The Sweet Smell of Real Estate Success

forsale

OK … confession time. What smelly things have you done to try to sell your home?

New research is telling us that the wrong smell in a house can cost home sellers a sale. Dr Avery Gilbert, a psychologist who studies human responses to scents, says tobacco and cat urine are the odours most difficult to cover up and warns the bad impression they leave can have buyers walking out the door.

Dr. Avery Gilbert is a smell scientist.

He has conducted research on human odor perception in academic laboratories and in the R&D divisions of multinational perfume companies. Along the way he’s taught scores of audiences about the science of smell. – Avery Gilbert

But what about good scents? Have you ever tried baking bread or biscuits just before a home open? Apparently that might make buyers feel as though the house belongs to someone else (which of course, it does) and they’re less likely to see themselves living there.

Dr Avery reckons the best option is a clean, fresh floral scent. I guess that having a couple of bunches of fresh flowers in your house would make it visually appealing too.

“If you have a highly pleasant smell, people get into a better mood as they are exposed to it. And bad smells will put people in a bad mood,” Dr Gilbert said.

“People may not be as attracted, even if it is a fine property.”

Dr Avery, whose research involved a company that manufactures air freshener, partnered with Air Wick to complete the research into home odour created an index of the 51 most common household scents, from cooking to pets and body odour.

He said finding a way to remove bad odours should be paramount when selling your home. – News.com.au

What are the little tips and tricks you’ve used for home opens? Brewed coffee? Air freshener? Fresh bread? Let me know what you’ve tried.



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Staying Right Here

I was reading a friend’s blog this morning about the trials, twists and turns of buying a home. They’ve finally signed up to buy a home and now just have the waiting ahead of them before they get to move in.

This particular blogger friend is in the US but I know that here in Perth the statistics suggest that we tend to move house more often than most.

Personally I’m more than happy where we are. We’ve been in our current house for a couple of years and we lived in the one before that for sixteen years. That’s a lot longer than many people stay in one place. I can’t see us getting the moving bug for many years.

How about you? How many houses have you lived in over the last twenty or so years? Do you get itchy feet if you live in the same place for any length of time? When do you think your next move will be?

With all the hassle of selling, buying, packing and moving I’m more than happy to be pleased for friends that are shifting house, but I’m so relieved that it’s not me.



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Want to buy some property?

I just got an email from a real estate company in Hong Kong. They specialise in exclusive and very expensive apartments in Hong Kong.

Apparently they have clients who would be interested in living in the exclusive area of Hong Kong where I recently purchased an apartment. They were wondering if I’d like to sell.

I shot back an email to let them know they’ve found the wrong Rodney Olsen. I don’t own any property in Hong Kong and I haven’t even had the pleasure of visiting.

Now I’m wondering if I should have just let them sell the apartment for me and forwarded the proceeds to my account.



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The Final Countdown

newhouse.jpgThe end is finally in sight.

After so many delays we are now moving to put the final pieces of the puzzle in place. The final approval we needed to sell our home came through yesterday so we’re now about a month away from moving to our new home. You have no idea what a relief that is.

Selling our current home and buying another has been a long process. We’re not there yet but the light at the end of the tunnel is now almost blinding.

Once we made the decision to make the move it took us a lot longer than we expected to get our house to the point that we were happy to have it on the market. There were a few bits and pieces to fix, rooms to de-clutter and a garden which needed a make over. We have many generous friends and family members who helped along the way.

Once the house was placed on the market it sat there for three months without an offer. We then switched real estate agents and within three weeks we had rejected an offer which was too low and accepted one that was suitable. On the same day that we accepted an offer we put an offer on the home in the picture in this post.

The people buying our current home are first home buyers and so they needed approval through the government’s Key Start process. That took over 40 days. We were were 99% sure it was going to be OK but the sense of relief and joy when we had formal approval yesterday was amazing. From the time of approval, Key Start conditions require us to wait thirty days until settlement. So that’s where we are now. In around a month we’ll be deciding where the furniture fits best in our new home.



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Moving forward

sign_1.jpgWell …. a sold sign may be a little premature but we do have an offer on our home.

After nearly four months on the market and two real estate agents, we got a suitable offer on our home. We’re pretty excited.

A young lady visited our home during last Saturday’s home open and told the agent that she’d like to make an offer the following morning. He had an appointment at her home last Sunday morning at 10:00. While he was chatting about the offer, we were trying very hard to concentrate on the sermon at church. After church we waited for the phone call to come. Finally, our agent phoned and told us about the offer. While it wasn’t huge, it was what we needed to be able to move forward with the moving process.

Once we got home from church we signed the necessary paper work and our agent rang the buyer the buyer with the good news. Of course we still need to wait for approval from her lender but we’re very confident that things will run smoothly.

On Sunday afternoon we visited a couple of homes in the area where we want to live. We’ve seen a lot of homes in the past few months but it really came down to just two, and we were convinced that one of them wasn’t really all that suitable. Unfortunately we had heard that a successful offer had recently been made on the other house which was the one we really wanted.

We went to see our ‘second favourite’ house, more or less to rule it out before starting the search all over again. We were very surprised. It seemed different. It seemed so much better than we had remembered. We phoned our own agent who then dropped in to look around and give us his opinion. We then went to the other place, the one we couldn’t have. It didn’t seem quite as good as we’d remembered. Our agent said that he liked the other one a lot more. So did we.

We headed back to the house we thought we didn’t want, excited about how wonderful it would be if we could buy it. We made an offer and a short while later we got the call to say that our offer had been accepted.

So after all the months of waiting we sold one house and bought another all within a day.

Our new home is just a few minutes walk from school for Emily and James. Pauline won’t miss having to drive 130 km every day just to get the kids to school.

As I mentioned, we’re ‘not home yet’ with the deal. We’re very confident that we will get the finance we need and that the person buying our home will get their approval but at this stage it’s a matter of waiting.

We should have our approval sometime next week but our buyer’s approval is unlikely to be given for about another month. After that, it’ll be another thirty days before we move.

We’re not done with waiting yet but we are seeing movement in the process and we’re thrilled.



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