 2007. And all entries will be due by 5pm pacific time, Friday, October 5th, 2007.

You can submit to Blog Carnival directly via this link here, just click to enter. Anyone can participate, as long as your entry is about staging! You can be a realtor, stager, a consumer, seller, buyer, whoever has something to share about staging.

It will be hosted on my blog www.staged4more.com/blog

Click to View the first edition of the we *heart* home staging Blog Carnival here

My new friend Pamela, a real estate agent in Saint Louis, Missouri had asked me to pitch in on her blog There’s No Place Like Home to answer her readers’ questions in regards to staging.

Both are excellent questions. I think I will touch on James’ question first in this post.
James said:

Hi Pamela! I think this is a great idea. I have some questions about using a home stager. Is it really worth it? I have seen some articles by real estate agents stating its only used to hide problems. Is it true? Thanks!

Here is my response:

NABEA (National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents) recently published a report How to not Get tricked by staging– and potentially save $5,645 when you buy your home, which I wrote a blog post in response to it: Apparently, A Good Stager Is the Buyers’ Biggest Enemy and We May Cost You $5645. It was featured on the real estate community Active Rain and you can access the post here.

Here are some of the comments that I received from the real estate community on AR:

It sounds like the report does not emphasize that buyers should always do home inspections which would uncover most problems (would not uncover problems that are intentionally concealed). Buyers should appreciate staged homes as they provide more opportunity to look at a home in its best light and make sure they get the home thoroughly inspected and all should be fine. Intentional non-disclosure of material facts will come to haunt the seller and seller’s agent when the time comes.

As a long-time real estate investor, I know that a knowledgeable buyer will be able to look past the staging or lack of….however, most people are unable to visualize whether or not a particular home will be right for them. I think mixing in property fraud with home staging is really pathetic. There is a huge difference and though there are some less-than-upfront realtors and property owners who can be dishonest, STAGING should not have to take the blame for major flaws in a home. The next thing we will get blamed for is that the bathroom tile is 40 years old and why hasn’t the stager forced such a change?? LOL!! Thanks for the information Cindy…it is always good to be in the loop!! (negative or positive news!) Regards-Kathleen

I just came across this article, and came into the rain to post a blog on this…sooooo happy to see you already had! As a stager, I felt rather offended - if there is a serious problem with the home, hiding it won’t change the appraisal or inspection, and is not ethical. We alert the homeowner to what we see that needs to be done, but do not resort to “trickery!” Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Cindy, unfortunately some EBAs seem to consider real estate as an adversarial enterprise, with sellers and everyone associated with the sellers being the enemy. This isn’t useful, and makes transactions much more unpleasant for everyone. Looking out for your client shouldn’t imply that everyone else is a potential crook.

(Click here to read rest of the response at www.staged4more.com) 

In case you missed it, I am running a 5-part series on Seller Objections:

1. “I don’t believe in staging”
2. “My kids are preventing me from staging”
3. “I don’t want to pay for it”
4. “I am too busy to keep the home staged”
5. “I am too busy to prep the home for sale”

***The final conclusion post next Wednesday will conclude these 5 posts, as well as showcasing people’s comments on the blogs.***There will be a new series starting soon on Why Staged Homes Don’t Sell***

Me and significant other both work & We have no time to stage/prep the home for sale

Have you ever showed up at your client’s home, after you had already gave your sellers a full list of to-dos and deadlines, and nothing or very little has been done? When you tried to be brave and tell the already annoyed seller, they told you: “I got no time to do these crap.” Then they look at you with this message in their eyes: “Why don’t YOU do it?”

Selling a house is a very hectic process. As a seller, s/he will encounter many people through his/hers door during the process, not only professionals like agents, mortgage brokers, photographers, stagers, home inspectors, and also buyers. There is a lot of prep involved in planning in order to have a successful sale. If your sellers are strapped for time, it almost seems impossible to follow their professionals’ directions on how to prep their home and get it ready for sale. Here are a few tips that can help you as an agent:

1. Get written commitment up front: Sit down with your seller and establish a “Working Agreement.” As a professional, here is what you do and what you don’t do. You absolutely will not market their home until it’s ready to make the best impression for buyers. Buyers will only look once, if they hate it at first look, they are not going to come back. Explain why these are your professional policies. Have them write it down themselves, it affirms their commitment mentally and physically.
2. Plan your sale with your sellers on a calendar: These calendars are very easy to create, you can DIY one yourself via Microsoft Word, or just hand write one if you feel so inclined. It’s a visual presentation that will give them a solid idea of what is going on and when things need to be done in order for the next action to be taken. It is also a great way to tie everyone in a real estate transaction (loan officer, stager, contractor, handyman, painter, agent, etc.) together. Here is an example:
   
   (click here to read more about tip #2 and #3-#7 on Staged4more's blog. While you are at it, feel free to leave a comment or two...)
   

