Everyone who puts their home on the market is hoping to get the top price for it and anticipates that the sale won’t stretch out for months.
With the housing market taking an upturn now in the Greater Vancouver Area, makes this is an exciting time for sellers and buyers. Getting your home ready to sell takes time and planning. The curbside appeal must be at its best and staging the interior just so clenches the deal. Color plays a crucial role in both instances.
Exterior Colors to Attract Buyers
Years ago, those who put their homes up for sale depended on photos and visits from potential buyers. Oftentimes the photos did not do justice to the actual property. The weather was always a consideration for people to come out and look at a home. Fast forward to today’s high tech methods and you find that many changes have taken place and home sellers need to take these into consideration when choosing colors to help sell the home.
Photos are of a much higher quality than they were years before and now there are also videos and virtual tours available to potential buyers. This means that your home needs to look good for the camera as well as in real life. As the old saying goes, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression,” so you need to make sure your home looks appealing whether seen on screen or in person.
White is still a top choice when it comes to exterior colors that sell homes; however, last year Zillow’s research showed that homes with exteriors painted in shades of light grey or beige – a mix called “greige” tended to sell for over $3,000 more than those painted with medium brown or tan colors. Having a door with a color somewhere between dark navy blue and slate gray also increased the selling price by as much as $1,500 more.
More neutral colors show off the home’s assets better. White makes a home look larger and more welcoming. Additionally, sprucing up the exterior of your home makes it look fresh and gives it a better curbside appeal.
Make Your Home Easy to Sell
Staging the interior for the sale is crucial. If you’ve taken diligent care of your home, you want to showcase that fact and present your home in such a way that potential buyers can see themselves living there and putting down roots. Choosing the right colors for the job will make a significant difference.
Most of today’s homebuyers appreciate a house that is move-in ready. They are not necessarily looking forward to painting or doing a lot of remodeling. That work is for the buyers who are looking for a fixer-upper to transform. Lives today are already overfull, so when it comes to buying a home, the less work the house needs the better. So what colors are going to help your house sell faster and bring in more money?
Painting the Interior to Make the Sale
There are always trendy colors that come on the market each year. The problem with trends is that they are very fickle and don’t often stick around long. Therefore, what may look good this summer will probably be outdated in a couple of years or so.
When it comes to putting your house on the market, you want to look at what is going to make your home more marketable. Buyers like to be able to use their imagination when looking at a house to buy. This means that a blank canvas is more appealing; hence, using neutral colors for interior paint is always the wise choice. This doesn’t mean that all your walls need to be white.
The truth is that even white comes in a variety of shades. There are warm whites with yellow undertones or cooler whites with tinges of blue. Those shades with the cooler undertones seem to be more appealing to homebuyers.
Room by Room
When considering paint colors for each room, some colors add value while some seem to take it away. For example, homes with bedrooms painted in blue tones sold on average for nearly $2,000 more according to the Zillow report. The blues in these homes ranged from light cerulean to cadet blue. The same report showed that pink rooms devalued homes by about $200.
It’s interesting to note that white bathrooms did not do well. Homes sold on average for about $4,000 less if they had white bathrooms. On the other hand, blue and purple shades increased the amount a house sold for, sometimes as much as $5400 more. Periwinkle to powder blue seemed to be the jackpot colors.
Shades of blue to pale gray seemed to be the color of choice for dining rooms and kitchens. Those colors were not popular in living rooms, however. Browns from light taupe to oatmeal or light beige used in living rooms added about $1,000 or more on average.
Make it Look Good
In fact, make your home look better than good by investing in a good paint job. To do a professional looking job takes a lot of time and patience for the average do-it-yourselfer. However, calling in the professionals from Lions Gate Painting will make it easier and give you the high-quality look you want your home to have. Whether you are preparing your home for selling or you want to have a fresh look for your own family, Lions Gate Painting is here to help. Contact us today to find out more information about how we can make your home look good.