Help Buyers Feel at Home (In Your Home)

Of course your house is awesome – it’s your house! But the things that you really love about your home’s decor can sometimes slow down progress when you’re trying to sell your place. Just because you’re all in on the “Halloween all year long” aesthetic doesn’t mean that potential buyers will be able to see past that when viewing your home. What a Home Buyer Sees Although we all like to imagine that we only look at the house itself and never, ever let ourselves be influenced by anything that’s easy to change about a home (or things that don’t even go with the home), the truth is often very different. Many homebuyers, especially those who are in the market for the first time, need to be able to picture themselves living in your house. For some homes, that’s easy enough, but others that are owned by people who live an abundant or exuberant life can be a real challenge to homebuyers. They can forget they’re shopping for a home and get overwhelmed by the decor or intense level of personalization going on inside. Of course, you bought your house in part so you could make it your own, but now it’s time to let someone else take her for a test drive. Obviously a lot of things can’t be turned into blank slates, especially if you have children or pets who have items that are specifically theirs and used often. Short of sending them to stay with the grandparents until you’ve got a contract secured, just keeping their areas tidy and focusing on the things you can soften will have to be enough. Decluttering Is Important, but So Is Depersonalizing There’s a difference between stripping a house of all its charm and simply depersonalizing it a bit. If you’ve got an original pink bathroom in a 1950s ranch-style home, by all means, let that brilliant bit of historical architecture shine. But, if your home is covered in photos of your family, your dog, and your intensely personal artwork, you may want to tone those selections down a notch. When a homebuyer walks into a home that’s so deeply personalized, it can make them feel a little bit like they’re violating your privacy, even though you invited them in by listing your house. When someone feels like they’ve trespassed, they’re going to try to get out as quickly as possible, which does not help a buyer see themselves living in that house. Consider Color Choices Many buyers realize that they can and will almost certainly repaint your home to their liking, so for most sellers, repainting isn’t really a high priority, nor should it be. However, for some sellers, it definitely merits consideration. The homes that may need to consider a paint job are those that offer significant challenges to the potential buyer, or that have paint that works against the space. For example, if your house is full of dark colors that make the space seem a lot smaller than it is, it’s going to turn buyers away. Not only will they have trouble seeing themselves in the space that they perceive erroneously to be very dark and tight, those who realize it’s a visual trick may still be put off by the large amount of work that’s ahead of them. As a rule of thumb, if you’ve chosen a color that will need several coats of primer before lighter paint will cover it, you’ll probably need to repaint. You can even go with a similar color that’s much, much lighter, if you really feel like the color works well for your house. Most buyers won’t care, as long as it’s something that they can easily imagine themselves repainting in a weekend to meet their own needs. Need Help Making Your Home More Welcoming? Look no further than your HomeKeepr community! Not only will you get the best recommendations for home professionals in your area who can help you repaint, reorganize, and even re-envision your home, it’s always free for homeowners to join!

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Choosing Better Paint Colors