I read a great article on Inman news today about Pro’s Guide to Painting Home’s Exterior. The experts Bill & Kevin Burnett have a 3-coat approach, especially on older wood homes & trouble spots (like windowsills) that are subject to the wrath of sun, wind and rain.

They also talk specifically about bay area’s Victorians: “Wood siding on Victorian houses in the San Francisco Bay Area is usually clear heart redwood. A century ago, when the siding was applied, building paper and insulation were unknown. As a result, the wood dried from both sides. Even if the house was painted regularly, today the siding is as dry as a bone. A paint job on this type of house has to be done right to get the longest possible life from the new paint. It’s time consuming if you do it yourself or very expensive if done by a professional.”

The Burnetts recommend 3 basic steps: preparation, priming (including caulking and filling voids) and finish painting.

On Prep: “A paint job is only as good as the preparation. Prep is a boring process, but if you invest the time and effort, a good prep job will pay lasting dividends. Usually, the first step is to clean the surface to be painted by pressure washing. However, sometimes an older home’s buildup of multiple layers of paint requires stripping the paint to the bare wood. If this is the case, use a propane torch or electric heat gun to strip the old paint before pressure washing.

I was very happy for Kim when she won, although I was not totally shocked. I also love Todd’s designs, and constantly taking off his shirts, sure, maybe a little brownie points there. Both designers were like night and day and very different styling and approach to their work. But I think why Kim won is the same reason why staging works to sell homes — she/staging appeals to the broader range of audience/buyer.

Todd is very creative and a very visionary & interesting designer, as we have seen in his work. He is certainly not boring!

But he doesn’t appeal to the general public. Most homeowners at home cannot recreate a 3D sea creature sculpture on the wall. Most of us (okay I will speak for myself here) cannot do that on our own. Also, I personally cannot envision living in a hotel room like so, let along my own home. The novelty will wear off pretty quickly, say oh, couple hours. I certainly cannot live in a room that looks like a 12-year-old kid’s.

Whereas Kim, chooses (click here to read more what Kim chooses)

While FreeMoneyFinance is taking his sweet vacation, I am guest blogging several blogs on Staging:

If you missed the previous entries:
*Quick & Cheap Tips for Selling Your Home
*How to Earn Extra Income By Becoming A Home Stager
*Use Staging to Sell Your Home

Starting your own business is probably the best thing I have done in my life. It taught me a lot of my limits and my worth, it also has challenged my personal characters. Moreover, it is a great way to increase your net worth because after all, you can control your destiny.

Having a small business can also be a money pit, where you can over-invest on inventory (if you have any) or machinery, equipments, office supplies etc. I personally don't believe in over-investing because you can drain your financial resources very quickly. You can grow your net worth by grasping your financial picture. Here are a few tips if you are thinking about starting a small business:

1. It's okay to be small: I am very happy that my company is still very small, because it is manageable for me and if I take on full time employees then my monetary responsibilities increase dramatically. It is also a very personal thing to have my own small business, everyone who comes through the doors, including clients, become family. After all, it's a people's business.

2. Get a financial plan: We all have this dream that once we go out on our own, we will strike a goldmine immediately and clients will be calling us non-stop. Well, if that doesn't happen, make sure you do have resources to fall back on. Generally it is recommended to save 4-6 months worth of living expenses save up when you work hard to take your business off the ground. You should also speak with a professional to plan everything out financially before you start. You need to figure out what your start up costs are which include marketing, licensing fees, continue education if any, investment in inventory, machinery, computers, etc.

3. Network, network, network: It doesn't mean you go out and hand out business cards to everyone you meet, because you are not building meaningful relationships that will make you memorable and become part of someone's rolodex and referral list. One of the ways I network is that I started my own support group for other small business owners who are women. I feel that it's more important to develop personal relationships, that way the referrals are stronger and more meaningful. Running a small business can also be very lonely, so it doesn't hurt to meet other people who can support your endeavors and who understand what you go through on a daily basis. I am the only one among my friends who have her own small business. They have no idea what I go through every day and that can get frustrating sometimes.

