Decided to Sell Your Home? Here’s What Not to Do

A live monkey kept in a floor-to-ceiling cage in the living room?

That’s what Brenda Formicola of Riverside County was startled to see while on a home-shopping expedition years ago.

Formicola--who was looking for a house in move-in condition--didn’t want one with a monkey cage bolted to the floor. She passed up that home.

Although few home-sellers make such blatant mistakes as allowing a monkey to greet prospects, many make it tough to market their homes by leaving too many personal items on display, including myriad family photos and collectibles.

“I’ve been in houses where people have collected so much stuff, that there’s just a narrow pathway from room to room,” said Formicola, now an agent selling homes throughout southern Riverside County for the Prudential Canyon Lake Realty. “All that personal stuff is a real turn-off when you’re trying to sell.”

Martie Etheridge, a broker-associate for the Huntington Beach office of Re/Max Realty South County, remembers one seller who displayed 33 baseball caps on the wall of his family room. “Some were clean, but a lot were dusty and some were raggy. To buyers, they just looked like garbage,” she recalled.

Your collection of baseball caps, porcelain pigs or talking parrots may make you proud when friends and relatives assemble at your place. But leaving them on display when your house is up for sale is a definite no-no in the marketing process. Here are some other mistakes:

* Having the gang glued to a football game when your house is shown.

“Tape the game and walk out; scatter, do whatever you have to do to get out of the way,” said Formicola, who has ushered buyers into homes on several occasions when the living room was crowded with sports fans who wouldn’t disperse.

You don’t have to go far to give prospective home-buyers the privacy and comfort they need to see your place without your being present, because most showings last just 10 to 30 minutes, she said.

A walk around the block or a trip to a local ice cream parlor will usually absorb enough time to give would-be buyers the space they need to explore your home.

* Trying to peddle a smokehouse.

You may have quit smoking more than a month ago. But the signs--and odors--of your old habit are likely still lingering in your home unless you’ve expunged them through a thorough cleaning of upholstery, carpeting, draperies and blinds. Your walls should even be thoroughly scrubbed down, assuming that’s feasible, Formicola said.

And don’t forget to do a thorough cleaning of the interior of your windows, which may still have remnants of smoke clouding them.

“I’ve been in smokers’ houses where the smoke on the patio door was so thick, I could write my initials on it,” Formicola said.

* Believing that decades-old plants still look fresh.

Granted, some of the plantings inside or outside your home may still, technically, be alive. But if they’re old, mangy and dowdy looking--despite your best efforts--they ought to be replaced, said Carol Cusator, an agent for Century 21 Sparow in Long Beach. “I love old trees,” she said, “but a lot of old shrubs have no character.”

For whatever reason, home buyers are more enamored than ever of greenery, she said.

“People love beautiful landscaping, even if, the month after they move in, it will all be dead because they don’t have a clue about how to take care of it,” Cusator said.

“A well-landscaped home will bring as much as 5% or 6% more than a poorly landscaped one,” she estimated.

* Forgetting how long prospects linger at your threshold.

If the United Parcel Service driver rushes up to your front door to leave a package, he’s not likely to notice any chipping paint or cobwebs on your front door. Nor will he see the fingerprints left by your children on the glass or your dog’s scratch marks.

But home shoppers are intensely observant. And, furthermore, they may spend a number of minutes looking around your threshold as their real estate agent searches for the right key or attempts to open a lockbox attached to your doorknob.

Why should you focus so much on improving your entrance?

“Because statistics tell us that more than 60% of the decision on whether to buy a home is made before the client walks through the front door,” said Etheridge.

* Keeping your home sealed tight as a drum.

A number of years ago, Etheridge recalls, she encountered an 88-year-old widow who was selling the Garden Grove cottage she had lived in since she was a bride.

The house seemed dark and forbidding as the agent entered. “Why do you keep those heavy draperies closed all day?” the agent asked. To protect the carpet from fading, the widow replied.

Indeed, the chocolate brown carpet was in excellent condition. But the agent explained that the buyer would probably replace it anyway.

And further, a darkened house is especially unappealing to today’s buyers, who want light, bright homes, Etheridge said.

Recognizing that it was silly to protect her brown carpet from a little fading, the widow kept her draperies fully open during daylight hours and sold her place in just 20 days.

* Pricing at the top of the neighborhood range when it’s unjustified.

Homeowners love to look at the prices fetched for like properties sold in their neighborhood, Etheridge said. And out of these comparable listings, they select the ones that attracted the highest prices.

But if your home is truly in medium to poor condition, it’s a serious error to price it like one that’s “immaculate and drop-dead gorgeous,” she said. The reason is that the discrepancy in condition will be obvious to buyers, who will boycott your place.

Though seasoned agents have to deliver the same tiresome message time and again, mistakes in pricing and condition only hurt the seller in the end. Thus, Etheridge contends it’s a savvy seller who carefully avoids marketing such mistakes as over-pricing.

“You can’t get a positive from a bunch of negatives,” she said.

Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate.

Real Estate Trends

Median Home Price-Resale (in thousands of dollars)

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Latest Previous Date period period Year Ago Los Angeles County Aug $181.7 $175.9 $172.3 Orange County Aug $234.1 $229.5 $216.2 San Diego County Aug $193.2 $192.2 $175.2 Ventura County Aug $228.9 $222.9 $209.9 Riverside / San Bernardino County Aug $114.7 $114.5 $116.1

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Affordability Index (as percentage of households able to afford median price)

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Latest Previous Date period period Year Ago Los Angeles County Aug 37% 39% 39% Orange County Aug 38% 38% 38% San Diego County Aug 36% 36% 37% Ventura County Aug 39% 40% 41% Riverside / San Bernardino County Aug 57% 57% 53%

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Housing Permits (single family)

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Latest Previous Date period period Year Ago Los Angeles County Aug 596 659 580 Orange County Aug 636 943 769 San Diego County Aug 688 843 429 Ventura County Aug 154 200 264 Riverside / San Bernardino County Aug 1,247 1,126 881

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* Data for Southland consumer price index and for all charts includes Los Ageless, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties. All CPI data is based on an index; 1982-84=100.

Source: California Assn. of Realtors, Construction Industry Research Board.