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Of course that is the other problem when viewing homes, if you have allergies, asthma. etc. That is why if you want to appeal to the most buyers you will declutter, clean and make sure the house smells nice. If you can't if it smells, tell have a friend or two come over. I also can smell mildew, mold even a small amount. It would turn me off immediately. If you don't want to clean the house, then higher someone. It would be well worth it. I pride myself on my home and rentals. Our repairmen say they look like they are models out of a magazine. When renting you will see our rental homes, are clean, updated and well cared for. They are updated after tenant moves out, we always have a project we are getting ready to do. That way when or if we need to sell it doesn't cost alot to get the house ready. So far we have had very clean tenants who care about the homes.
I could write a book about houses in various conditions. It has been an education over the years seeing houses.
When I was house hunting earlier this summer, I tried not to be judgmental. People have all sorts of mental and physical conditions, some of which are forcing them to sell. When I made an offer, I took into account what it would cost to fix bad paint jobs, urine odors, etc., but I tried not to make any comments about the owners.
I moved into a house with some bad smells (they had 3 large dogs), but the sub-floors were fine, and now that the carpets and pads are out, and the surfaces have been scrubbed with Murphy's Oil Soap, Ajax, and steamed (where necessary), my friends with sensitive noses tell me all is well.
I also don't think much of a lot of today's cleaning products. For example, while a Swiffer might be appropriate to use on laminate flooring, it doesn't do a good job on badly stained older vinyl. I was on hands and knees on a pad with a scrub brush in my new kitchen (it was that bad). But now that I've removed several years of grease and grime, I probably could use a Swiffer at this point.
I have a big dog and a couple of cats. When we sold, I just made sure that everything was as clean as possible. We had no carpet, leather living room furniture, and all metal blinds (no curtains). I took a couple of months to sell our house, and we had to live there while that happened. I would Febreeze the dog bed before showings. Our realtor, a very experienced, big volume seller told us that in our market, it wouldn't be a problem as long as the house was clean. That's how we looked at it as we bought our current house. Which smelled weirdly musty in a non-animal way, because it had been empty, but we took care of that with a thorough cleaning.
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Originally Posted by emotiioo
I love how everyone replying thinks their pets don't smell...
Newsflash: they do. I have severe allergies to pet dander. I can't last more than a few minutes in a house with a cat or a dog, let alone several. And it ALWAYS smells. I can ALWAYS tell. Even if the owner washes everything every single live long day. I can always always always smell a pet.
This made me chuckle a bit. I once had a friend who swore that she could smell cat boxes no matter how clean they were. She could smell them in my house, for example.
We didn't have one in the house. The litter box was in a shed off a balcony. She backtracked when I pointed that out.
I would avoid a house that smelled like cat pee, but the house in question I would use as an opportunity to get it at a good price. Any house I buy, I’ll be taking out the carpet and painting anyway, and a bit of landscaping doesn’t bother me.....if the price is right.
I love how everyone replying thinks their pets don't smell...
Newsflash: they do. I have severe allergies to pet dander. I can't last more than a few minutes in a house with a cat or a dog, let alone several. And it ALWAYS smells. I can ALWAYS tell. Even if the owner washes everything every single live long day. I can always always always smell a pet.
There is this delusional thinking about how some animals are free of smells and lemme tell you that they are not. Carpet is NOT your friend.
I buy and sell or buy and flip houses and one of my bargaining chip is whether or not it's been occupied by pets. I send in crews to get the place to a standard suitable for me, allergic like crazy, to be able to breathe in and deduct that from the asking price. It's not cheap.
I love threads like this because people really do think they are somehow escaping the reality of life by just being special. Your pets smell and people like me will absolutely take advantage of that fact to pay less for your house.
But that's just it. It IS possible to contain the smells and dander. I had a good friend who was highly allergic to dogs. I did not know this. I had them in my house on average once a week for a yearish and one day he mentioned his allergy. I told him we had a dog and he was SHOCKED. Our pooch was in the garage every time they came over and I had just done my regular cleaning and no extra effort because I had no idea of the allergy.
Also, we sold that house (in 1 day) and were looking for a rental while we built another home. I found a place in an awesome location, but no pets allowed due to the owner's child having a severe allergy and they may want to move back one day. I had the owner over to the home we had just sold and she made an exception for us.
Our dog only resided in rooms with hard floors, never sat on furniture or entered a room with carpet. We made sure our homes had plenty of spaces for her to be.
My second home was a fixer upper. It had a renter in it and, in retrospect, maybe she didn’t like that the owner decided to sell. To make a very long story short, when I got into the house, the odor from her 7 cats was so strong that the home inspector asked to stand out on the deck to discuss his findings.
I was planning on being out of the country for 3 weeks in the not too distant future and timed my work accordingly. First I tore out all carpeting throughout the whole house. The carpeting next to where her bed had been was saturated with urine and just pulled up in handfuls cause it was rotten. I removed all anchor strips along the walls and molding because some of those areas were saturated.
I then wet mopped the floors with a warm solution of Outright as per instructions. It was an enzyme based product available at that time specifically designed to react with urine compounds. The stuff itself smelled kind of sweet but when you put it on urine soaked areas and let it work there was soon a strong ammonia smell. I let it dry, sanded the floors and repeated the process. I sanded again, repeated again and this time left it to just soak into the wood and sit while I was out of the country for 3 weeks. When I came back, the house having been sealed the whole time, I really could not notice anything. The floor was completely dry now with the AC running the whole time. So the final step was to seal the floor with polyurethane and have new carpeting installed.
I doubled my money on that home in 12 years and enjoyed my time there. So, bottom line, it can be done but you need to go at it hard, not take any short cuts.
A smelly house is a deal killer. My daughter just sold her house. She moved everything into the new house, had a professional cleaning crew go over the old house were she had owned 6 cats and a puppy. Got an offer at full asking the first week.
I wonder how much this really is an issue for people. I have pets (cats and dog over the years) and am not critiquing this. But it may be a blind spot for pet people.
A neighbor has two large breed dogs and has had a house that seems impossible to sell though its in a nice area and "hot" market. The feedback she has gotten is that the house "smells like a dog" and is off putting to buyers. This is objectively true, the smell part. Its pungent and immediate when you walk in the door.
She has been offended by this feedback and doesn't seem to have made any changes to alleviate the pet smell. Her yard is a "dog yard" and not landscaped/torn up and her floors definitely show that big dogs have been running over them for years. The house seems structurally solid and has nice curb appeal from the front. Its just when you get into it that these things become obvious.
As a buyer, would you avoid this kind of house? As a seller would you be able to work with this feedback and make changes or hope that someone of like mind makes you an offer? As a realtor, have you had this sort of situation?
We saw a nice home in the area we wanted. It was priced a little high, but we were put off by all the damage the dog had done. The smell too. I have a pet and she isn’t allowed on beds or furniture. Our home doesn’t smell. I vacuum muitiple times a day and have wood floors. Cleaning lady comes every two weeks.
Getting the smell of dog out of the home is rough.
What number of cats qualifies you to be called " that cat lady " ?
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