Online, in another state, far, far away, I saw this listing for a house for sale. It is the perfect example of how not to sell your house! If you don’t want to sell fast or for more, follow this advice!
- Make sure every room is so cluttered with objects and décor that buyers are totally distracted with your stuff and can’t see past it to the house!
2. Make sure it does not appeal to the greatest number of buyers by making the colors and décor so personal that it only appeals to people with taste just like you.
3. Overwhelm buyers with colors and patterns.
4. Put too much furniture in every room so the house feels small, regardless of how big it is.
5, Add as many personal photos as possible so buyers are distracted by who lives in the house now rather than envisioning it as their house.
6. Keep the decor dark and heavy, rather than light and airy, clean and modern.
7. Increase your price to 60 times more than the estimated value of similar homes.
While “Zestimates” are often wrong and can be off quite a bit, they are usually not off by 29 million dollars!
Zestimate: $613,051
Price / Tax History
DATE | EVENT | PRICE | $/SQFT | SOURCE | |
05/17/18 | Listing removed | $30,000,000 | $937 | ||
05/16/18 | Listed for sale | $30,000,000 | $937 | ||
11/17/17 | Listing removed | $1,995/mo | $0.00 | Zillow Rental … | |
10/18/17 | Price change | $1,995/mo-20.0% | $0.00 | Zillow Rental … | |
09/13/17 | Price change | $2,495/mo-10.9% | $0.00 | Zillow Rental … | |
08/14/17 | Listed for rent | $2,800/mo | $0.00 | Zillow Rental … | |
11/01/01 | Sold | $51,000 | $1 | Public Record |
For more information on why your house may not sell, see my recent article “Why Your House Won’t Sell”.
To have a quick and profitable sale, make sure your house is easy for buyers to fall in love with and visualize themselves living there. To make that happen, make sure it is clean, move in ready, well maintained, light, airy, modern, decluttered, inviting and warm yet not too personal, priced right, and marketed well. Don’t forget curb appeal. Grab buyer’s attention with great photos and a reasonable price, get them to the front door with great curb appeal, and get them to fall in love with it once they are inside.
A professional home stager can help you make it all happen and increase your sales price with professional staging.
This was a fun post to read, Mary Ann, and an insightful one. We all think our homes are *so beautiful*, without often realizing that they don’t reflect anyone else’s taste but our own.
What a service this post is to those wondering why their home isn’t selling fast enough or for top dollar.
Working with a home staging expert like yourself is genuinely the ticket to a much better and faster price & sale.
Thank you so much Leslie. Yes, we all have our own tastes, and home staging is about appealing to buyers rather than ourselves. So many people don’t realize what a big difference there is between decorating to sell compared to decorating to live there. That is why hiring a pro is key as they are trained to do that very thing, rather than doing it yourself or getting a friends help that is “good at decorating”. When you think your home is gorgeous because it reflects your taste, it takes an objective professional opinion to help you see past that. This home was obviously not “staged” to appeal to buyers.
This is a great post! By seeing what not to do it makes it clear, many of us may suffer from house blindness.
Thanks Lisa! It is so true, sometimes seeing what not to do is even more helpful. Great point!
Haha SO true! This looks like it could be one of the houses from the McMansion Hell blog!
Haha, I have not heard about that blog but will check it out! Thanks for reading!