A savvy homeowner looking to stage their vacant condo in Richmond BC did extensive research to find Enjy Fouad of Envious Design. They interviewed a panel of a few other reputable stagers, but hired Envious Design. What made them stand out was their services package tailored for each individual project. It includes project coordination, contractor referral, color consultation, and of course Enjy’s favourite – home staging. The client was SOLD on Envious Design’s tailored services package.

Envious Design decided to use Fluff Rentals to source from their warehouse of contemporary furnishings. The staff at Fluff are great and it’s always great fun to shop for the client’s property. The best part of all is staging the property with all the handpicked furniture, accessories, and decor pieces from Fluff. The realtor that this was the best staged property he had seen, and that it showcased the client’s property to its best potential and made it the best looking unit within the building.
After the completion of the colour consultation, project coordination on time and staging his property, both my client and his realtor were so pleased with the dramatic shabby to Envious results! The client was very happy that he was able to hire a home staging company that help him with all his project needs from A to Z.

Living Room (Before)

Living Room (After)

Dining Room (Before)

Dining Room (After)

Bedroom (Before)

Bedroom (After)

Dana Smithers, the founder and creative director of the PRES Staging Resource Centre offers mentoring to the PRES graduates at a special ‘member only’ price. In addition to offering mentoring to her own PRES members, Dana is now offering her mentoring services to other women entrepreneurs in small service businesses. She has seen the results over and over again – hire a coach or a mentor and you can fast track a start-up business or get unstuck in your existing one.

The new site, www.EmpoweredWomenInBusiness.com, is targeted for a September 2010 launch. On her new site you will be able to get her new ‘FREE’ CD with 7 destinations on her Empowered Women’s Road Map to Success.

I recently read an article on The 5 Stages of Grief and how it relates to the process of saying good bye to your home of a few or many years.

I believe most PRES home stagers have faced situations like this and have had to use a lot of psychology and empathy in making their client’s move more palatable. The public doesn’t often realize how much we do care about not only making the property spectacular for selling, but ‘being there’ for our clients.

I often think of PRES Home Stagers as your “Home Selling Coach’ since we work together with you to help you achieve your goals. We listen – we set goals – we take action steps. Many staging jobs can take up to a year depending on what has to be done to make the home marketable. When our clients get STUCK well, we encourage them to take small steps and remind them that they can create their next home any way they want!

This photo is me with my client asking him to ‘Tell me about these swords’ and tell me he did. They are his pride and joy and so without a moment’s hesitation I said, “Well then, let’s pack these treasures up and make sure they are safe and sound when you move in to your new home!”

PRES Staging & Redesign Training was taking place in Victoria last week and as part of the course we do makeovers in 2 real client’s homes. Through networking with a fellow Active Rain member, Fred Carver a realtor with Re/Max Camosun/Oak Bay, he found 2 homes for us!

The PRES Staging Resource Centre does not charge for the work we do in a training home, but we ask that the realtor or the client makes a donation to their favourite charity. It’s a WIN-WIN situation for all concerned.

One of the challenges with one of the homes was the home owner’s bedroom – it had SAMURAI SWORDS and other deadly weapons in it! Not so good for staging! The living room was clearly not been utilized as a living room so that took some creative work from the PRES team. The rooms we did were totally transformed and the home owners still have a bit of cleaning up and decluttering to do.

PRES home stagers and redesigners offer their clients a wide variety of services. One of them is called ‘sourcing’ (seek out) rental furnishings. PRES graduates will source the best rental furnishings to give broad buyer appeal to their sellers’ target markets. Many clients will use rentals if their property is vacant, or their existing furnishings do not quite give the WOW look.

In the Lower Mainland of BC we are fortunate to have many rental furnishing companies to choose from. In other parts of BC and Alberta there are a few rental furnishing companies but not as good or as large as a company such as Fluff Designs in Vancouver. Most home stagers have their own small inventory and rely on rental stores to provide larger items such as sofas, desks, beds, etc. Many home stagers in smaller locations have larger inventory especially when they know they can provide better quality and styles of furnishings than local suppliers. Kym Tarr of ShoeString Interior Staging in Kelowna has great furnishings she offers her clientelle.

Here are a few TOP SECRETS about the process and how it works best:

1) be OPEN to what the PRES stager has to say about your furnishings whether you need some or have a vacant home – we are the experts here
2) the PRES stager will go to the rental furnishing store that they believe will have the best product/inventory to meet your needs. They may go to several stores before they finally decide on the best one for you. This can take up to 8 hours if it is a very large property.
3) PRES stagers will work within your budget to meet your needs. Once we have a quote we will review it with you for your approval.
4) Many PRES stagers have some of their own inventory and may choose some items of their own to use, and, some from a rental furnishing company
5) PRES Stagers know the best colour schemes for selling and will select product to work best with what you have or what they need to create for you.
6) Once PRES stagers have selected the appropriate inventory arrangements are made for delivery and they are there ready to go with the installation/staging set up
7) When the property is sold the seller notifies the stager and the stager comes to destage and the movers come for the pick up back to the rental furnishing store.

