Loved the editorial! I’m finding much of the criticism appropriate for recent Seattle area homes on the market - maybe everywhere? So many homes are “flipped”. I personally would never recommend a flipped home, because I know how quickly and cheaply they are typically “upgraded”. Grey everywhere, with painted, but older cabinetry, cheap grey-toned vinyl flooring imitating wood, white glass mosaic tiles, etc.
Even more concerning are the marketing photos and misleading descriptions. Wide angle lenses have always assisted making spaces look larger than reality. Many realtor photos now include fake staging (some admit it, some don’t). Often yards are “colorized” to look lush green - even in fall and winter, when in reality, the yard is the Seattle summer brown and obvious on photos taken inside, but exterior visible through the windows.
Now the standard is also to include unfinished basement space (if any) in the square footage calculations, making the cost per SF appear far better than it should. This seems to be a more recent change on realtor sites. Yes, some basements can be renovated, and make great storage, but more often damp, with low ceilings and minimal (if any) windows.
Somehow I had forgotten about this thread, so glad to see it resurface! While that LV house is not my cup of tea, it reminds me what I shake my head about with agents. Why would you take a picture of a room with an unmade bed? When looking at home for myself and with our kids when they were looking, I was always surprised about the number of pictures with unmade beds, towels on the floor, toilet seats up, or one of my favorite, the bathroom picture where you can see the picture taker in the mirror reflection!
When we sold 6 years ago, my agent made us remove anything personal in the house so that buyer could see themselves living in our home. We had a rather heated discussion about this, as I was still living in the house, and wanted to see my family photos. And hiding the paper towels and kleenex on a show day drove me crazy; I do believe anyone looking at the house has blown their nose at least once in their life She won and the house sold, but I wasn’t a fan of her methods.
We bought are home in 2007. I remember during our walk through opening the washer because it came with the home.
All their clutter was shoved in there! Books, a jacket, a figurine- it was very funny!
Design for living and design for selling are often two entirely different things. Realtors almost always advise taking down at least most family photos. Ours did too. I figured I was going to have to take them down anyway when we moved, so I acquiesced.
I have a friend whose house took a year and a half to sell. I didn’t have the heart to tell her, but honestly, it was one of the worst set of house listing photos I’ve ever seen. There were multiple problems:
she used a friend as her real estate agent. Big problem. Eventually after trying for over a year, she ended the listing with friend-agent and switched to somebody else and it sold 2 months later.
couldn’t tell where the front door was in the main front-of-the-house photo.
backyard landscaping looked like nothing had been refreshed since 1972.
every bathroom was painted a different color. Every color was very bright. One bathroom was all turquoise and black.
every toilet had one of those toilet rugs around the potty & toilet lid rug-cover thingys like everybody’s grandma used to have.
there was an attached 1-BR MIL apartment with its own 1 car garage. Great! and my friend’s grandma used to live in that part of the house. Except the 1-BR apartment had creepy looking antique dolls in it. Staring at you in the photos.
every room had personal family photos up for everyone to see.
1 BR was stuffed so full of furniture that you couldn’t tell if it was meant to be a baby’s room or a guest BR. That room also had white wicker furniture.
the family room was also sort of doubling as a work-out space, complete with gym equipment.
giant pool table where a dining room table should have been.
1 BR had a lace bedspread.
etc., etc.
Plus, it was overpriced by about $150,000.
When the house finally DID sell, every room in the house had been repainted. All of the creepy dolls had disappeared. All of the family photos were gone. Everything was a lot more neutral. No gym equipment in the family room. There was an actual dining table in the dining room. No more lace bedspreads. No more weird rugs on toilet lids or around the toilets.
Friend has since bought a different house and spent a lot of last year fixing it up. They redid the kitchen and got rid of all of the upper kitchen cabinets and instead replaced them with open IKEA-looking shelves. I don’t know about y’all, but I want my kitchen clutter to be out of sight. LOL.
A lot of people would insist all the things you mentioned are irrelevant because “people aren’t buying dolls, they can see past all of that. It was only the price that was the problem.”
Research finds that this simply isn’t true. Most people have a limit to how much clutter (especially if it’s weird clutter) they can tolerate when trying to picture themselves in a home.
I really don’t understand the homeowner resistance to Realtor advice to de-clutter and de-personalize their space while selling. They are going to have remove and pack up this stuff when they leave anyway. Why not get it over with AND increase the odds of selling more quickly and/or possibly for more money? It’s a very weird hill to die on imo.
I totally agree. When we sold our previous house, at first I had a hard time emotionally detaching from it. But I forced myself into the mindset of “the goal is to sell the house” and started looking at everything from the point of view of “what would I think if I was looking at this as a potential buyer?”
So we removed a LOT of stuff. Removed a LOT of decorations. Trimmed a lot of things up in the front and back yards.
My friend’s house already had problems with it that couldn’t be overcome by decorative stuff. The layout of the house was a bit odd. And the grandma apartment/cottage thing was great, but the layout was weird with 1 big wall being at this sharp angle, so the family room area of the grandma apartment was an odd shape. And you really couldn’t tell where the front door to the house was if you were at the street looking at it. And the fence needed replacing. There was a screened in porch, but this was in the southwest and you don’t need screened-in porches there (buyers tend to view them as a negative instead of a positive). Etc., etc.
The creepy porcelain dolls and potty rugs just added to all of that charm.
As a house hunter I agree with @Nrdsb4 - its one thing to look beyond cosmetic improvements like paint, refinishing floors, etc. But if there is another layer of “stuff” to have to overlook - that’s a lot for my mind to get past. Also stuff like creepy dolls or other nostalgia stuff gives a home that “old tyme” look that turns off anyone looking for a fresh, updated start in a new home.
“This private commune is the perfect retreat for groups of friends, families and enemies alike with the property boasting seven private studio villas – each inspired by a different chakra, six pools, a state of the art gym featuring on call private training sessions, lavish gardens and a multitude of entertaining spaces including a sunken living room and massive dining area perfect for hosting the most elaborate of murder mystery parties.”
I suppose if you could afford a private island, you could afford to redecorate. The views are stunning though!!
I was thinking that this would be more of a commercial property - somebody using it as a spa retreat. Reminds me of Nine Perfect Strangers - the book and movie about an exclusive spa retreat!
She won and the house sold, but I wasn’t a fan of her methods.
