Selling A Home During Christmas

If you want to try selling during the holiday season, here are a few tips:

The power of the nose is underestimated by many people. Smell is the first sense we develop and is deeply associated with food and emotion. A clean smell is great, as it does not cause negative reactions from most buyers. However, for Christmas, it may pay off to stage your home so that your buyers can imagine their Christmas happening here.

When you clean your home and stage it for showing, try choosing natural-based citrus and pine scented cleaners. These should just leave a hint of their scent behind . If you can bake cookies and cakes (bake, don’t burn!), do it in the morning before you leave the house for showing; it will give the house a holiday smell. Also, a pot of apple cider that has been heated on the stove lends a delightfully spicy, Christmasy smell.

Go the extra mile and leave some of those cookies and cider out for your buyers. They might not remember the crown molding, but they will remember free food and drink!

Decorate conservatively, but don’t over-decorate; it blends your house in with your neighbors’ houses and looks more homey. Several strands of Christmas lights and a wreath on the door are enough to make your house sparkle. Keep banners and large yard displays packed up this year. Get a smaller tree than you normally would if your living room is small; it will make the space look larger. Keep the kids’ ornaments off the tree when buyers are around and try for a more uniform look this year with classic Christmas ornaments and a light hand on the tinsel. It is recommended that you shut your family’s presents away, but since they look good under the tree, wrap a few fake presents to provide a nice effect.

With some extra thought to decorating and scheduling, you can certainly pull off house selling on the holidays. However, stop and think whether you really want to – it may be easier to pause for a short time while holiday celebrations are going on and then start anew in January.