Back in February a guest author wrote Why Scents May Not Make Cents When Selling Your Home. This point driven home as I was showing houses in Palmer yesterday.
We pulled up to a nice looking home. It had good curb appeal and was in an attractive neighborhood. But when we stepped inside the buyer almost turned around and walked out.
She said her throat was closing up and she was having trouble breathing. This house had new paint, a nice backyard and good layout. It was priced very competitively. In fact, the listing Realtor had paid for new carpet to be installed to help it sell. Likely, this was to help eliminate the cigarette odor that permeated the old carpet. The carpet was beautiful, but the place still stunk.
The odor was a mixture of stale cigarette smoke and scented candles. The prospective buyer couldn’t help talking about it the whole time we were in the house and she couldn’t wait to leave. This house is going to repel most buyers because most buyers don’t smoke.
We looked at four other houses yesterday that didn’t stink. She liked parts of all four and wants to see a few more before she makes up her mind. The stinky house was on the bottom of the list…in fact it doesn’t even make the list.
The sad thing is, the smelly house is probably the most attractively priced. But the price may need to drop even farther to find a buyer.
All because of the way it smelled.
