Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
We’ve got a hot one
Those nice folks who spent a long time poking around our house last weekend? They’re coming back on Friday for a second look.
Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes . . .
We’ve asked a gardener to come out tomorrow to mow the lawns and neaten stuff up, and we’ve got a housekeeper coming Friday morning to do whatever it is she does (and she does it well, believe me). I wish I could bake a loaf of challah, though, since that makes the house smell so nice. But since I don’t have the time off from work to do something like that, I decided instead to google “tips advice showing your home.”
. . . and discovered this nightmare. And I thought baking challah would be a lot of work. I mean, really:
Make the House Sparkle!
- Wash windows inside and out.
- Rent a pressure washer and spray down sidewalks and exterior.
- Clean out cobwebs.
- Re-caulk tubs, showers and sinks.
- Polish chrome faucets and mirrors.
- Clean out the refrigerator.
- Vacuum daily.
- Wax floors.
- Dust furniture, ceiling fan blades and light fixtures.
- Bleach dingy grout.
- Replace worn rugs.
- Hang up fresh towels.
- Bathroom towels look great fastened with ribbon and bows.
- Clean and air out any musty smelling areas. Odors are a no-no.
And that’s just one-tenth of the article.
I have to agree with that last bullet point. When we went house-hunting in Seattle, one otherwise beautiful home had an unaccountable odor in the hallway. Every time I passed through the hallway, I smelled cooked cabbage. The realtor said, “I think they have a dog,” but that means what, exactly? Dog farts don’t linger for hours, do they?
We have a funky smelling bathroom downstairs. Maybe I should go buy some of that smelly crap . . . what’s it called? You know, it has cinnamon and star anise and dried flowers. A bouquet? Gaaaaaah! I am so not up to this task.
Hmmph. How come so many of these advice-givers tell me I have to “disconnect my emotions”? I only have one emotion here: I want to sell this house quickly so that we can buy, not rent, when we get down to Santa Rosa. Or at least, I don’t want to have to rent for more than a few months. And if we have to rent, I want to be in a place like Oakwoods where they have EVERYTHING furnished, so that way I don’t have to unpack anything but clothes. Unpack once, that’s my goal.
Don’t any of these websites provide simple advice to make my home appealing? You know, something I can bake, or spray into the air?
Maybe a potted plant, strategically positioned. That would be easy.
D.
It’s potpourri – see good advice in Wikipedia. Try to get something that isn’t too garish with too heavy a fake scent. I’m a fan of piney, cedary scents. For the kitchen cinnamon and orange are good. From what I’ve seen of your house in the background of various pictures, florals may bit a bit incongruous. Much as I picture the bathroom towels tied with bows not fitting into your style…
Probably most important, tidy up (easier said that done in certain houses like mine) and shove all the detritus of real life into drawers, boxes, whatever, just so it’s out of sight.
My sister is trying to sell their cookie-cutter townhouse in the Washington Metro area and their realtor is talking about how to “dress” the house, now that their stuff is on its way overseas. But then they have a weeny townhouse – I understand that making your place look big, isn’t the issue.
Good luck!
Sorry – one more thing! When I was househunting in Takhoma Park (the Berkeley of the Washington Metro area), the realtor showed me a pretty good size bungalow (love that style!) in a nice neighborhood. I suppose the tree stump from the illegally cut down tree should have tipped me off, but I was liking the house. Very close to dear friends, big rooms, freshly painted, and the turquoise kitchen could have been dealt with. Down we go into the basement, which is the usual, not so exciting laundry room. Then one of us innocently says the realtor, where does this door go? Oh, it’s a mother-in-law apartment. We open the door and go into a low ceilinged dark filthy smoky room that looked like it was lifted from a serial killer movie. And that was it. Regardless of all the other good things and the fact that less than $5K of cleaning, paint, and carpeting could have made the creepiness go away, I just couldn’t get past it. Turns out the seller’s realtor told them to get out of the main part of the house, have it painted, and make themselves scarce. If the whole house had looked that before, it was good advice.
Anyway, I still sort of regret not buying the house, since it had a great location, good bones, and was quite a good price. So, anecdotal evidence of how irrational buyers can be based on something that isn’t really an expensive problem.
P.S. Remembering the first glimpse of that room still gives me the creeps!
I remember a tip from a real estate agent that said to go to the store and buy a six of cinamon rolls. Before a showing, put them in the oven for fifteen minutes, then turn the oven off. The smell of the cinamon permeates the house.
I thought that sounded like a good idea, and cheap. If you were really frugal, you could probably reuse the rolls for more than one showing.
Gimme a sweet roll.
What’s funny is that if you do all the shit they tell you to, it looks great and you wish you’d done it years ago so YOU could enjoy a sparkling house.
I’m crossing my fingers for you!
