Selling a non-aesthetic (normal) home

One of the things that home owners are often told, when preparing to sell their home is that they have to make it aesthetically pleasing to potential buyers. They are told to paint the walls neutral colors and to remove personal photos and mementos. While we are proponents of decluttering (see last month’s blog post), we don’t think that homes need to have a particular aesthetic in order to be desirable.

Anyone who scrolls social media or browses for house related topics on Pinterest knows there’s an  expectation that a home for sale should look like it’s out of a Pottery Barn catalog or has just been featured in House Beautiful. What an overwhelming and unrealistic standard!

Of course there are many types of aesthetic styles (coastal, minimalist, boho chic, industrial, etc) but what these share is a cohesiveness that can feel hard to maintain. We want to assure prospective sellers that no matter their home decor preferences, we can help them get their house sold.

We talk to home owners who worry their house won’t be desirable because their walls aren’t painted grey and their cabinets are oak and their house is filled with furniture they have inherited through the years from various family members. That just isn’t true.

After years of photographing and marketing homes, we have found that even though a uniform aesthetic can make a house desirable, there are some things that turn out to be even more important to buyers. Homes that are clean and where the furniture is arranged to maximize flow through the rooms are desirable. Homes that feature mechanical and structural updates are desirable. Homes that are well lit and have good ambient light are desirable.

But the most important thing for making a home desirable to potential buyers is that it is well cared for and loved. The feeling you get when you are in a well loved home is unmistakable. Cared for homes tend to have the traits listed above but having those traits isn’t a guarantee that a house will feel well loved. A well loved home feels warm and lived in and walking through, you can tell the owners were good stewards of the building.

In the end, what buyers are really looking for is a house that feels like a home.

Photo credit: iStock.com/AJ_Watt