somebody knows mauve is out

[don]

Houses, Decked Out for a Sale, Are Burglarized

By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN
PIEDMONT, Calif. — The Sunday open house is a sure sign of spring, a seasonal ritual in which marble-countered kitchens, light-filled master suites, spectacular rear gardens and closets galore are decorated to perfection to draw buyers.

It is a common ploy here and elsewhere to have professional decorators “stage” unoccupied homes that are on the market with borrowed furnishings and appointments to help fetch top dollar, especially now that real estate sales have wilted like a week-old flower arrangement.

But along with fragrant jasmine and wisteria in bloom, there is caution in the air here. The same painstaking efforts to attract buyers have also attracted thieves.

An unusual wave of burglaries has hit unoccupied houses for sale in this affluent 1.8-square-mile bedroom community in the hills east of Oakland, and it is testing the forced cheerfulness of real estate agents who are already reeling. Last weekend, two staged houses were burglarized in nearby Orinda, a wealthy suburb, robbed in the morning hours before planned afternoon open houses.

“It’s brazen,” said D. J. Grubb, the president of the Grubb Company, a real estate agency based in Oakland. “These are highly aesthetic crimes. The thief seems to be someone with very good taste, somebody who knows that mauve is out.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/us...ar.html?ref=us

I'm thinking Somalians ;)