Offering new solutions for home design
Jan LeVan, of Munster, has been space planning and decorating since she was a little girl. The result of her passion is New Solutions, an interior design and home staging business LeVan started nine years ago.
Home staging is the art of making a residence more appealing for homebuyers. It first became popular in the West Coast and has been the subject of several home designing television shows.
"It's new around here," LeVan said.
LeVan is accredited by Barb Schwarz, a renowned Realtor and designer who is attributed with inventing home staging after realizing there was a need for people who needed help selling a home.
"It's making the home appealing to the most amount of people possible," LeVan said. "Once you do that, the house usually sells faster and sells for more money than a house that's not staged."
LeVan is a former Realtor with a degree in interior design who, when staging a home, looks at it "unbiased and with fresh eyes."
"I know what people are looking for when they're going to buy a house," she said. "I look at it with buyers' eyes and know what people want and can arrange the home with things already in there and make it more appealing to the general public.
"I get the house ready to be marketed. Staging is basically a marketing tool," LeVan said. "It's investing in your home so you can make the house more marketable."
LeVan's business includes a state-of-the-art 3-D visualization program. If someone is going to build a home, New Solutions can take the house plans, draw them up and show them what the house will look like before construction begins.
"You can notice things you might want to change before you even get started," LeVan said.
LeVan also does consultations and is one of the in-home designers for Mary & Martha Home Accents in Highland.
LeVan's services can run as little as $150 to $200 for a walk-through to a full-scale staging priced as an hourly fee.
"I give an estimate on how long I believe it will take so people know ahead of time," LeVan said.
The bad economy has actually affected LeVan is a positive way.
"I think people are staying home more," she said.
LeVan has been doing a lot of "refreshing" of homes because it's residents who aren't going out as much who want their homes to look different.
"I thought the accessorizing and decorating would go downhill, but it hasn't," LeVan said. "People really want to update where they live right now."
source: http://www.nwitimes.com/business/local/article_6361c2ac-2ca7-5119-abaf-6df55c2d0dba.html