It’s more than a matter of taste…

Where is the line that marks the difference between “shabby chic” and just plain tacky? How modern is too modern? What do you tell a homeowner whose house is a tribute to Graceland that an oil painting of Elvis on black velvet is not appropriate in every room? Can you suggest taking down the horny heads and putting away the stuffed dead animals to the Great White Hunter? What do you do with the Princess bedroom that is painted pink and has glow in the dark starts on the ceiling? Is it appropriate to suggest alternate colors for the sports team themed bedroom done in maize and blue? How do you deal with “custom-built,” when the result looks like the lounge at a cheap motel? What do you tell the owners who just love their Victorian themed purple and turquoise paint job?

These and many other questions beg the issue of when things are just a matter of taste and when they become impediments to the sale of a home. Somewhere near the center of the universe of good taste is a bland little patch of off-white. Everything else is something else and the further out you go, the further you get away from that happy little neutral patch. The farther away you move from that center point, the lonelier it gets, too. There are fewer and fewer buyers who will share your tastes and appreciate that all black room that your moody teenager chose for himself.

My challenge as a Realtor is to help the owner see that imposing their tastes and preferences on potential buyers is basically an exercise in exclusion. Every personal choice that is expressed in a room color or décor may drive away those who don’t share in that choice. The avid hunter often can’t understand why someone would be offended by the dead, stuffed mounts that are spread around the house. Yet many women won’t even go into a house if they see these trophies all over the place. And many single women who’ve lived in a house alone for a while can’t understand why male buyers are turning off by frilly frou-frou all over the place.

I’ve tried several approaches with owners who are over the top in their home décor, including taking in home stagers to provide “professional advice” above and beyond what I may have told them. Quite honestly, even that seldom works and often the owner is offended by the advice that they remove or tone down the personal touches and content of their house – especially if it involves advising that they take down and store most of the family photos that may have lined the walls of a stairway or, perhaps, that they paint over the cute little marks on the kitchen doorway that documented the growth of their children.

The bottom line is that when they put it on the market it is no longer a home, it is a house – a product that is competing against other houses on the market and the owners must be able to look at it that way. For some this is a tough emotional transition to make – letting go of the “home” aspect of the house and getting comfortable with that aspect living on in memories. This is where taking the sellers to a few other, well staged homes would probably help them see what you need them to do for you to make the house more marketable. Sometimes it just takes time and giving the owners a few weeks to get over this hump and make the changes needed is probably the best thing to do. Sometimes the seller never does agree with what needs to be done to sell the house and in those cases it's a long and frustrating wait, tryin gto find those few buyers who have matching tastes.