By Colleen Valles

Ginger Conti can make any  home into a thing of beauty.  Ginger is one half of the makeover team, a team that takes coziness seriously. Paul Conti, Ginger's husband, is a real estate agent, who lists the homes and sells them.  But before they go on the market, Ginger comes in, and usually in a matter of hours, transforms the house, using furniture and accessories, into a warm and inviting space. The process, which some refer to as "staging," uses temporary decoration and arrangement to make the home more appealing to buyers.

Even if there's nothing really wrong with a house in the first place, Ginger can add some pillows here, and area rug there, and make a nice house seem like a home.  If a house is vacant, the makeover can make all the difference, Paul Conti said.

"In an empty anything, flaws will show," he said. "If people stage their homes, they'll get that much more demand, which could mean that much more money."

The couple has been married 38 years, and Paul Conti has been in real estate for 26 years, but Ginger Conti began staging homes her husband was listing about 13 years ago, after seeing the vacant home he was trying to sell and thinking she could do something to make them more appealing. The media calls it home makeovers today.

"Professional Staging (Makeover) invites people to consider the possibilites"

"Says Homeowner Don Holmes,  his home sold in 7 days full price"

She started with a box of accessories-a few pictures and things for the counter top-and a table and chairs.  Now, the Contis can fill a van, a trailer and their garage with all the furniture and decorations they use to help make homes look better.

Home staging is not new, and, in fact, many will charge to help people make their homes more presentable.  But Ginger Conti stages only the houses of her husband's clients, and she does it for FREE. The couple said for a minor staging, they'll bring in about $4,500 worth of decorations and furniture, but for other, more extensive staging, the value of the added accessories can reach $6,000.

Click Here To Get A FREE Makeover on YOUR Home!

Paul Conti estimates the worth of the items they use to be around $50,000.  Ginger spends a lot of time shopping around looking for new supplies, so much so that she said they know her by name at Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel.  The couple estimates they spend between $10,000 and $15,000 a year updating their supplies.

But the Contis expense can help save their clients more money. Frequently, Ginger Conti said, when they go into a house to assess it, people tell them all the things they think need to be done to make the house look better, and that usually  includes remodeling.  One couple had even gotten a quote - $30,000 – on how much it would cost to remodel. But Gloria Conti told them to hold off, and brought in some accessories to make the house over.

"A warm fuzzy is nice" The interior makeover and the Contis Marketing
got us Full price in 6 Days.  Homeowner Willy Sagun

She said the main mistake people make is spending too much on remodeling.

"Time and money would be better spent on assessing and attacking the most important things, like staging the front of the house," she said. "People are relieved they don't have to do what they thought they had to do."

Ginger Conti said the three most important areas of the house that she tackles are the kitchen, the living room and the master bedroom. She also focuses on the front of the house. "Curb appeal," said Paul Conti, "is not just the landscaping. It's what they see through the window."

Ginger Conti just did a makeover on  Ron and Gail Price's home who are trying to sell their home in San Jose. In 2004, they had the Contis list and stage a previous home, which sold in three days. Three days after their current home was staged, they had  six offers. Ron Price said Ginger Conti asked them to clear out some clutter and clean, and then she came by with decorations like plants, lamps and pictures, and spruced up the house, making it feel lighter.

"We felt like we wanted to buy it ourselves," Price said. "It feels like you walk in the door, and you just say 'Wow.' That's what you really need. You got that, and you're one step ahead."

Before the hands on makeover, Ginger Conti will go through it, and typically will ask people to remove some items, clear some clutter and clean up a bit.  She'll take notes and then pick from among her supplies the items she thinks would enhance the house. Ginger and Paul Conti will bring the items over, then Paul and the homeowners will leave Ginger alone to transform the house.

For the most part, people are receptive to the changes, Ginger Conti said.

"Out of the 380-some houses I've done, we've had resistance only a couple of times," she said. "People want to know exactly what I'm going to do, but I really need to give them an idea of what I'm going to do.  A lot of times they'll take things out, and it'll look different than what I even expected."

Sometimes Ginger Conti has to do a lot of work to make a home look palatable to potential buyers. One home had what Ginger Conti referred to as the "Black and White Disco Kitchen."

She said it had what looked like hand-sawed cupboards with rough edges, poorly done black-and-white tiling and black-and-white checkerboard linoleum. Plus, she said, the owner insisted that the curtains he had hung must stay.  And there was no eating area in the kitchen, or anywhere else in the house.Ginger Conti brought in beige curtains, area rugs and a table and chairs which she set up as a dining area in one corner of the living room. Another home she had to tackle had no real definition between rooms, and there was a platform in the middle of the house which was set up as a dining area, with half walls around it that blocked the view to the kitchen.

"It looked like a stage," Paul Conti said.They couldn't do much about the platform, but Ginger Conti hung pictures around it in the dining area, brought in plants and set up an actual living room and family room. And, in the third house, Ginger Conti had to make it look appealing to potential buyers who were driving by. Paul Conti said people were just driving by the house, looking at it from the outside, and driving off. The owners had removed a lot of their personal items from inside, and outside, it had white rocks, closed curtains, no flowers or plants and was, in general, very cold-looking, Ginger said. Ginger  brought some plants in planters from the back to the front, hung a wreath on the door, opened the curtains and put a nice setting in the window.  A few other touches later, and the house looked so different that a neighbor came over and asked the owners if they had done some landscaping,

Ginger said. After the accessories and furniture are in, the candles are lit and the preselected music is turned on, making the house ready for potential buyers.

"I want to help them picture themselves living there," Ginger Conti said.

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