Rock star Slash turns to decor expert to get home sold fast
By Valerie Kuklenski, Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 06/15/2007 05:57:04 PM PDT
The Hollywood Hills home has so much going for it: a natural setting, a private street, charming Spanish architecture, a guest house, a lap pool and possibly the best view in L.A. - an uninterrupted vista that sweeps from Griffith Park to the Pacific.
And it has pedigree, at least for rock fans. Slash of Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver slept here.
Still, the guitarist and his wife, Perla, were advised it needed a little something to make it stand out as a listing in this buyer's market.
Their broker introduced them to Beth Ann Shepherd of Dressed to Close, a Los Angeles company that provides everything it takes to grab the attention of real-estate agents and, later, their clients.
"We bring in everything from rugs to furniture to candles to books to photos to frames to lights to light bulbs to orchids to fruit," Shepherd, who also lists singer Natalie Imbruglia as one of her celebrity clients, says as she gives an impromptu tour of the home.
The cost of staging varies widely, influenced by both the square footage and the home's market value.
It's all about the location
"In L.A. you have to price it that way," she says. "Because you have 3,000-square-foot homes that are $600,000, and you have 3,000-square-foot homes that are $25 million in Malibu."
Shepherd says Slash's house - 6,800 square feet with about 20 rooms, listed at $6.99 million - cost just under $30,000 to decorate. The price includes the design work, a three-month contract for furnishings rental and maintenance, move in, move out and installation.
A much more modestly priced four-bedroom home, she explains, might run about $15,000.
Trends say it's a worthwhile expenditure.
"If a home is priced right and it's staged, it's going to sell in about half the time," Shepherd advises.
She says some clients charge the staging fee on a credit card, reap the frequent-flier miles and then sign the sales contract before the credit card bill comes in.
And the purchase price is on average 20 percent higher than it would have been unfurnished, she claims.
Consider it an investment
"It's what I call a short-term, high-yield investment," she says. "Where else can you invest your money and get it back so quickly with such a high return? Not the stock market.
"You pay us, it's staged three days later, it's on the market, it sells. The minute it sells - even if it takes three months - it comes right back to you. It's a win-win, as Steven Covey would say."
There are some 1 million people in the home-staging business, according to the International Association of Home Staging Professionals.
With the supply of available homes exceeding the current demand, that means plenty of work for Dressed to Close and other local companies, including Alpha & Omega Home Staging in Burbank and Simply Stage It in Los Angeles.
Vanessa Sandin, Slash's broker, would be happier if more of her listing clients would vacate their homes before putting them on the market and hire a stager.
"I think a lot of people come into an empty house and they don't know how to live in it," Sandin says. "But if it's staged beautifully, someone could think, `All I need is my toothbrush and I could live so easily in this house.'
"There are so many homes I really wish we could stage," she says. "People love their stuff. They just don't see it the way everybody else does."
Slash - whose real name is Saul Hudson - and Perla had owned the house for about two years but never completely moved in while maintaining their principal house in Sherman Oaks.
"We were going to live here, so we were going to do a whole remodel to make it livable for us, and we'd stay here on the weekends and have parties here and stuff like that," Perla says. "And then Slash decided we're not going to be in Hollywood. We're over the Hollywood thing because we have two small children."
Their boys, London, 4 1/2, and Cash, almost 3, need more outdoor space than the hillside living affords, she says, so they're planning to sell the Hollywood and Sherman Oaks houses and buy a property in the hills above Malibu.
Pinball parlor ... or gym?
Slash's "stuff" that may not have been appealing to buyers included a collection of pinball machines spread through two rooms in the guest house, which is reached through a large breezeway off the kitchen.
After Shepherd's crew was done, the smaller of those two pinball joints was a home gym, and the larger one had been converted to a screening room with four comfy settees facing a pull-down screen and a pool table at the rear of the room. A tray with Red Vines and Good & Plenty candies sat on an ottoman.
He likes it
As Slash walks through the finished house, it was the screening room that caught his fancy.
"That's the biggest development because we never did anything specific with it," he says. "Now it actually has a purpose."
Shepherd says about half of the homes she decorates end up being sold fully furnished, down to every candle, throw pillow and fluffy hotel towel.
Otherwise, the furnishings go into another client's house or back to one of the Designed to Close warehouses to await their next assignment.
Even with the rush of the work and the demands of often finicky clients, Shepherd prefers her current line of work to the regular interior design business.
"We create impact in 48 hours," she says. "You can't do that in interior design," she said. "Interior design is a six-month to one-year process.
"And when clients call me and say, `You won't believe it, the house sold, first open house, multiple offers,' it's the greatest thing. And they become clients for life."
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