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Don’t Spook Your Showings! Avoid These 10 Frightful Staging and Landscaping Mistakes
The red-hot Minnesota housing market may be cooling off for the winter months, but there’s still plenty of time to sell your home this fall. In fact, there are several advantages to selling your home in the off-season, including less competition and more motivated buyers. Don’t scare your fall showings off with these staging and landscaping mistakes!
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Creepy Critters
Bats and spiders are festive when they’re plastic and part of your Halloween decorations. But when they’re infesting your property, they’re a major turnoff for potential buyers. Make sure bats, spiders, skunks, squirrels, and other critters are making their homes outside your attic and basement. Call an exterminator to remove animals and keep up with dusting and vacuuming to keep up with indoor creepy crawlies.
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Spooky, Dark Rooms (& Landscaping)
We lose a lot of daylight in the fall and winter months, and this lack of light makes a big impact on showings, even during the day. Before each showing, turn on all your home’s interior and exterior lights. Add walkway lighting outside to make it easy and inviting to reach your home’s front door.
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Frightening Family Photos
Your family photos and heirlooms are precious to you, but not to buyers. One Realtor® in Kentucky once led buyers through a home that had nude, life-sized photographs hanging in the bedrooms. Don’t scare off potential buyers with disturbing, frightening, or awkward photos and other décor. Put away your family portraits and heirlooms and put out more neutral décor.
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Locked Out
A sure-fire turnoff—forgetting to leave a key in the lockbox before a showing! You only have one chance to make a good first impression. Most buyers will not buy a home sight unseen, and few are willing to come back and give you another chance.
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Ghosts of Owners Past
It may be surprising, but many agents have horror stories of arriving at a showing with their buyers and being greeted at the door by the seller, or worse yet, surprising a showering seller. Coordinate with your Realtor® to make sure you have lots of lead time before your showings.
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Peculiar Pets & Pet Messes
Figuring out what to do with pets during a showing can be complicated. Make sure small pets are securely locked in their cages. If possible, bring cats, dogs, and other larger pets with you. Even caged pets can behave in ways that turn off buyers. And be sure to pick up any pet messes inside your house and in your lawn!
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Offensive Odors
Take out the trash, scrub the bathroom, and dump old food in the fridge. Messes and the odors they leave behind make a lasting impression on buyers. Some smells are particularly difficult to remove, such as smoke and pet odor. In these cases, it pays to take drastic action, such as repainting or recarpeting.
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Wacky Home Remodels
Bedrooms with no closets, bathrooms with no doors, and a kitchen that doubles as the den, office, and your closet can all scare off buyers. What works for you and your family may not work for a new owner, so address any funky remodeling before you sell.
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Getting Too Personal
Our homes are our castles, so it’s easy to forget to put away personal items, including sensitive documents such as bank statements and credit card bills. If it’s got your name, account number, and a monetary amount on it, file it away before opening your home to buyers.
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Disgusting Dirt & Clutter
Don’t let dirt and clutter haunt your house and spook buyers. Piles of clothes, paper, and oversized furniture make it difficult for buyers to see the potential in your home, or themselves living in it. Clear it out, clean it off, and then start scheduling showings.
Halloween is a time for trickery, yummy treats, and even a horror film or two. But if you’re trying to sell your home, it’s not a time to scare away potential buyers. For help buying or selling your home in the Rockford-Buffalo-Delano-St. Michael area, email Trent Shipley at Keller Williams Realty Integrity NW or call 612-310-4770 today.
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