Is your home exactly like you?
We’re a nation of individuals, and like individuals,we want our possessions to reflect our individual style. But if your individual style is a little too individual, it could spell disaster when selling a home.
Once upon a time in the early days of my real estate career, I listed a multi-million property with 400 feet of waterfront on a lovely harbor off of the Long Island Sound. Naturally, I was excited to land this level property and convinced myself that the little quirky things about the home would not be noticed because of its spectacular location.
Boy was I wrong. The temperature in the oversize indoor pool was suffocating, even in January, and the chlorine fumes were hard to ignore. The two-story squash court didn’t do much for most buyers, and who didn’t love the plastic flowers in the window boxes?
One of the cornerstones of the real estate selling philosophy is that giving a home too many unusual features damages its resale value. Just like the homeowners I cited above, too many people, especially those with deep pockets, are adding designs or features to their homes that may not help it sell down the road.
The less is more principal is never more true than in home design. If you want a castle, go to Ireland; if you want an adobe home, go to New Mexico; and if you want a log cabin, I hear Denver is nice because if you put it on the beach in Anna Maria, you will probably be very sorry.
This, of course, doesn’t meant that your house has to look like the inside of a business envelope. Go ahead and use vibrant colors on the walls and buy that purple Victorian sofa. Just don’t replace the kitchen cabinets with an animal skin design or buy hot pink appliances (anther one of my listings).
The key is to find a way to make your home comfortable for you and your family while still considering how a potential buyer will view your home in the future. Whatever individual touches you put in your home should have the ability to be removed or changed with a minimum of money and work.
In addition, if you’re building a new home, you should consider the resale benefits of building a smaller rather than a larger home. The recent trend is for smaller homes becoming more popular and reflecting the reality of smaller families and the desire for maintenance free living, which appeals to buyers with busy work and travel commitments.
As far as my early individual style home experience, I did finally manage to build up the courage to ask for a large price reduction, which I did get, but by then it was too late, the house came off the market and did finally sell a few years later with another broker.
The whole experience taught me a great lesson. Most buyers will not pay for improvements to a home that too much reflect the owner’s individual taste. All they’re going to see is what it will cost to remove.
Better find a way to express your individuality outside of your home if you ever want to sell it. Most buyers are looking for a blank canvas, not a Picasso abstract.