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Thread summary:

Home buyers have worst home shopping experience, seller’s agent need to tell client to clean house, dirty clothes, cat urine smell

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Old 01-10-2010, 03:17 PM
 
Location: Martinsville, NJ
6,175 posts, read 12,915,122 times
Reputation: 4020

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Hepcat View Post
I do confess....I am a bit of a foodie and I have never been known to refuse a warm Nestle's Tollhouse cookie. I think the chocolate in the chocolate chips also impacts mood....chocolate contains chemicals that cause the release of certain endorphines in the brain that make us feel pleasure. I think the job of the sellers/realtors is to help people envision themselves living in the house, and to evoke positive feelings about being in the house during their brief tour. In that respect, using pleasant sensory "gimicks" like baked cookies, soft music, etc. is a simple, inexpensive marketing strategy that can help. I have also toured houses where the dining room table was beautifully set for dinner....yes, it was staged and artificial, but it did draw attention to the beautiful room, view, windows, and ambiance. For people who process information visually, this type of staging can help them decide how they really feel about a particular house.

The other disadvantage to showing a dirty or shabby looking house is that many buyers assume that if you didn't keep up with the superficial maintanence, you must have also neglected mechanical and structural maintenance. If the house seems "uncared for", I am more nervous about the systems and what I may find in a home inspection (or what a home inspector may miss).

I do agree that too many people overlook the important things when house hunting (think "Househunters" on HGTV), and value the superficial things like paint color and fixtures instead of layout, location, square-footage, etc. But I think the OP in this thread is questioning why, in a difficult and competative real estate market, sellers would not do everything possible to show their house in the best possible light? Why would sellers risk losing money on the sale by not showing the house clean, at a minumum? Is it simple laziness? A lack of maturity? A lack of respct for the value of a dollar?

I do think the realtors should continue with the cookie trick...just make sure you leave them out for the buyers!
Thanks for steering us back to the original, and much more important, issue. Yes, sellers in this market ought to be doing everything they can to make the house look as good as possible. What you want is for the seller to walk in and be impressed with the house, to be able to, as you suggested, envision themselves there.
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Old 01-12-2010, 04:53 PM
 
Location: OCEAN BREEZES AND VIEWS SAN CLEMENTE
19,893 posts, read 18,409,927 times
Reputation: 6465
Quote:
Originally Posted by Torn2pieces View Post
I went house hunting this past weekend. I have a buyers agent. Let me say This one house I saw was utterly discusting. We opened the door and just about threw up. Clothes thrown all over the place, cat urine smell was putried.

As a past seller, I sold my house recently- I kept my house clean and did what I needed to do to make it look presentable.

Why would anyone who's selling a home allow realtors to show clients a disaster? I kid you not this house was discusting. Our agent was told by the sellers agent if you can over look the messy clothes, it has potential (meaning real fixer upper) We couldn't even enter the house, it was awful. The owners live amongst the urine and clothes.....

why would the sellers agent, not say anything about the urine smell or mess to their client? This was the worse house I've ever seen and it was not a cheap house either!!!!!!


As a real estate assistant for many years, i never understood why some realtors, just will not tell the homeowners to clean up, I did. No buyer wants to walk into a freaking mess, I did use to open up my mouth, and the realtor i worked for liked that aobut me, I also use to give the sellers, ideas, on little things that made a huge impact for the seller's. Another that just gripes me is some of the terrible pictures being taken by realtors, where the house is a freaking mess, and they take pictures anyways. If the home did not look presentable, we did not take pictures, and that is just the way it was. I was not afraid to tell Seller's things for their own good, but in a very tactful way. That is why they had Me.
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Old 01-12-2010, 07:44 PM
 
127 posts, read 488,967 times
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I kept our house extra clean while selling, but before showings I would dust up in the living room with a little Pledge, and wipe the bath with Scrubbing Bubbles, whether it needed it or not. I prefer these pleasant smells of (light) cleaners over cookies.
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Old 01-15-2010, 08:55 PM
 
165 posts, read 1,023,246 times
Reputation: 105
The last house I bought, it was January, and an unusually cold, rainy day especially for California. We entered the house and the first thing I noticed, besides being on a quiet cul-de-sac and that it was very clean and nicely decorated, was a lovely fire in the very lovely marble fireplace. Of course there were many other reasons to love it, but that made a great first impression.

The house was on the market for a day and a half.
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