A live monkey kept in a floor-to-ceiling cage in the living room?
That’s what greeted Brenda Formicola one day on a home-shopping expedition some years ago.
Looking for a house in move-in condition, Formicola passed up this place to buy a home that didn’t have a monkey cage bolted to the floor.
While few home-sellers make such brazen mistakes as this monkey caper, many make it tough to market their homes by leaving too many personal items on display, including myriad collectibles and family photos.
“I’ve been in houses where people have collected so much stuff, there’s just a narrow pathway from room to room,” says Formicola, a Prudential agent for nearly 15 years. “All those personal belongings are a real turn-off when you’re trying to sell.”
Martie Etheridge, a broker-associate for RE/MAX, remembers one seller who displayed 33 baseball caps on his family room wall. “Some were clean, but a lot were dusty and some were raggy. To buyers, they just looked like garbage,” she recalls.
Your collection of baseball caps, porcelain pigs or talking parrots may make you proud when friends and relatives assemble. But leaving them on display when your house is up for sale is one definite “no-no” in the marketing process.
Here are six other common mistakes:
– Having the family glued to a TV football game while your house is being shown.
“Tape the game and walk out, scatter, do whatever you have to do to get out of the way,” advises Formicola, who has ushered potential buyers into homes on several occasions when the living room was crowded with sports fans who wouldn’t disperse.
You don’t have to go far to give prospective buyers the privacy and comfort they need to see your home without you being present, because most showings last just 10 to 30 minutes, she notes. A walk around the block or a trip to a local ice cream parlor will typically absorb enough time for would-be buyers to explore your home without your crowd in the way.
– Trying to peddle a smoky house.
You may have quit smoking more than a month ago, but the signs–and odors–of your old habit are likely still lingering in your home unless you’ve expunged them through a thorough cleaning of upholstery, carpeting, draperies and blinds. Your walls should be thoroughly scrubbed down, if that’s feasible, Formicola adds.
And don’t forget to do a thorough cleaning of the interior of your windows, which may still bear smoke residue.
“I’ve been in smokers’ houses where the smoke (residue) on the patio door was so thick, I could write my initials in it,” Formicola says.
– Hanging onto bedraggled, decades-old plants.
Granted, some of the plantings inside or outside your home may still, technically, be alive. But if they’re old, mangy and dowdy-looking, they ought to be replaced, says Carol Cusator, a Century 21 agent.
“I love old trees, but a lot of old shrubs have no character,” she notes.
For whatever reason, home buyers are more enamored than ever of greenery, she says. “People love beautiful landscaping even if the month after they move in it will all be dead because they don’t have a clue about how to take care of it.
“A well-landscaped home will bring as much as 5 or 6 percent more than a poorly landscaped one.”
– Forgetting how long prospects may linger at–and scrutinize–your threshold.
If the delivery driver rushes up to your front door to leave a package, he’s not likely to notice any chipping paint or cobwebs on your front door. Nor will he see the fingerprints left by your children on the glass or your dog’s scratch marks.
But home-shoppers are highly observant. What’s more, they may spend a number of minutes looking around your threshold as their real estate agent searches for the right key or attempts to open a lockbox attached to your doorknob. Why should you focus so much on improving your entrance?
“Statistics tell us that more than 60 percent of the decision on whether to buy a home is made before the client walks through the front door,” says Etheridge.
– Keeping your home sealed up too tight.
A number of years ago, Etheridge remembers her first encounter with an 88-year-old widow who was selling the cottage she had inhabited since she was a bride.
The house seemed dark and forbidding as the agent entered. “Why do you keep those heavy draperies closed all day?” the agent asked the widow. To protect the carpet from fading, the widow replied.
Indeed, the chocolate brown carpet was in excellent condition. But the agent explained that chances were the carpet would be replaced by the buyer, anyway.
And furthermore, a darkened house is especially unappealing to today’s buyers, most of whom have a passion for light, bright homes, Etheridge notes. Recognizing it was silly to protect her brown carpet from a little fading, the widow began opening her draperies during daylight hours and sold her place in just 20 days.
– Pricing at the top of the neighborhood range when it’s unjustified.
Home-sellers love to look at the prices fetched for like properties sold elsewhere in their neighborhood, Etheridge says. And out of all these comparables, they often select the ones that attracted the highest prices.
But if your home is truly in medium to poor condition, it’s a serious error to price it like a similar one that’s “immaculate and drop-dead gorgeous,” she says. The difference in the homes’ conditions will be obvious to potential buyers, who will boycott your place.
Though seasoned agents have to deliver the same tiresome message time and again, mistakes in pricing and condition hurt the seller in the end. Thus, it’s a savvy seller who avoids common marketing mistakes such as overpricing. “You can’t get a positive from a bunch of negatives,” Etheridge says.
