Ep 50 - Selling Your Home During the Holidays - a podcast by Brian Cook And Kindra Cox

On Episode 50 of The Brian and Kindra Show, they discussed how to decorate for the holidays while your home is on the market. 

Attempting to sell you home during the holidays is that you want it to still be festive, but not too festive!!  Some of the best decorated homes Brian and Kindra see can actually be distracting to buyers. The buyers get distracted looking at all the decorations, rather than looking at home. The thing to remember is that you’re selling your house, not your christmas decor. If you have to move the couch to the garage for decorations, you should definitely downsize your festivity!! 

When it comes to trees, they come in all shapes and sizes. You should display a tree that is sized appropriately to reasonably accommodate the space in your house. One idea to reduce tree size is half-trees. Essentially, it is a tree in half vertically and it goes against the wall, easily cutting down half the space. If you are attached to a real tree, put it in your backyard. The scent and its allergies of a real tree can be too overwhelming to some buyers.

With outdoor decorations, keep it simple. A holiday mat and/or a wreath is plenty. If you want to put lights up, consider keeping it neutral with white or clear lights.

Inside, minimal decorating is always a safe bet. You could go as simple as a decorated mantel and a tree. To aid in minimal decorating, having lit candles around the house in holiday scents can help make it feel festive. With mantel decorations, stockings can be that simple decoration.

Reducing clutter during the holidays can be hard. An easy way to do this is to not display your christmas cards and to put away all personal christmas decorations. You want your decor to relate to everyone, so the “Baby’s First Christmas” decor might not be the best. De-personalize the decorations. However, if the christmas cards are just too sentimental to not display, put them in a basket so that they are neat and tidy.  If you like to decorate bathrooms, keep this to a holiday scented hand soap and decorative towel. It adds festivity, but it keeps it functional. 

The big picture here is that the buyer might not like your decorating, so minimizing that will help ward off distraction. The key word is de-personalize. Of course it isn’t ideal to do that, but hopefully you’re selling your house just for one season and the next year you won’t have to worry about it. On the upside, this gives you an early start to packing the personal decorations for the move! 

When selling your home around the holidays, the buyers are far and few between. However, they are serious buyers. If someone is buying a house during the holidays, it’s often that they have to buy a house and will do so quickly so you will want to keep your house as ready as possible for showings!  

Brian and Kindra hope these tips have been helpful to you. As always, if you have any questions or need help, please feel free to reach out to your local real estate professional.

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