4. (click to read the 4 remaining tips at FreeMoneyFinance)

This looks like a great fun event

The next Mission Indie Mart in SF will be on Sunday 9.23.07. @ 25th & Guerrero from noon to 6pm. (Parking is tough so get there early! Or better yet, take public transportation)

You will find:

• local designers
• offbeat crafters
• fabulous vintage
• interesting antiques
• fun dj
• mmm cold $1 beer
• yummm hot plates (organic hotdogs, veggie dogs, bbq treats)
• and i heard word on the street there is some basil mojitos making a special appearance…

The indie mart actually has grown a lot since it first started, this will be the LAST event that do around the house & in the yard. Starting Oct 28th, go to 12 Galaxies on Mission where they will bring the party to Galaxies’ 2 bars & 2 fabulous floors.

Find out more about the it on mission indie mart’s myspace link

If you missed the previous entries:
*Quick & Cheap Tips for Selling Your Home
*How to Earn Extra Income By Becoming A Home Stager

Staging has become a new buzzword of the real estate industry. I often have homeowners calling me to inquire about staging, but after in-depth conversation, I realize that they often a) don’t know why they need to stage their house, they just know they should b) have a complete misunderstanding about staging and therefore have unreasonable expectations of what goes on when a professional stager stages his/hers home.

To explain staging in brief: Staging is not about decorating, it is about marketing. Think of when Nike comes out with a new pair of shoes, they package the product and make it fabulous and appeal to as many potential buyers as possible before they roll out for the mass consumers. Same with selling a home. As a home seller, once I have decided to place my home on the market, my home now becomes a listing, a real estate product that opens its doors to the general public. What staging does is to package and market the home to make it show-ready to appeal to a broad spectrum of buyers, therefore staging helps to sell listings quicker in both hot and cold real estate markets, and potentially for more money.

So now your home is staged, now what? Just because of your home is staged, it doesn’t mean that it’s automatically attracting buyers to open houses. It still has to be marketed properly. Like great food is paired with great wine that brings out the food’s flavor and depth, same with your home. Now your home is staged, it needs to be pair with good photographs to make the home attractive. Staging has duel purposes: not only staged homes should to show well in person, staged homes should also show well on the internet. This is the online shopping age, people even buy cars over internet and it is no longer strange to buy homes off ebay. With 80% of buyers start their home purchases online, it is extremely important to pull the buyers into the open houses by having great listing photos.

Click to Read more at FreeMoneyFinance

If you missed the previous entries:
*Quick & Cheap Tips for Selling Your Home

When FMF first suggested this topic I was frankly a little hesitant to write it. I have been a professional stager for about 2 years now and have seen quite a few newbies who never took off in their businesses or stagers left the business after couple years. It’s a high turnover business, like any job in real estate industry. The main reason for such high turnover is that people don’t have the right expectations coming into the industry. HGTV has made it very glamorous and seemingly easy to do, but the daily grinds of running your small business, liabilities issues, administrative tasks, taxation issues, inventory upkeep, time management and personnel management, prospecting, marketing, PR, etc. can kill any aspiring professional very easily. I have seen quite a few jumped into the industry and had no clue what they were doing whether in staging or running a small business or both, and consequently hurt themselves and their clients along the way. In the long run, that does hurt the industry and made it difficult to work with clients sometimes when they have the misconceptions or already got burned by previous bad staging experiences.

That said, it is actually very easy to become a home stager, that’s why there is a significant increase of stagers on the current market.

Unfortunately there are neither ethics nor regulations that set standards for stagers. That means essentially anyone can print up a business card and set up a website then call herself/himself a stager. Working as a stager can be good money, as we have seen on shows like Million Dollar Listings where stagers charge $30,000 to stage a home (Although in general, that’s not the case. It varies by market.). It is also fabulous to work for yourself. It certainly is a creative job.

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Here are a basic ways you can earn side income as a stager:

