Selling Your Home - To Paint or Not to Paint

When I talk to a seller about preparing their home to put it on the market, I suggest that resources be used wisely and only on things that will help the home sell quickly. A client asked me recently whether they should paint their kitchen.

I thought I’d share my response because most sellers could benefit from the advice.

If you paint the kitchen, should you paint the great room and/or the dining room? I do think it would be preferable to have more neutral colors BUT it might not be what ultimately brings the buyer.

A professional stager would definitely tell us to paint the kitchen. If it is something that you've been thinking about doing anyway, then I know it certainly wouldn't hurt your position.

Let me share an example...

I bought a home a couple of years ago. The seller's agent had recommended that they have the house painted. Apparently, they paid a professional over $3,000 to paint the interior of the home. It was a drab gray and they used flat paint. To further complicate things, they left no touch up paint so even if I thought I could live with the color it was impossible to touch up to my satisfaction. So...I ended up painting it again. The agent came by to drop something off and realized I had re-painted. She said "What a waste!"

So, my opinion on paint is that it's only paint and is fairly easily changed. If it isn't a really crazy unappealing paint scheme, I don't recommend you change it. The buyer will most likely want to make it their own anyway. If there is dated wallpaper, it's a different story. People know they can easily paint in a weekend. Removing wallpaper is a big job and if you don't do it right you could damage the walls and really end up with a mess on your hands.

With homes staying on the market longer, it doesn’t hurt to do some things that you would otherwise do if you were planning to keep the home long-term as long as those things would appeal to the masses. Your home needs to attract the attention of virtually every buyer since buyers are a scarce commodity right now.

If you’d like to talk further about how you can put my Nashville-Middle Tennessee Real Estate Services to work for you, visit www.FivePointsProperties.com. To search the MLS listings for Nashville-Middle Tennessee real estate, click on the large map on the home page.