This is a long-overdue review for a wonderful team that has helped me helped my seller clients tremendously over the past 4 years. I've been working with Maryam and CJ since 2015, and have had countless homeowners benefit from their staging services and have referred them to countless more colleagues of mine or homeowners from out of the area as I believe they cover multiple counties across Southern California.
I want to especially thank Marco Velarde on his recent work at my Irvine home. Marco has superb customer service and a very good eye. He said he learned a lot from Maryam and I really saw that in his work. I trusted him to single-handedly stage my 4 bedroom+bonus room home for sale and my husband and I thought he did a fabulous job and also very much enjoyed working with him throughout the process. Marco has a great personality and is very good with communications which are some of the most important things to us and to me as someone who regularly refers them to people. Marco took the time to really make the room look it's best given what he was able to work with. He swapped my sofas between the family room downstairs to the bonus room upstairs even though I didn't think it was possible to fit the larger sofa through the doorway, he carefully took apart the sofa to help me with it without damaging the door frame.
As an Accredited Staging Professional myself, I truly value staging and know that at the end of the day, it is usually a no-brainer decision and pays for itself, oftentimes tenfolds. I've hired Home Staging Star to stage my own rental properties for sale, including starter size condos that were already fully-remodeled but needed the furnishings to tie the look together and help prospective buyers envision the space (think new construction model homes---- why do builders invest in staging when the home is already brand new, beautifully upgraded with the latest materials and on-trend... it's simply because of the ROI)
Staging works and I appreciate Home Staging Star because they are reasonable in pricing and have the economies of scale. I know that other individual stagers or smaller companies do good work too, but when they need to hire movers, it ups their cost and therefore can't be as competitive. If you're looking for a very full look, lots of very nice things, I think you would get that from other companies but also expect to pay 2 to 3 times the price..... so it is good to set reasonable expectations and know that at least in my experiences, Home Staging Star is a good value for what they deliver and the timeframe they can execute. It is important to try your best to accommodate a large window of arrival because they are all over the place and every day their route is different and things happen and sometimes they need to make trips back and forth to different destinations to pick up or add a finishing piece. One area of improvement would be to set the right expectations on arrival and just the communications. I understand with any company that is doing something right and expanding, there are things that can be compromised in the communications and customer service. I believe they try to do their best and hope that they will continue to try their best in the areas of communications and customer experience. I will continue to work with them and refer them because I do like CJ and Maryam and understand they try their best and have a lot on their plates because they do a good by their clients and that's why they have the business to keep them busy!
To sum up, here are some things I appreciate over the years:
1. Affordable pricing for what they can accomplish. They've always helped my listings photograph beautifully.
2. They are able to execute on relatively short notices because of the amount of inventory they have at any given time
3. They have their own branded trucks and they have a full-time staff of professional and polite moving crew.
4. They help you patch the nail holes when they destage.
5. They cover multiple counties in Southern California.
6. They're very experienced and don't need a lot of time at the home to do get you an estimate. Most visits to get an estimate is completely within 20 minutes so it does save time. They will take photos and videos so they can go back and plan the space.
Thank you, Home Staging Star, Maryam, CJ, and Marco!! read more