1. Write consultation reports: Consultation reports are basically DIY reports for the sellers. You will visit the home, write down detailed notes and instructions for transforming their home, and have the homeowners stage the homes themselves. You can also include a visit so you can make sure the homeowners are staging it according to your instructions, moreover, they actually did it. Sometimes sellers don’t feel motivated to stage it so they may only do part of it. Unfortunately, the entire home is for sale, not just “part of it,” so it’s good to pay a visit to make sure they actually did what you said they should do.
2. Redesign homes to live/sell: You have seen it on HGTV and basically you come into the home and use their existing furnishings and accessories to stage. When sellers are strapped for cash, you gotta use what they’ve got. Many believe that staging is about moving all the furniture out and then moving in stager’s furniture. NO. Staging doesn’t have to be costly and I personally don’t believe that the sellers should spend more than they should to get their home sold. It’s a waste of monetary resources and everyone’s time. Sometimes when homeowners don’t have accessories at all, or theirs are outdated, I do bring in my accessories to style the homes. This happens when young couples know that they would be moving in couple years, so they purposely didn’t buy anything to decorate the starter condo/home. Or senior citizens who haven’t updated their homes while they live there. I also encounter sellers who have very personal décor, such as religious symbols, nude paintings, etc. where I generally will bring in home accessories as well to neutralize the home to appeal to a broader range of buyers.
3. Click to read more at FreeMoneyFinance

I have been lurking Bemz for awhile now and finally they have opened up the American market. You may be asking.. What the heck is Bemz?! What Bemz does is taking your worn out IKEA furnishing and adding a new life by its transforming and versatile slipcovers. They are absolutely AMAZING.

Let me show you what I meant:

Here is one of my favorite couches -- Klippan. It goes everywhere and I am sure you have seen it appearing at various TV show sets and commercial spaces. It's sleek, clean and fabulous. In fact, it was a elimination challenge of HGTV's Design Star.

But all white can be boring sometimes. Enter Bemz.

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Pretty cool, huh?

So I have been reading about Blog Rush lately, including on AR. I think someone blogged about it couple days ago and was featured. Mashable had some interesting things to say about its pros and cons. You can read about it here. But what I like about is that it is targeted content grab, not just any random blogs come up on the blog widget. I used to have site neighbor in my side bar on the AR blog roll and my old blog roll, it's just not doing much for the blog nor me. I planted the widget on my AR blog roll and send off the codes to my webmaster for my company site (that's the bad thing about having someone else do your site... you lose control on timing). So I am testing out Blog Rush to see how it functions. If you want to try it out for yourself, use this link here to get on Blog Rush ;)

Let me know what you think of it!

Cheers,

Cindy

 ps. Ack I tried embedding it in my post but failed. But it shows up on my AR bar =>

So you can check it out there. 

It’s so cool that I got invited to speak at the first semi-annual Hire-A-Businesswoman Week (September 17 - 21, 2007) presented by the International Virtual Women’s Chamber of Commerce for women who have been in business for 5 or more years that are looking for business support and new clients to guide their company through the growth and expansion stages.

I am on schedule for Wednesday, 9/19/2007, The ABC’s of Moving Out, Moving Up, or Just Plain Moving to present the segment “Staging Your Home to Make it Sell Quicker.” During the segment, I plan to touch on important ideas behind staging, share my real life experiences working in the trenches and examples of staging to counter some common staging myths on the current market.

Here is a little preview on slideshare. Just click on the slideshow....

Home selling is not only a grueling process emotionally, it can also be grueling on your bank account. Here are a few tips that can help you to prep your home for sale, and at the same time not breaking your bank:

1. For exterior curb appeal:

a. Power wash the exterior walls & windows instead of repainting. If your paint job is in fair condition (i.e. no visible holes in your wall or obvious discoloration from the sun), power washing the exterior & windows can make your home look like it just got a brand new coat.

b. Add tree barks or rocks. If you don’t have money to add plants in the yard, this is a way that you can still present a nice, clean simple look instead of just plain dirt that can look cold and unappealing to buyers.

c. Weed. Unruly yard means the homeowners don’t spend much time maintaining it, and if that’s the case for their exteriors, buyers are going to assume it’s going to be so with the interiors. It’s casting doubts in buyers’ heads, and also a yard full of weeds creates bad first impressions. People want to buy a manicured yard, not a jungle.

2. Interiors:

1. Painting: Every home is different and the wear and tear of your interior walls can vary. In the cases where most of the paint job is in good condition, you can generally remove the minor scuffmarks, etc. with Mr. Clean’s Magic Eraser (it is truly magical, I highly recommend it). If your walls have visible traces of discoloration from the sun, look faded, or have visible holes from installing artwork, message boards, etc., I would recommend painting the interior walls. Pick a color that is neutral and not overpowering. Any off white colors will generally work. Swiss coffee from Kelly Moore is a great interior color with white trims. If you are really strapped for cash and cannot paint the walls, I would recommend cleaning the walls, clear off any cobwebs, and paint the trims. Overall, paint is really the cheapest thing you can pay for, do it yourself in one weekend, and it makes the homes look renewed.
   
   
2. (read more at FreeMoneyFinance.com)