Have you stayed too long and the party and not paid for your dance ticket?

I quite often encounter clients these days that have been in their homes for 20-30 years. Now it is time for them to move on, to downsize into something more appropriate for retirement and their declining abilities to keep up a bigger house. What I also encounter are people who have stayed too long at the party and not paid recently for their dance ticket.

What I mean by that are folks who likely bought the house when it was new or had it built. They’ve owned in ever since. It was the top of the line when they bought it back in the 70’s and it has served them well. It hasn’t needed much, if anything, so they haven’t put anything into it. The roof has never leaked, so no need to replace it. The furnace still works fine, so it’s OK. The avocado bathrooms and the Harvest Gold kitchen with the Formica tops are still in good condition, although they did paint the oak cabinets white several years back. Maybe they replaced some windows and a door or two and they did, after all, paint the dark wood paneling a nice light neutral shade a while back. And the wall paper was premium stuff when it was installed and is holding up great. Don’t forget that they replaced the water heater five years ago, so it’s “new”. And they put a dropped ceiling in the basement, with a few florescent lights and put down that indoor-outdoor carpeting, so it is “finished” now. It even has a ping-pong table that they’ll consider leaving.

Sound familiar? It’s really sad and awfully tough to try to get these owners to realize that they just haven’t been doing the things that they needed to do while they owned the house – things that would have been done to the house if it had changed hands every 5-7 years. The roof should have been replaced. All of the windows likely needed replacement too. And those baths and the kitchen – give me a break. No matter what they’ve heard about the retro look coming back, they should have been totally remodeled at least 2 times during those 30 years. Don’t even get me started on the wallpaper and the painted wood paneling.

What has happened with these people happens all the time when homeowners settle in for the long haul and get really comfortable with things as they’ve always been. The house goes badly out of date and the owners don’t even notice. If they are good, meticulous owners they may indeed have taken such good care of things that they all still look good and work fine, just like a well cared for antique car. Except, unlike the antique car, the house is not gaining value due to its age, it has lost a lot of its value and owners don’t even realize it. Potential buyers don’t look at your museum quality preservation of a 1970’s house and appreciate it. Instead they see project after project and cost after cost as they go through. They leave asking, “What were these people thinking? They haven’t done any updating in years, maybe ever.”

I almost always get the “it was good enough for us all those years, it should be good enough for the next owner” argument from the sellers. Well, No! It’s not good enough for anybody else, because you’re the only one who will put up with it as it is. The sad thing is that the house could be worth what the sellers think it is, if they had only been investing in it as they lived in it for those thirty years. Now it is likely worth about ½ of what the sellers think it is, if that much. It has taken me over a year sometime to get the sellers to understand and adjust the price to a marketable level when I list one of these homes. Only time and pain seem to get the message across, eventually.

The shame is that these same people could have afforded to keep their homes updated, had they spent a little every year and maybe done a major update every 5-6 years. They just got comfortable and couldn’t see what was happening, sort of like wearing a favorite old pair of jeans until the fall apart while you’re in them. Now that they are ready to move on they don’t want to put in the money to make up for their lost time and lack of effort. What they eventually have to come to grips with is the value loss that they have caused by not keeping the place updated. Helping them see all of this is my challenge.

So, if you’re a homeowner and you’ve been in your home for 5-10 years, look around and see what you may need to be doing. Go to a few open houses of home that are similar in size and see what the current trends are. What are they doing in the kitchens and baths now and how would that fit into your home. What are window treatments like these days and could they replace your heavy drapes? Could the modern wood floor look replace your wall-to-wall carpets? Should you maybe blow out the wall between the kitchen and the dining room and create a bigger, more open look that fits in today’s designs? Would a modern pedestal sink to replace that big bathroom vanity make the bath look bigger and more inviting? Is it time to lose the big floral print wallpaper in the foyer and hall in favor of a neutral paint look? Now that the kids have move out is it time to redecorate the princess room and the college football themed bedroom?

Hopefully you won’t get to the point where you want to move on and realize that you’ve stayed too long at the dance and not paid for your dance card.