Your home on the market: Avoid turning buyers off during the holiday season

Buying a home during the holiday season can bring many benefits and opportunities to home buyers, but it can lead to more challenges for the actual home seller. With different holidays and colder weather, it’s important to keep up with the appearance of your home for potential home buyers. Find out a few tips you can do to help avoid turning buyers off during the holiday season in this recent U.S. News & World Report article by Tori Toth.

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Some sellers may feel it’s easier to take a home off the market during this time of year, but can you afford to lose those months? Keeping a home on the market can be beneficial because there is usually less inventory, and those looking to buy are serious. If the plan is to keep that “for sale” sign up during the holidays, make sure to limit decorations to get a maximum return on a home’s investment.

Here are some tips to keep the home festive despite being on the market.

Exterior Decorating

  • Keep the tinsel, garlands and most of those blow-up characters in storage.
  • The entrance should be simple.
  • Use more natural elements: For fall add pumpkins, stacks of hay, cornstalks and don’t forget to plant some mums (you can also prepare the home for spring now by planting daffodils and tulips).
  • For winter, group poinsettias and use evergreens to create floral arrangements.
  • Door wreaths welcome all to your home and set the stage for celebrating.
  • Use holiday colors that work with your home’s exterior colors.
  • Use a few strands of white lights for elegance or keep to a color scheme. Forget about the multi-color strands this year.
  • Most importantly, refrain from objects attributable to specific religions.

Scene Stealers Inside

During staging it’s important to make focal points stand out, so don’t block or cover up fireplaces, stairs, stained-glass windows and any other features that are unique to the home.

Rooms filled with decorations can feel smaller and will stop the buyer from visualizing themselves in the space. Choose specific areas to stage with festive themes. We want buyers to see themselves celebrating their holidays in the house – to do this create a simple, clean, cozy space with decorations.

  • Set the formal dining room for Thanksgiving or Hanukkah dinner.
  • Bring in a Christmas tree, but make sure it’s not oversized.
  • Use natural elements to bring in texture and interest like an evergreen garland or pinecone centerpiece.
  • Color is also important to keep in mind and make sure you keep within a color scheme. Red is not only the color of Christmas, but it’s an emotionally appealing color that can be used in the space.
  • Don’t forget to think about what the holidays mean, then create the scene in your home. Would your buyer love decorating the tree? Creating a gingerbread house? Or sitting by the fire?
  • Play into using the five senses – sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste – to make buyers emotionally connected to the space and feel at home.

[Read the full article here]

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