Do Your Sellers Understand How Vital Curb Appeal is in the Current Market?

Mar 15, 2023

Although the return on investment for home improvements isn’t as significant as it once was, some home renovations are still wise investments and increase value, especially in a changing or down market.

The latest research finds that curb appeal can add “… up to 7% of a home’s value when sold,” according to associate professor Sriram Villupuram who led a study from the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA).

“The curb appeal premium is more pronounced during housing market weakness …” the study concluded.

Let’s look at some of the study’s findings that you can pass on to your listing clients to help them get more money at the closing table.

The Curb Appeal postcard from the Content Card Series is shown above. To see this card or more options, Click HERE.

New siding/paint

When considering ways to increase curb appeal, you can’t go wrong by recommending your clients get new siding.

This will increase the homeowner’s “… home value by about $12,500, claims CreditKarma.com’s Andrew Dunn, citing a recent real estate Cost vs. Value report. “This also assumes that about 1,250 square feet of new siding were installed and represents a 67% return on investment,” he concludes.

If your listing lacks siding, urge your clients to paint the home’s exterior. While estimates of the ROI for fresh paint are varied, “…it’s the least expensive investment for the biggest return,” according to Jennie Norris with the International Association of Home Staging Professionals.

Be the agent-in-the-know by offering suggestions on current trends. These include “… colors in the ‘greige’ family,” suggests Mekaila Oaks at Redfin.com. She claims that Kelly Moore’s ‘Gallery Gray,’ with ‘Desert Shadow’ as an accent color, will have buyers getting out of their cars and in the front door.

Add new windows

Not only will the addition of new, energy-efficient windows offer an 85% return on your client’s investment, but they may just be able to get a nice tax credit to boot.

Suggest to your clients a visit to energy.gov to learn how to shop for energy-efficient windows.

Spiff up the landscaping

Landscaping renewal’s ROI has been the subject of many studies over the past decade. “Numerous studies have shown that trees increase the value of a property from 3.5 to 27 percent,” according to the experts at the Arbor Day Foundation.

They go on to say that “An analysis of 844 single-family homes that sold in Athens, Georgia, revealed that houses with an average of five trees (regardless of species) in the front yard sold for 3.5 to 4.5 percent more than comparable houses without trees.”

Recommend that your sellers visit ArborDay.org’s tree database to find trees growing well in your area.

Then, suggest they remove weeds, green up the lawn, plant some color and apply fresh mulch to the beds.

There are workarounds to the uncertainty of the current market. Ensure your clients understand that curb appeal can either compel buyers to get out of the car to view the rest of the house or drive to their next showing.

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Difficult real estate listing? Appeal to their senses

Jun 26, 2019

Even in the fastest-moving real estate markets, some homes just don’t sell. You know the reasons this happens and chief among them is that the home is overpriced. When a listing is priced right, however, it’s usually the home’s condition that keeps buyers from swooning over it.

If investors are swooping in on your homeowner with rock-bottom offers to purchase, perhaps it’s time for you to step in and politely demand that the homeowner make some changes.

Even basic fixes can help move a home. But perception drives value, so consider some of the psychological aspects of staging a home.

Take a cue from the retail and restaurant industries

In fine dining restaurants, presentation of the meal is critically important. It has, in fact, been elevated to a culinary art form.

When plating a meal, a fine dining chef combines color, texture and even space to make the meal attractive to the diner. Compelling plating has other benefits too:

It adds value to the dining experience
Increases the restaurant’s profits by making it easier to upsell
Helps build the restaurant’s reputation

Retailers have also long valued the benefits of presentation. More than two-thirds of consumers interviewed in a Morpace Omnibus survey said that they’ve avoided a retailer based solely on how it appeared from the exterior.

Get there attention with content that matters to them (available in the postcard section under the Content Card Series)

Curb appeal apparently is just as important in retail as it is in real estate

Even once they’re inside the store, the retailer isn’t safe from consumers’ negative perceptions. A couple of years ago, Harris Interactive surveyed 1,000 Americans about what features of a store most negatively impact their perceptions of the store.

“A surprisingly high 86 percent of those surveyed pointed to the floor,” according to Daniel Frimmel, at CSNews.com.

He explains that “a store with soiled or poorly maintained floors would definitely be a factor in their decision to revisit that store again.”

Remind you of any other consumers? How many times has ratty carpet or holes in vinyl turned a homebuyer off even when everything else about the home is ideal?

Curb appeal, staging and cosmetic repairs are all visual cues for homebuyers. But they aren’t the only ones.

If you have a difficult listing, it may be time to dig deeper into the arsenal.

The nose knows

To compete with online retailers, the brick-and-mortar guys (and gals) are using something the online shopper just isn’t provided: a sensory experience.

“Sensory marketing targets a consumer’s basic senses of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell,” explains David Anzel at RetailCustomerService.com.

After sight, the next most commonly used of our five senses when viewing homes for sale is scent. When the front door opens, what do your clients smell? Yeah, there are some pretty nasty smells out there.

But, it doesn’t have to stink.

If you’ve ever been to Las Vegas you know that cigarette smoking is prevalent in the casinos. In fact, a study done a few years ago found that more than half of casino patrons smoke cigarettes.

Unless you’re sitting next to a smoker, however, the air smells surprisingly smoke-free. That’s because almost two decades ago, casino owners brought in experts in air filtrations systems who provided devices that were attached to the ventilation system and pumped out “highly aromatic and shockingly expensive oils into the ducts,” according to PaceVegas.com’s Pesach “Pace” Lattin.

While the cost of these devices is a bit more than the average homeowner or real estate agent would be willing to pay, there are other ways to rid homes of pet, baby, cooking, smoking and other stenches.

It all starts with a thorough cleaning, paying special attention to those items that attract and cling to odors”

Range hood filter
Draperies and curtains
Bedspreads
Carpet
HVAC filters

Then, have your client paint the entire home. If they smoke in the home, tell them to grab a can of KILZ Primer when they buy their paint.

As the paint dries, look around the home for common items that many homeowners use for odor control. The University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension offers a list that includes the usual baking soda, vanilla extract and fabric softener sheets, but it also offers some you may have not heard of before:

Listerine for cleaning
A solution of citronella oil and a half cup of rubbing alcohol in a gallon of water for cleaning the bathroom.
Hang DIY sachets of cat box filler or potpourri in the closets to rid them of stale smells.

Suggest that when your clients install the new HVAC filter, they sprinkle a few drops of a lightly-scented essential oil on it. Apparently, the scent only lasts for a week, so reapplication may be necessary.

Remember that even the most heavenly scent to one person may be downright disgusting to another so caution your clients to keep cover-up smells light.

Open the lines of communication with valuable content (available in the postcard section under the Content Card Series)

Ready to spread the word on curb appeal?

Send at least 100 Making the Most of Curb Appeal postcards from the Content Card Series to an area where you want more listings.

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Master the Art of Writing Listing Descriptions That Sell

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