Palo Alto: Ken and Barbie Live Here

Have you noticed that almost every open house you visit these days looks like a Pottery Barn showroom?

Many Palo Alto realtors hire a “stager” to perform a total house makeover for new listings. After they get done with your house, it in no way looks as if real people live there. Ken and Barbie live there.

For example, on a typical morning, Ken serves Barbie breakfast in bed with fresh flowers from the garden.

High tea is served a 4pm on the patio.

When the kids come home from school, they never leave stinky socks and backpacks in the living room.

And at dinnertime, Barbie always keeps the champagne chilled to the perfect temperature, which, of course, is served on an immaculately set table with 3 layers of plates, fresh flowers, and napkin rings.

But as silly as it all seems, according to Palo Alto’s master impresario realtor, Ken DeLeon, staging makes a big difference. He says that staged houses, on average, sell for 5% more and twice as fast as unstaged houses. Staging typically involves fresh paint, lifestyle props, weeding out of bad furniture … and sometimes a whole-house furniture transplant. (Hmm… Do you think it’s time to move that milk crate full of Moody Blues vinyl records out of the living room and into the basement?)

If you decided to hire a stager yourself, expect to pay from $3,500 to $8,000, depending on how many brown shag carpets, dead ferns, and cat-scratched sofas need to be removed from your house by the Hazmat crew.

Run by 1319 Hopkins Avenue for a nice example of staging at the low end of that range. It was staged by “Just the Touch by Liling.” This home is essentially a condo-alternative. It’s on a flag lot, but it’s in the high-test-score school district; and near the pool, tennis courts, kiddie park, and children’s library.

Price: $1,195,000
Location: 1319 Hopkins Ave
Neighborhood: Community Center
BR: 2, BA 2
Sq. Ft.: 1,304
Lot Size: About 3,500 sq. ft.
MLS: # 711278