Today is Earth Day so I will share what I personally do in my business to be more eco-friendly!

(from google: what would you do for earth day ‘08?)

Staging can be a wasteful industry, because we purchase, use and transport a lot of furnishing day in and day out. Here are a few things that I do to be more eco-friendly:

*Reduce garbage, reduce overhead– I plastic wrap most of my hard furnishing to protect them during transport, consequently we used to go through plastics like crazy. Moreover, we have a lot of cardboard boxes that came with the furnishing that we ordered. When I buy accessories, they also come with a lot of wrapping papers and plastic bags. I now reuse plastic wraps, re-purpose the cardboard boxes and reuse the plastic bags & tissue papers.

The Results worked toward my favor: less plastic wraps to buy, MUCH less garbage to throw away, much easier on the overhead. When the plastic wraps are super tired out, we use those as wrapping materials instead. I also cut apart cardboard boxes to put between the artwork to protect them. Moreover, I don’t buy trash bags at all, I just reuse the ones we got from the store. Oh, as a former yoga teacher, I also accumulated a lot of lost and found yoga mats from teaching. Those became the bottom layers of my artwork shelves to protect the frames from being scratched on raw wood.

*Build things consciously– I hired people to build custom shelves in my warehouse and we use screws instead of nails for putting the shelves together. Because screws can easily (Read more …)

Related Articles:

• 2008 Home Decor Color Trends
• Incredible, Simple, Eco & Kids Friendly DIY Art For Your Home
• Staging for the GREEN!!!
• Collapsible, Lightweight & Eco-Friendly Flower Pots
• 4 Tips on Getting Rid of Your Junk in the Trunk!

(image by Godzillafeet44)

(I was going to post a photo of poorly bruised toes, but I think I will spare your eyes on this one) 

Inspired by Maureen's recent post, it makes me wonder: what do you do when an agent, who is not your client but has a stager already, asked you what you think about how the home was staged?

If the work is good, obviously you compliment it. But what if the staging is terrible looking and/or the agent is not happy with their existing stager and start complaining about their stager? Do you:

a) Politely say it's nice and leave

b) Give agent your card and tell them to call you when s/he fires the stager

c) Offer to tweak the existing staging

d) ???

What would you do?

It’s always pretty cool to get great news on our staged listings:

“Thanks again - it was listed for $599K, closed in 21 days for $635K.” — Jenn Davis, Listing Agent for 43 Garden Grove, Daly City

WOOHOO!

See some of the Before & After Staging photos below or check out the nifty slideshow via flickr:

Popularity: 1% [?]

Related Articles:

• New Staged Vacant Home: 43 Garden Grove Daly City
• Success Story even in "Down" Market: 21 Offers, $114,000 Over Asking
• Another Successful Staging Story!!! SOLD! OVERASKING! $49,000!!!
• Another Successful Staging Story -- 2001 McAllister San Francisco | Staged Vacant Condo

(image per Wall Street Journal)

My good friend Craig came across this scathing Wall Street Journal editorial on staging titled “The Allure of the Fruit Bowl; Home Staging ‘Twiddles’ With a Buyer’s Mind.” This is my first and only reaction, and exact comment on the WSJ site:

“Okay, isn’t this just another rewrite of the report that National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents wrote?

I already wrote my rebuttal last August. You can read it here: “Apparently, A Good Stager Is the Buyers’ Biggest Enemy And We May Cost You $5645″ http://staged4more.com/blog/2007/08/16/apparently-a-good-stager-is-the-buyers-biggest-enemy-and-we-may-cost-you-5645/

Thanks again for the backhanded compliment.

Cheers, Cindy”

Old news, try some new arguments next time.

*Yawn*

(This is a guest blog post on 3 Ocean) 

I have to honest. I have been reading Kevin’s posts on social media and blogging, I am itching to write one on the topic myself since internet & blogging has done tremendous for my business. So here it is! (We will continue the regular programming on staging for next post I promise.)

I have been toying with Facebook a lot lately because I am intrigued of how this thing can work for my business (since I am spending a ridiculous amount of time on it) and how fun it actually can be even for work. Facebook has exploded on the business sphere lately largely because of its user-friendliness, much more professional look than myspace, and easy to network quickly with a string of people in a more relaxed atmosphere (they now even added a People You May Know section, which is frankly scary how they know I know these people).

At first I only used Facebook for contacting old college classmates & long lost friends, secretly comparing looking where they are working now how much weight they had gained, but lately I am finding a lot more business applications being developed and used, as well as an increased number of contacts in both staging and realtor fields. (Finally, no more of those invites of “Are You a Vampire?” but “Have my online business card.”)

I went to a great presentation put on the Benjamin Moore showroom couple weeks ago for author and cancer survivor Jennie Nash’s latest book “the last beach Bungalow.” She used many vivid and brilliant colors for her presentation. She also reflected upon how her personal experiences of living with and surviving cancer had played into constructing this story of a cancer survivor who became obsessed with winning the right to buy the last bungalow.

What really struck me is the inspiration of her book. She told a story that she was trying to buy this home but lost in the bidding war. Many days later she found out that the home was purchased by the real estate agent who bid against his own clients. Needless to say, he lost his license. One morning when she was chaperoning her child’s field trip, she realized the agent was the other parent chaperoning. She walked up to him and said: “You (Read more …)