Curry take away

I love curry and the smell makes me hungry but I wonder about people who cook strong smelling food just before having an Open House.  As much as you can, avoid cooking with curry, boiling cabbage or popping microwave popcorn.  There are some food smells that the majority of  Buyers will not like.

Let your house pop without getting corny.

Zinger 115

Guns and roses

If you are going to put your house on the market and you have guns, be prudent and store them  away from the house and from where strangers are going to see them. This might be a thorny topic for some but why worry about your guns being stolen?  Replace the Buyers’ interest with a couple of wonderful bouquets of roses. 

 Replace cold metal with symbols of love and friendship.

Zingers 114 

Selling and Decluttering – The Front Hall Closet

Your front hall closet is going to be viewed when Buyers come to look at your house.  Most people have the front hall closet packed tight.  Before you put your house on the market,  de clutter the closet. 

Buy a box of wooden hangers (they look solid and substantial while costing less than a dollar each).  Take out all the coats and jackets and choose one or two for each person in the house – one if there is little space, two if there is more room.  Take out anything that is not coat, boot, scarf and glove related.  Find a different place in the house for these items.  If it summer, take out the winter coats and vice versa.  You can pack your seasonal coats and outerwear now, in anticipation of the move.  You might take this opportunity to have your coats cleaned and/or given to the Salvation Army.

When everything is out of the closet, sweep and wash it.  Toss the bent hangers and mismatched mittens.  Find a new home for your dozen purses, vacuum cleaner and the kitty litter bag. 

Hang on to your Buyers with a clean, organized and spacious closet.

Photo credit:  Coat Hanger Cintre @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/21025851@N00/2169219432/

Five More Decorating Mistakes that Bug Ottawa Buyers

There was a television special about the 25 biggest decorating mistakes people make in their homes.  Everyone has made a few of these and learned to live with them over time.  However, there are some more obvious to home Buyers than others.  Of the 25 here are 5 more of my favourites when it comes to selling / show casing your home:

  1. Outdated Accessories – For the Owner – the door handles work and over time they are just there.  For the Buyer, old door handles date the house and make the Buyer think that the whole kitchen / bathroom may have to be updated. 
  2. Furniture that Doesn’t Fit- For the Owner the big puffy couch with matching love seat and armchair are wedged into the room with just enough space to get by and why not?  It works for the Owner.  For the Buyer, a room that is stuffed with furniture looks small and may make the Buyer think that they too cannot get their furniture all in the room.
  3. Fear of Colour – everything is in builder’s white.  For the Owner white goes with everything.  There can be no colour mistakes when there is no colour.  For the Buyer, the house has no spark and not memorable.  White walls can look dirty over time so……
  4. Fake Flowers – For the Owner going fake is the answer to replace expensive and short lived fresh flowers.  For the Buyer fake flowers and plants are dust collectors, soon look dated and seldom fool anyone about their provenance.
  5. Ignoring windows – For the Owner, the tacked on blanket has served its purpose for the last three years and why spend money on window treatments now that you are moving?  For the Buyer, blankets, torn fabric, bent metal blinds, dirty drapes all mean that the Sellers are neglectful and cheap. If this is what is not done for the windows, then what is not done for the rest of the house.

Decorating is important when you are marketing your house.  It is not about how you live but how you want the Buyer to imagine themselves in your house.

Photo credit:  Fake Flowers in the Sun @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/orinrobertjohn/1795685457/

Selling and Decluttering – The Linen Closet

A Buyer for your home will open every closet door, including your linen closet.  If you have things that you would rather people not see, put them in a box.  Buyers open doors but should never be opening boxes or drawers in your furniture. Now that you know that your linen closet will be on display, declutter it before your house is on the market. 

Start by removing everything in the closet. 

1.     Wash the shelves, walls and door.

2.     Sort through your towels.  Keep one or two spare sets in the closet and pack or give away the others. If you have the room, roll some of your towels and put them in a basket in the bathroom near the tub. 

3.     Look at all your bed linen.  If you need to make space in the closet choose two sets per bed in the house.  One set is on the bed; the other is neatly folded and kept in the bedroom that contains the bed.  A neat trick is to fold the sheets and the pillow cases but keep one pillow case to be used as a bag to put the matching set inside.  This way, all you have to do is find the one bag for the bed.

