Yes, you read that right, 5 easy tips to NOT to sell your house. Not that I am claiming to be a expert, but some of the houses we have seen made mistakes that seem so downright easy to avoid that I thought I would share them with you. The market is tight, there is too many houses, and not enough motivated buyers out there. As a seller they should be doing everything they can to entice potential buyers into a showing, and when they are in the home it should be clean, inviting, smell good, and look better, and be competively priced. 1. Take a really bad MLS photo. If you don’t care, just use any old photo, blurry, finger smudges across the lens, who cares… after all it’s only the first thing that a prospective buyer sees. Why worry about if it is well lit, as long as the house is in it. Toys all over the front lawn, bicycles leaning up against the garage, not that important.
2. Don’t take the dirty clothes off of the beds, or tidy up before your Realtor takes the photos for the listing. We have seen countless photos with dirty clothes strewn everywhere, and dirty dishes in the sink. Not everyone wants to see your toothbrush on the counter, toilet seat at full mast, and beds covered with dirty laundry. If you don’t want to sell, then choose the photos with people lounging around in the armchairs, and the family dog licking a mess off of the floor, that’s appealing to a prospective buyer isn’t it? 3. Leave dead plants in the pots beside the front door, don’t bother freshening up the greenery. Curb appeal is just some fancy term for having to do too much work. So if you can’t be convinced that it’s important, don’t worry about the way your home looks from the street. And don’t bother to shovel the snow to the front door, let them wade in. That’s what snow boots are for.
4. Don’t bother to take out the garbage, leave it inside. You can’t smell it because you are used to it, so they can’t smell it right? I can still recall the smell of fermenting apples, and garbage, in a otherwise clean house that assailed our senses as we walked about. I just couldn’t get beyond that smell. And for a real turn off, spray Febreze liberally in all the rooms, and use lots of perfume, and room sprays. You don’t have allergies to those sprays, why should anyone else?
5. Leave the dog poop in the backyard, don’t bother to clean it up. In this weather who is going to take a quick tour around the backyard? Well prospective buyers that’s who. Actually, one house even had dog poop in the crawlspace. That was a doozie. So there are 5 easy tips for not selling your home, in my next post I will have some “do’s.”