Maybe just boil a lot of cinnamon on the stove? The lady selling her house (that we bought) made chocolate chip cookies in her oven and handed them out to people touring the place.
THEY’RE COMING BACK!!! YEAH! That’s a great sign. AND your kitchen’s redone. That’s huge. I think they’re gonna buy.
# Wash windows inside and out.
# Rent a pressure washer and spray down sidewalks and exterior.
# Clean out cobwebs.
# Re-caulk tubs, showers and sinks.
# Polish chrome faucets and mirrors.
# Clean out the refrigerator.
# Vacuum daily.
# Wax floors.
# Dust furniture, ceiling fan blades and light fixtures.
# Bleach dingy grout.
# Replace worn rugs.
# Hang up fresh towels.
# Bathroom towels look great fastened with ribbon and bows.
My late ex-mother-in-law did all that on a weekly basis. Seriously. She washed her curtains every Wednesday.
But she’s dead now, so you can see how well that worked out.
Good luck!
It took five trips for our buyers, hopefully yours will decide sooner.
Remove every freaking thing you possibly can. We stripped down to the barest of bare essentials – essential furniture, one TV, minimal dishes, towels, sheets… No books, no nicknacks, no kitchen gadgets. No nothing. And everything clean, clean, clean.
We got calls from realtors who showed our house thanking us for making it so easy to show. We had a great location, a good price, and a lovely house.
Still took us three months to sell.
One of the first realtors who came through found a rat in one of our unused closets. Seriously. A rat. A rat so long dead it didn’t even smell any more, and looked more like a toupee than a rat cadaver.
I cleaned that area out — does that count? But I imagine that’ll be one realtor we don’t see again.
I like the chocolate chip cookie idea. Or maybe I’ll have Karen and Jake bake up some cookies AND cinnamon rolls. The place will smell like Mexican hot chocolate.
I agree with Tambo. My mother died last year and I am trying to sell her house right now. Tambo’s advice was exactly what the realtor told us to do. Get rid of everything personal so the prospective buyers won’t have anything to distract them. Empty closets and cabinets and uncluttered rooms look bigger, and it makes it easier for the buyers to imagine their stuff there. Hope you sell. Wish me luch as well. I have had my Mom’s house on the market since May with little interest and it is really a stunning place, and all cleaned up just like they advised in your post. I spray a special lemon scented air spray around the house from time to time and it makes it smell very clean and fresh.
I was also told by an agent that freshly baked chocolate chips cookies (even the kind you slice from a roll…you don’t have to eat them…they ARE nasty tasting)give the house a “homey atmosphere”. They just smell great.
I know when I look at a house, I don’t appreciate the funky smells (we once looked at a home in West Covina, and the cooking oil smell was so strong, we didn’t even finish looking at the house). Deal breakers for me: the name of the street (Beaver Way was a no no),
the lack of cleanliness in the house.
That’s funny. In Seattle, ‘staging’ a house is a big thing, with companies that will come and furnish your empty house for you. The rationale being, of course, that it makes it easier for the buyers to imagine their stuff there…
Oh yeah – good luck w/ the returning buyers!
Good luck!
Staging is a big thing out here (Cincinnati/Dayton) too. Home builders and real estate agents have lots of furniture, decorations and stuff to fill an empty house. Closed closets and cabinets are left empty, except perhaps for a hanger or too, just to give the unwary home buyer the hint that it really is a closet, I guess. But, anything that doesn’t have doors or is open or has glass doors usually has something on it.
I think, though, it is possible to go overboard with the staging. I’ve see homes that give off a museum-vibe, and you just wouldn’t feel comfortable living there because you’d feel the need to maintain that museum atmosphere!
Thanks, folks.
Okay . . . so you need to understand, we have no place to put things. If we clean out the closets, where do we move the crap to? If we de-clutter, same question. I’m throwing out as much as I can, and this weekend is the garage sale. Shiver. To quote Ronald Reagan, “We’re doing the best we can.”
Today, I wiped down the front door (it’s a beautiful door, but you wouldn’t have noticed through all the dirt), moved some of the living room clutter out into the pre-garage sale clutter, cleaned the kitchen, put some potpourri into Le Stinqi Bathroom, and did some cleanup of our big furry blue bathtub. I’m not sure when I’m supposed to find time to blog.
. . . especially since I keep yawning.
Rent one of those store-your-own lockers for a month. Move everything you don’t need right now (and be brutal) into the locker. Everything. Be prepared to live a monk’s existence until you sell. Better yet, move it into one of those moving containers. They’ll store it for you, and drop it off at your new place.
Pay your housekeeper for a couple of extra days doing things like washing walls and doors and all that stuff. If she’s too busy, pay someone else to do it.
At this point, it is more important to sell than to save money.