4.     Look at your toiletries.  Are any stale dated?  Toss.  What about the cleaning products?  Sort through these in the same way.  Keep only what you will be using for the next few weeks and store the others in boxes in the basement/garage/storage locker.  Watch out when packing liquids.  Most movers will not allow liquids.  You might want to give your products to friends or relatives. 

5.     Have you got photographs, games, wrapping paper and ribbons and a myriad of other things in the linen closet?  Consider putting these away in boxes for the move.  The less you have in the closet the bigger it will look.  Stage it so that Buyers can imagine their own things in the closet.

6.     When everything is sorted, stack what you will keep in the closet. 

7.     Don’t be tempted to put an air freshener in the closet.  If you must, buy some lavender sachets and put them between the bed sheets. It will give a faint smell and is good aromatherapy for sleeping.

 

Please your Buyer with an organized and clean linen closet.

Photo credit:  118/365: Towels, Again @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/playfullibrarian/3498846572/

Photo credit:  Lavender square @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/dichohecho/3800608793/

 

Zingers #106 – Seven years of bad luck

If you are going to remove mirrors that have been glued to the wall, make sure that you are standing at or above the top of the mirrors.  Criss cross the mirror with tape and put a drop cloth below the mirror.  Of course the mirror is likely to break, especially if the bonding agent is really strong.  Be careful.

Avoid having to see double.

Zingers #105 – Feature this

 Does your living, dining or bedroom need a little boost?  If the paint job still relatively fresh but the room looks a little tired and maybe it looks small, then consider painting a feature wall.  To choose the wall, walk into a room and determine where your eyes go first.  This is likely the wall that will benefit from being a different hue or colour.

Pop with paint.

Zingers #104 – Mirror, mirror on the wall

Have you got a wall of mirrors?  Think about removing them before putting your house on the market.  A wall of mirrors is like being in the fun house, it makes you disoriented.  Covering a wall with mirrors was a decorating fad that is now past its due date.   

Make your house the fairest of them all.

Things Ottawa Home Buyers May Notice #35 – Missing Pictures

Everything you read about staging says to take down personal photos and unusual pictures from the walls.  What some advisers fail to say is – take out the hooks, the nails, the thumbtacks and any other type of hanger and fix the wall. 

Buyers and I were looking at a wonderful bungelow.  The layout, while a bit unusual, was appealing.  However, everywhere you looked there were hooks and nails in the walls where the owners had previously hung their ‘art’.   These were owners who hung stuff over the doors, low on the walls (probably for the children) in collages, above cupboards, etc.  When we finally made it to the basement, there was the ‘art’, stacked along the walls ready for packing. 

It would have been advisable to patch the holes and touch up the paint. 

This house became unhooked from the Buyers’ list.

 Photo credit: Uninspired 46/365 @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/skyfire/4359853973/

Things Buyers May Notice #35 – Country Kitsch Gone Mad

A few weeks ago I was out with Buyers looking at homes.  Of course we had done our homework by looking at the listings on the Internet and evaluating the worthiness of viewing the homes based on the pictures.  One set of home pictures stood out for two reasons  It seemed that the Seller was overly fond of dark maroon paint – it was on the walls inside the home and on the exterior bricks.  Rooms were too dark and depressing because the paint was a no-no.  Secondly, it seemed the Seller was running a craft / country store of kitsch from her home.  Every bit of wall space and every horizontal surface was covered in craft-like items.  It was difficult to see the rooms beyond the stuff.  It was on our “not to see” list.  However, the Listing Agent asked us to give it a chance and take a look.

OMG – we were in the house for 1 minute and one of the Buyers wanted out.  Our eyes were spinning.  There was nowhere to look without being attacked by stuff.  The other Buyer recognized that all of the clutter was, in fact, expensive pieces and probably lovingly collected over time.  Sadly, everything was on display but nothing was a focal point.   The house was lost in the stuff.

How would the Agent tell this client to start to pack up a lifetime of collecting and start painting in beige?  Good luck.

Photo credit:  Kitsch-cow @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/itnomad/11340853/

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