Painting can be a great way to customize your house and make it into a home. Whether you’re just adding a splash of color or redoing entire rooms to match your favorites, a fresh coat of paint is a great way to take a home that you bought and really make it yours. Unfortunately, not everyone is great at picking the best colors for their home. After some unfortunate paint jobs, some homeowners may even wonder why they were allowed to go near a paint store at all. This doesn’t have to be the case, however. There are a number of things that you can do to find paint colors that better match your home. You can pick up paint swatches, get some small cans to test in different colors, or even use software to see how different colors will look in your rooms. The big thing is making sure that you know how to take what you’ve learned and make your rooms look their best. Here are a few tips that may help with that. Things to Consider There are several things that you should think about before picking out a specific paint. One of the big considerations that many people overlook is stopping to look at the colors of your existing décor. Even if you don’t have a specific theme to your furniture and decorations, there may be predominant colors that you should keep in mind when choosing paint. Even thinking about whether most of the décor is on the darker side or the lighter side can affect your color decision. You should also consider the type of finish you want on your walls. Depending on the paint options you’re considering, you might find colors in everything from flat and eggshell to the high-gloss paints that are typically used for trim and accents. The finish affects the shininess or flatness of the colors and can produce significantly different effects with similar colors. It can also affect how resistant the paint is to stains and dirt, with flatter colors being harder to clean while higher sheen paints are easier. Finding the Right Color There are a few considerations to be mindful of when it comes to actually choosing a color, too. Ideally, you should pick up swatches of multiple colors that you like and bring them home to see how each one looks with your lighting and home environment. Once you’ve narrowed it down to a few, get a few samples of the colors you like the most and actually put some paint on the walls to see how each one looks once dried. Don’t put these sample bits too close together, though, as it might be harder to tell which you actually like when you’re distracted by a number of samples right next to each other. Larger areas are better than small spots, and if you’re doing the entire room, you should try different colors on different walls. Bring Your Walls to Life When it comes time to paint, it may be tempting to just grab a brush or roller and go for it. That may not be the best approach, however. First you should make sure that you have everything that you need, including enough paint to cover the entire area and tools of high enough quality that they aren’t going to leave streaks or fuzz in your paint as you go. You should also go over your plans one last time, especially if you’re doing one wall in a different color as an offset or otherwise trying to use accent colors. A bit of prep time before you actually start painting can make a huge difference in the end result. Of course, if you’re concerned about the scope of the job, you can always hire professional painters to come in and get the job done. This can take a lot of the stress off you, and they can usually offer suggestions on colors, textures, and other elements that you might not have even considered. HomeKeepr can help you find the right painters for the job; simply sign up for a free account and connect with painters in your area through our app.

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Going Down: 4 Ways to Destroy Your Home’s Value

