Effect of empty house vs. furnished house when selling house? (mortgage, construction)

[Ohiogirl81]

I'd rather see an empty house myself; bonus points if it's scrupulously clean.

Although I understand the preference of some who'd like to see beds in the bedrooms; it does help you gauge if your bed will fit in there.

When I listed my last house, I'd already moved but left the furniture behind. The boxes and boxes of stuff I trucked down to the basement and out of the way of house hunters. Buyers got a good idea of how much junk the basement could hold! The movers didn't like it much, though ...

[NOLA2SGF]

Even if you decide to leave furniture in your house while it is on the market, it seems to me that it really helps to get rid of about half of it. I am no expert but I think that one or two pieces of furniture in a room is enough to make the purpose of that room clear, and yet little enough that it doesn't make the room seem small.

[bbronston]

I have to agree with Ohiogirl81. I'd much rather show an empty house that is very clean than a furnished home. Everyone has different tastes and buyers often are distracted by furniture and personal items--especially when the stuff in the house doesn't look good in there. Sure some can look beyond that but I like to see a blank canvas. The exception is a home that is decorated like a model. They are out there and those properties show the best.

[Artfuldodger702]

From what I've been told by Realtors and watching HGTV house buying shows, store your personal property, have professional cleaners come in, vanilla air freshener in the kitchen, fix minor visible repairs, if you're not going to fix major problems then you must disclose it. When it comes to furnishing, ask the realtor the statistics on how long it usually takes to sell a house similar to yours. That should help you decide whether or not to rent or buy cheap furnishings to decorate the place for showing. Personally, I'd rather just have an empty house to look at so I can use my imagination on placement of my furnishings.

[movedtothecoast]

last three houses we have bought were empty at time
of showing, it helped us visualize.
very easy to put a measuring tape on the floor of a bedroom
to see if a queen will fit.

[chet everett]

A thought just occurred to me. My experience as a real estate agent is generally vey much inline with what has happened to jerseyj -- staged houses that have been completely decluttered / cleaned up sell MUCH FASTER AND FOR MORE MONEY than others on market.

The majority of users of this TEXT BASED FORUM probably have better than average skills of language which has been shown to go along with ability to VISUALIZE how something MIGHT look. If your target buyers are forum users (which despite city data's best efforts still represent a tiny fraction of home shoppers..) than just list the place vacant BUT IF YOUR TARGET IS THE BROADER WORLD it is crazy not to stage and clean it to the n-th degree...

Originally Posted by jerseyj

We recently (12/10), had to sell my MIL's house in a retirement community in Florida. There were 29 comps in her immediate
area, most had been on the market for 6+ months, some for 2+ years, we thought we were in for a long haul.

Our agent suggested the list price, I thought it was too high, but she wanted to try it for 2 weeks. Hey, she's the Pro!

We moved MIL out and spent 4 days packing up her personal stuff, hauling truckloads to GoodWill and tossing mounds of junk.

We left enough furniture in each room to "define" the space, nothing more.

Our agent put the house on the MLS on a Friday, the next Tuesday we had an offer. Before we could respond to that offer we had a full price offer by that Tuesday afternoon.

To put it mildly, we were blown away!

Our agent said that the best features of the house popped out without having all of the personal "stuff" to divert attention.

I give our agent the credit too, she sure knew her market!

[Koale]

Originally Posted by Racelady88

As a buyer I much prefer houses that are empty.

When we bought, we told our agent that we didn't want to have to look around or behand any furnishings and hope that something wasn't being hidden under a throw rug...empty it out. We wanted to see exactly what we were considering buying, not a bunch of 'staged' furniture that didn't come w/the purchase anyway. She just didn't quite understand that logic and, unfortunately, it came down to us having to tell her that if we were shown one more piece of furniture we would be changing agents.
Koale

[manderly6]

Originally Posted by Koale

When we bought, we told our agent that we didn't want to have to look around or behand any furnishings and hope that something wasn't being hidden under a throw rug...empty it out. We wanted to see exactly what we were considering buying, not a bunch of 'staged' furniture that didn't come w/the purchase anyway. She just didn't quite understand that logic and, unfortunately, it came down to us having to tell her that if we were shown one more piece of furniture we would be changing agents.
Koale

So you severely limited your choice of houses?

[captain_hug99]

An empty house made me think "Oh good, they are out already, maybe they'll want to move up closing."

Plus, it also let me find where all the plugs were in the room. That was very important to me.

[skeet09]

Originally Posted by manderly6

So you severely limited your choice of houses?

I didn't tell my agent that I didn't want to look at houses that did have furniture in them but this was my first home purchase and I always felt kinda odd going into someone's home and looking around, whether folks still lived there or it was staged for selling purposes.
Looking back on it, we only were seriously interested in the homes that were empty (just happened this way) and we ended up buying a house that was empty.