Melanie Atkinson: Selling Your House? Don't Cook Bacon!

The very first thing I notice when I walk through the front door of the house I am showing is the smell, or lack thereof. 

I have a very keen sense of smell, a useful, yet distracting pseudo superpower to have as a real estate agent. 

Most homes have a smell, some good…some bad.  The last thing you want when selling your house is for potential buyers to be distracted by smells.  Because the occupants of a house are usually the last to recognize a smell problem, I highly recommend you enlist the help of an honest friend or real estate agent to help sort out any potential smell issues. 

The top three smell makers in most homes are kids, pets, and last night’s dinner. 

Let’s take the kids first.  Babies may smell like sweet lavender when they come out of the bathtub, but their diapers don’t. Forget diaper pails.  If you are selling your house, the diapers need to be in a tightly sealed outside garbage can immediately.  It doesn’t get any easier as they get older. I know this because at this very moment my 9-year old son’s hockey bag is upstairs creating a rancid bacteria not yet discovered by scientists. Their shoes, socks, and sweaty shirts all combine to make a bedroom smell more like a locker room.  Do the laundry frequently, keep shoes in the garage, and don’t forget to check under beds for the occasional rogue stinky sock.

Pets.  There are some obvious things to consider when you are selling a home with pets:  clean up accidents immediately and use products designed to neutralize the odor, vacuum, clean cages regularly, and empty litter boxes outside (see baby diapers above, same rule applies).  I also encourage sellers to have a professional carpet cleaner come to clean not only the carpet, but other upholstered furniture.  Wash the pet’s bed and vacuum under all beds, couches, and behind the refrigerator/washer/dryer.  You will be amazed at all the hair that has accumulated there; you could practically make another animal!

Do you love bacon on Sunday mornings?  Unless the buyer of your home is a Labrador, you don’t want your house to smell like bacon when it is for sale.  What might smell good to you when it is cooking can be very unappealing to potential buyers.  Garlicky dishes can linger, as can fried foods. Don’t even get me started on fish.  As much as I love these types of food, some things are best left for a restaurant to prepare when you are selling.  A few things other tips to help keep kitchen odors out:  empty your garbage cans every night, use the exhaust fan (assuming it actually brings the odors outside of your home and doesn’t just swirl them around the kitchen), and if you have a cabinet or microwave above your cooktop, clean underneath that cabinet/microwave.  

When selling, you want your home to smell as neutral as possible.  No smell, even one that you consider a good one, ie. Chocolate chip cookies, should smack someone when they walk in the door.  Subtle smells such as clean linen, cinnamon, vanilla, and light citrus are appealing to most.  But before you use products to make your house smell better, make sure you change the air filters and remove all other sources of the bad smells.

OK, maybe you can’t remove your kids and pets permanently, but you can definitely stop yourself from cooking bacon-wrapped scallops.

Do you love where you live? Tell me what makes your house, street, or neighborhood such a great place to live.  I would love to feature you in my next blog!

Melanie Atkinson is a Westchase area Realtor with Future Home Realty and can be reached at 813-368-6084 or melanie.atkinson@verizon.net