Get the competitive edge in a tricky real estate market with

The Big Five:

Curb Appeal

Color

Consistency

Clutter Control

Cash Flow

As someone wisely said, you only have one chance to make a first impression. Just like driving by a billboard at 40 mph, the first five seconds of seeing a house are crucial. Whatever the buyer takes in through all of their senses (including the all important intuition) CAN make or break a sale. Now is the moment to “engage the emotions” in a positive way. Now!

In other words, much of the decision to buy or not buy is chemistry. Very little of it is about logic and left brain analytical thinking. It’s about feelings.

Here are some important ways you can make the most positive impression possible on the potential buyer of your house.

CURB APPEAL

Some who study the real estate market vow that over half of home sales are made before the buyer goes through the front door. Driving up to the house is an important moment….make no mistake about it!

Most of you know this instinctively but I can’t emphasize it enough. It is so important to present a beautiful entry to your home. Create an inviting front door. Put a fresh coat of varnish or paint on the door itself, as well as the trim around the door and the decking. Does your porch or patio need pressure washing? Take a look. A pressure washer costs a few bucks a day to rent. Incidentally, if the front door is painted, it is ideal to choose a color from the home’s interior color palette. For example, let’s say your foyer and living room are painted a soft sage green with accents of black and terra cotta in the furnishings. A glossy deep terra cotta front door or striking rich black one is perfect in this scenario and would create a beautiful flow from exterior to interior.

Pay attention to your door handle (entry lock), knocker and doorbell. Are they in excellent condition? or is the handle wimpy, dated or made of cheap brass? Four hundred dollars can buy you a nice looking handle and may be worth every cent. How about tossing another eighteen dollars into a new jute welcome mat (not one with bunnies and hearts…) And the front porch light fixture? Again, if yours is shot or just ugly, replace it….there are nice ones available for less than eighty dollars.

Healthy potted plants are an easy way to create beauty around the front door of most homes. The doors shown here are quite formal and seem to beg for tailored topiary style plants. More casual shingled homes might want pots overflowing with lush florals and vines. ?If yours is contemporary or Asian, the front door would call for something stylish and mininal, like ornamental grasses. Make sure your containers are nice looking and in very good condition. Prune all dead leaves, blooms and branches so the plants look well maintained. All of this sends a BIG message to your buyers that the whole property is well maintained and therefore…a good buy!

A lively additon to your more substantial potted trees by the door is to add a string or two or tiny white lights (with dark green cords). It doesn’t have to be holiday time…it’s festive and attention getting all year round. I have some little lights on the large potted palm in my living room. They provide a happy addition during daylight hours and a soft romantic statement at night.

This leads us to landscaping. To show your house well, the shrubbery and plantings around the front door must be right. What’s right? If bare, fill in your plantings enough to soften the architecture around the front door area. If the home is old and the plants are overgrown, be rigorous about cutting back and even pulling out whole bushes by the roots if necessary. Please…no dead plants or even dead branches…and use beauty bark liberally for staging. Of course you know this…and I need not mention keeping the lawn manicured, mowed and raked.

When we say “curb appeal”…we literally mean the curb. Is the mailbox attractive? How is the curbside lampost? If you have any doubts at all, have a carpenter build an attractive base for these things…or do some stonework if the style goes with the architecture of your house. Believe me, you will get a lot of mileage out of these dollars.

COLOR

Pick a palette and stick with it.

A palette should be narrow, limited to three to five colors (a neutral, a couple of related brights and a couple of related darks). What’s more, this palette should be carried throughout your entire home. I’m a design nazi….I know. But experience has proven this concept time and time again. The most lovely and inspiring environments are created with a limited and consistent palette.

Whether you already have the colors you want, or you are modifying and changing them for the sale of your home, it is easiest to find your palette in a patterned rug, a fabric slipcover or pillow, or a piece of art. It actually doesn’t matter where you start, just pick something you love a lot and use that as your springboard to a beautiful consistent color statement.

You will need a neutral to use for larger areas, a dark for grounding, and brights for lively accents. And incidentally, rules are meant to be broken. For example, not all color schemes need brights. An all neutral house can be stunning and make a sophisticated design statement. Black, tan and cream are a fabulous combination.

Accent walls are a great idea, but don’t do Tuscan Red anymore. That was an attention getter in the late nineties up until 2002…but it’s old news. Now color trends have moved in the direction of blues, greens, purples and silver.

Resist the temptation to add extra colors. It can weaken the impact of a room. Most especially, never use a color just once. It becomes an orphan and is terribly lonely. I’m quite serious. If you have a lovely blue embroidered pillow on the sofa, make sure your eye takes in another bit of blue somewhere….perhaps a vase or an area rug with a blue border. Repeat. Repeat. You will be amazed at how much better the room feels!

Painting is the cheapest way to transform a room. White walls are classic and always in…but go with cream or off-white. It is so much more flattering to the skin tones. People are loving color on the wall these days. If you want to do this, go to your palette and choose a soft version of one of the colors. Benjamin Moore’s Historical Colors provide many soft color ideas for walls. I love them because they are muddied down and easy to live with.