We make it seem ‘easy peasy’ but it takes a lot of skill to be a versatile PRES STAGER!!!

Home Staging is still relatively new in Canada and we are making major inroads to having both realtors and home sellers realize the value that we bring to the selling of their home. It is a proven statistic that staged homes do sell SOONER and for MORE MONEY than unstaged homes. We know this to be true.

But to see the leading lady (Amy Adams)  in a first run Hollywood movie LEAP YEAR, staging a vacant condo in Boston this says to me we have finally made it !!! We are considered bona-fide professionals.

In a local radio station was running an ad for a software accounting package and they used a home stager as an example. This is very very good news – the word is getting out there. !

Many people wonder how a 5 day PRES professional home staging & redesign course can prepare a home stager and/or redesigner to help them with selling their house. Well the answer is simple – the majority of new stagers and/or redesigners have been doing staging, redesign, decorating for years either for themselves or for friends.The difference is – up to now they have done it for FREE!

PRES stagers & redesigners just starting out may be new to seeing themselves as highly successful business women or men, but in fact this is the goal. Taking a professional course is a way of showing the public that they have invested time, money and energy into themselves to get credentials to do the work. They have taken written and hands-on tests to become certified and must uphold the PRES code of ethics when working in the industry.

So if you are looking for a great stager to help you sell your house, you have come to the right place! If you are moving in or just need to refresh the look of your home then check out our fabulous PRES stagers and redesigners.

Other services and experience some of the PRES stagers have could be in the areas of home renovations, home remodelling, home improvements, home decorating and home styling, colour consultations, sourcing for purchasing new furnishings or rentals.

Check them out under our Locate A Stager page www.PresStaging.com.

Stay tuned as we will be featuring our PRES Stagers throughout the year!

One of the resources that I use to keep updated with the real estate market, and what is going on with the NAR (National Association of Realtors) is through a website called Active Rain. It’s a blog site so there are thousands of members, thousands of articles and lots of great topics.

I just read a blog titled: It’s Time For Realtors to Stand Firm on Not Doing Open Houses written by Lee Morof, Associate Broker/Attorney in Birmingham, Michigan. He is with Re/Max Showcase Homes. You can read the full article from this link

It’s a great article and while he does have some very good points we know that not all areas in North America face the same concerns about Open Houses as others. You can read more about the CONS in his article.

What I found really interesting are these statistics:

Every year I order the results of the National Association of Realtors (NAR) Survey of Home Buyers and Sellers. I am particularly interested in How the Buyer Found His or Her Home in the last year because that determines where my marketing efforts will go to sell the homes that I list. Because the numbers pertaining to open houses are so dismal, it is no longer a category in the survey results. I do understand that open houses were more successful before personal computers and the internet but now, approximately:

• 90% of buyers begin their home search on the internet
• 36% will find their home on the internet
• 36% will find their home through the help of a realtor,
• 12% from a yard sign
• 6% from a friend, neighbor or a relative.

That covers ninety percent. Another 5%, will purchase new construction from a home builder or the builder’s agent.

And because of the internet availability as a resource this is precisely why homes need to be staged so that the MLS photos look FANTASTIC! That is what will attract a potential buyer. As PRES home stagers it is critical that the realtors we have strategic alliances with know the value of a staged home.

This was recently sent to me by Leanne Woodward a Realtor with Prudential Sussex Realty in North Vancouver BC:

Great News for buyers, sellers and the Real Estate Board. Government listens to REB on HST

The BC Government has announced that it will exclude new homes costing up to $525,000 from its proposed 12% Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) scheduled to take effect July 1, 2010, this increase will move the threshold to above the average new home price in the province.

The government has also increased the rebate of the provincial portion of the HST paid on a new home to a maximum of $26,250. They had originally proposed a home price threshold of $400,000 and a maximum rebate of $20,000, this is a 30% increase on that first proposal. This was all in answer to the Real Estate Board lobbying to raise the threshold in October 2009.

The government has also released its proposed Residential Housing New Housing Rebates and Transitional Rules for British Columbia HST, This includes:

Transitional rules: the HST would not apply to sales of new homes where ownership or possession is transferred before July 1, 2010.

Grandparenting: sales of new homes under written agreements of purchase and sale, including presales, entered into on or before midnight November 18, 2009, would generally not be subject to the provincial portion of the HST, even if both ownership and possession are transferred on or after July 1, 2010. Any home sold on or after November 19, 2009 is subject to HST transitional rules.

For a copy of the new Transitional Rules, visit:

http://www.sbr.gov.bc.ca/business/Consumer_Taxes/Harmonized_Sales_Tax/HST_Transitional_Rules.html

I love looking at floral shops in every city I travel to because they always offer so much inspiration. Not only are the flowers exquisite, they smell divine and floral shops have some beautiful home decor pieces that you don’t always find in the other home decor stores. If you like to bring some of that magic from the outside indoors, start popping into more florist shops.

One of my favourites is in North Vancouver, BC called Special Moments Fowers & Gifts in the Park & Tilford Shopping Centre. Their displays are beautiful with elegant groupings of flowers & vases & candles, etc. Check them out at www.smflowers.com