You’re a homeowner now, you can kiss bland uniformity goodbye the moment you turn your apartment keys over to your now-former landlord. The world is your canvas — at least, that part of the world that you now are obligated to pay a monthly mortgage payment on — and you’re the artist that’ll mold it into a shape that tantalizes and delights the senses. You may have big dreams for that new home, but cool your jets. This is a time for careful consideration, not for hastily scribbled modern design notes on cocktail napkins. Although there are certainly changes you can make that will update or upgrade your new home, there are others that can potentially devastate its value. This is no small thing. If you thought that ugly entryway light fixture was a real turn-off, just read on to learn about things potential buyers will find extremely unappealing down the road. There’s Good, There’s Bad and There’s Ugly Every homeowner will leave a mark on the homes they own, this is an inevitable fact of life. The only question you need to ask yourself is if your mark will be a good one. Will you be the homeowner who planted the gorgeous maple tree that eventually turns into a beloved climbing tree or are you the one that glued neon green shag carpet to the hardwood floors? We’ve made a short list of some of the most dramatic ways to destroy your home’s value without even trying all that hard so you can, hopefully, avoid these problems when you go to sell. Now, this is an important point to note: if you’re in your forever home, go hog wild. If you don’t need to sell that puppy ever, feel free to do whatever thrills you. Just be aware that your outlandish choices could prevent things like refinances and even reverse mortgages down the road. Having made those disclosures, let’s talk about home value-destroying projects! 4 Things That Can Lower Your Home’s Resell Value Now that you own a house, people will be giving you all sorts of weird advice. You’re going to have to learn to tune it out, because generally, random people don’t know. Most people own two or three homes in their lives, which doesn’t give them a whole lot of experience with market values and making upgrades that will make a house really pop. Realtors, general contractors and other home pros, on the other hand, make it their business to know what’s just in vogue and what’s a classic, evergreen sort of modification that will stand the test of time. These are the people to ask when you really need a second set of eyes. But, before you even get that far, let’s count down some of the worst ideas for your new home. #4 Really Personalizing the Place Look, we know you’re eager to make your house your own. But step away from the lime green wallpaper and the orange tiles. Just for a minute. Think this through. Some buyers can see past over-personalization, others simply cannot. There’s a reason Realtors used to advise sellers to paint everything beige, it creates a blank pallet for a buyer to start from. If you want to use quirky wallpaper, choose something that’s easy to remove when you go to sell. You may want to choose a tile that is mostly neutral and scatter those orange ones in just here and there like confetti. In short, tone it down a bit. However, feel free to paint to your heart’s desire — just plan to repaint before you put the house on the market. When a buyer walks into your home, the first impression they have informs every other thought they have as they walk through. They’re simultaneously calculating two things in their heads: “How much can I afford to pay for this house?” and “How much will I have to pay to fix this place?” Each intolerable thing they encounter, like that orange tile, is another thing that goes in the repair budget. As it grows, the price they’re willing to pay shrinks. Oh, you left the flamingo wallpaper in your bedroom? The repair budget’s getting pretty heavy. And these are just the immediately visible things, they haven’t yet gotten to the inspection period. The point here is: do you, but do it in a way that can be reversed before anyone shows the house. #3. Converting the Garage to Anything Else There’s a difference between using your garage as a gym and making it a gym permanently. When it’s a permanent gym, you can’t push some stuff out of the way and pull the car in real quick to get it out of the rain. In fact, you probably don’t even have a garage door anymore! Many people have made this hasty decision, turning their garages into master suites, home gyms, playrooms and home offices, not considering the long term ramifications. Then, after dumping thousands of dollars into the project, they find out that it’s extremely difficult to resell their home. No matter how professionally the conversion was done (and some are done very well), the buyer says to themselves, “Where am I going to stash my lawnmower?” Even if the yard’s a postage stamp, it’s a valid question. Buyers come into a transaction with a certain set of expectations and, frankly, when they’re looking at houses in certain areas or certain prices that typically come with garages, it sort of breaks their brains to find one that doesn’t quite fit the model. That’s the beginning of the price chopping spiral. Eventually you’ll discount the house much more than you ever intended or just give up on selling and rent it out or not move at all. #2. Tearing Down (Some) Walls This one is actually not a hard and fast rule. There are sometimes walls that should come out. But don’t make this call without consulting with an architect or a general contractor because there are several things to consider, including the structural integrity and flow of the home. The walls that you definitely should never tear out are the ones that reduce bathroom or bedroom number, unless you have something like five or more beds and three or more baths. At that point, you have a little wiggle room. As long as you maintain the American standard of a three bedroom, two bath home (or whatever is standard in your neighborhood), you’re probably ok. However, turning a three bedroom home into a two bedroom home because you wanted to expand a bedroom is a value killer. If you think about it from a market perspective, it might make a bit more sense. A larger, or more mature, family is most likely to buy a three bedroom home. They’re going to have a bigger budget because there are two incomes, they need more partitioned spaces because there are possibly teenagers involved. The same house with the same square footage, but with two bedrooms, is more likely to be shown to young families with small children, possibly only one income while one parent stays home to raise the toddlers, or even single people. Their budgets are smaller, which means that the two bedroom market simply doesn’t support the higher prices of the three bedroom market. When your home is appraised, your appraiser will be pulling comparable homes based on things like neighborhood, square footage and numbers of bedrooms and baths. So, if the other two bedroom homes are selling for $30k less than three bedrooms, that means yours is going to appraise somewhere well below where you might expect, maybe even below what you paid for it. Bottom line: Don’t knock out walls without professional consultations with your Realtor and an architect or general contractor at minimum so you can understand the full impact of this decision. #1. Unprofessional DIY Repairs There are two kinds of DIYers: those with significant trade experience and those without. If your main qualifications involve eighth grade shop class, you probably should not try to handle any big jobs on your own. Start small and work your way up, watch lots of YouTube videos, practice on test materials that don’t affect your home and for the sake of your house and your financial future, recognize and accept when you’re in over your head. A home pro is often less expensive than you might imagine if you just call them in first. When they’re asked to clean up a bad repair and still make the original correction, it can cost a lot extra. Finding these sorts of obvious DIY repairs in a home is a terrifying prospect for potential buyers. When they see them, they wonder what else you’ve tried to repair on your own. Did you rewire the electrical box? Is the house going to burn down in the night because you did something to the HVAC? Because they don’t know you or your level of competency, they just see that one botched repair and hyperfocus on it until they either run away or submit an offer significantly lower than what you were expecting. Protecting Your Home’s Value is Simple It’s really quite simple to protect your home’s value, despite how this blog may make it sound. Just ask yourself two simple questions: “Can I really do this myself?” and “Is this decision one that will stand the test of time? If not, is it easy to undo?” When you’re not sure, just open HomeKeepr and find a pro who can help.

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