So, be cautious about using bright colors on the wall. It can be done…but it’s easy to louse it up. Benjamin Moore’s Personal Color Viewer is a fabulous tool to help you visualize. And…if possible, get some help from a professional color consultant.

CLUTTER – LOSE IT!

There is nothing that turns a buyer off more than clutter and mess. It triggers a sense of chaos and causes most people to want to run screaming from the house. Be rigorous about this de-cluttering process. Eliminate or hide ALL of your usual living life junk….your stacks of mail, old newspapers and magazines, messy bulletin boards, toys, sports equipment, briefcases, sewing projects. Make absolutely sure that all of the dishes are washed and put away neatly. Organize your recycling. Make sure your dog and cat dishes and litter box are as presentable as humanly possible. I know…it seems sterile…but these signs of daily life are a huge distraction to the buyer. Get a storage locker if you have to. Do you want to sell your house or what?

Spit and Polish! Vacuum, dust and de-cobweb all surfaces (that’s the least you can do to sell your house). Clean fingerprints from doorjambs, refrigerator and cupboard doors. But then…you already know this.

Repair anything obvious that is broken or delapidated…or just store it away.

Floors should be completely picked up around the main furniture. Halls and stairways should be absolutely clear. Table tops and dressers should be neatly arranged with some well chosen accessories. Remove stacks of stuff from under tables as well.

Depersonalize your space. Your house will sell more quickly if it is neutral. Personal art and craft projects, or an overwhelming amount of family photographs are too much YOU and not enough YOUR BUYER. You want your buyers to be able to picture them selves and their stuff in your living space. Make it as much like a lovely resort as possible. So…remove your most personal statements from the house while it is on the market.

Remove “refrigerator art” (sorry Mom).

Accessorize sparingly and with care. Group like objects and tie color in. For example, if there is a rust colored pillow on the sofa, repeat the rust in a vase or art object on the coffee table. Assemble a very few family photos on a table top or small wall arrangements and frame them in the same finish (ie. all wood, all silver). Show collections in groups rather than scattering them around the room. Of course, everything must be dusted and polished.

Potted plants add softness to a room. Like natural stone and wood, we humans love things from nature. Of course, your plants must be very healthy (it’s not good feng shui to have dying struggling plants around). If a plant is needy, don’t be codependent. Give it to a neighbor or toss it out. Sorry….am I too harsh?

Clear surfaces. People like “negative space” for the eye to rest. For example, the dining room table should be polished (no fingerprints or leftover food). A low plant or colorful flower arrangement would be perfect for the centerpiece. Or you might display a collection of candlesticks together…different sizes and heights, but all the same material (such as all pewter or all crystal). Put a place mat underneath to ground the grouping.

Appeal to all of the senses. The house should smell fresh and inviting. The process is not strictly based on logic. Rather it’s about how buyers feel when they are in your house. Be sensitive to pet smells, diapers, cigarettes. Visitors will certainly notice, even if you don’t.

Delicious fragrances….cookies, coffee, cinnamon, vanilla and pine are wonderful. Burn scented or beeswax candles. Have a crackling fire in the fireplace or woodstove (there is absolutely nothing more inviting on a chilly day). But then, this writer lives in the Great Northwest.

The house should sound good too. Play very soft music to enhance the buyer’s positive experience of your home.

CONSISTENCY

…of style…of color

Only a real design afficionado can break these rules I am setting down. In other words, don’t try to be eclectic unless you are one of those people who is visually gifted. There are many out there….perhaps you are one. Perhaps not.

If your style is Traditional, be consistent about it. Use Traditional throughout the home. If your style is French Country, carry that theme through. If you try to mix rococco mirrors and contemporary Mies van der Rohe chairs together with ethnic fabrics…you may be very disappointed. Postpone that “design play” until later when you are not trying to market your house and mistakes only affect you and you alone.

Repetition of style and color will make an impact on your buyers. Follow through in every room, even the laundry room can show off a framed print or hat rack that conveys your style. While you are marketing your house, mixing styles can come across as chaotic, haphazard or just plain ugly.

Kids rooms….that’s a tough one. If at all possible, try to talk your 7 year old daughter out of the bright pink walls and purple bedspread. Explain that it’s a thing to do so that mom and dad will sell the house…and pretty soon she’ll have a brand new room that can be her very own in every way.

CASH FLOW

This, after all, is the bottom line.

Before you set a price on this new listing, put some thought and yes, some money, into staging your house. An investment of $2,000 can allow you to ask an additional $20,000 for your home. An investment of $4,000 can reap another $40,000 in the deal. Beautiful staging of a home can increase the perceived value of your property by 10% or more.

WHY HIRE A DESIGNER?

Whether staging your house for sale or staging your house for just living, your best decision may be to hire a professional interior designer.

Here are five great reasons why

1. To define the Big Picture and hold the vision for the space
2. To save money by keeping you from veering off into areas that become expensive mistakes.
3. To access wide selection of lovely furnishings and accessories at below retail prices.
4. To filter through an overwhelming amount of choices and narrow those choices down to a workable number from which to choose.
5. To take advantage of many already established relationships with subcontractors and suppliers.