To think some little things make a house look expensive?

[Stressmode]

Selling my house and trying to make it look like normal people live there! My husband disagrees and says people will only be looking at bricks and mortar. However I recon there are certain things that help people a feel for a place and show it off well. Not just because I am selling my house but because I want to get some nice stuff for my next place. I am autistic so kind of struggle with this stuff.

What little things make a house feel elevated (classy, expensive, nice… not sure which) ?

Not got much budget, but trying to work out which things help with interiors.

It is unbelievable the amount of people that do fall for this sort of thing. Some people really struggle to imagine a space anyway different from exactly what they see. I've heard people say I couldn't live without color for a wall!

A lot of people don't seem to get this. Sure, you can list your shambles of a house for sale, expecting potential buyers to ignore the cracked window and smelly bathroom and step over the piles of toys and dirty clothes on the floor. Someone will probably still buy it, but you're going to attract bargain hunters, not buyers who are willing to pay top dollar.

I think this is to do with the fact that other people's stuff=unnecessary clutter. My own stuff=things I actively want and use. A lot of people here are determined that they don't but on emotion, but we are human! Of course it's a contributing factor.

Although I don't like shells with nothing in them - very unhelpful for picturing how you actually live. I need to see a bed in a bedroom. And if you remove the wardrobe that just highlights to me that there isn't space.

No strong smells. I always think that people are using them to cover up something else like damp...

There's a huge different between expecting buyers to overlook things that indicate neglect and the stronger likelihood of more serious issue, like a broken window and a smelly bathroom and thinking that it’s necessary to ‘stage’ a house down to the ‘high end toiletries’, though.

I think the only thing I’ve ever done to appease the kind of buyers I knew I was likely to have, other than a good clean and paint retouch when selling, was once, when I knew viewers were going to be the LMC type to think of ‘books as clutter’ (heavily overrepresented on Mn), was to remove the two walls of fitted bookshelves in the living room — we’d already left, so the house was empty.

To me, the sensible thing to do is remove anything that could be an obstacle to a buyer wanting to buy the house, or remembering it for the wrong reasons. Like an obvious storage problem or the smell of sweaty sheets that haven’t seen a washing machine for weeks on end.
The cushions/candles/flowers are not there for the purpose of selling the house per se, or as a trick. People know they aren’t buying the candles. They are there for the purpose of making the house “feel” nice. Like the person who lives there currently cares for their home, and why wouldn’t they, it’s a lovely home after all?
I don’t have time for property development so I want a house that doesn’t need rehabilitation after a previous owners neglect. If it looks cared for then there’s more chance that it is cared for, by someone who values their asset and is serious about selling it.

Possibly but it went to first couple first day on market and lots of interest after that. We definitely sold lifestyle, we showed them around and then sat on our nice patio. They were ‘us’ just a few years younger. The nice toiletries and brand new towels set a tone. We did same with next property and again sold within days. People can tell difference between smart price plastic bottle with drips and a name glass bottle. There’s a reason show homes do it.

Show homes 'stage' homes both because they have to (this is a house no one has ever lived in, built ahead of the construction of the rest of the estate as an ad, after all) and because they're trying to make people overlook the small furniture chosen to make increasingly undersized rooms look normal, and to try to make people see past the fact that it's often on a large building site of raw earth, breeze blocks and diggers.

Everybody can tell the difference…
Everybody also knows that this crap doesn’t form part of the fixtures and fittings, and quite rightly concentrate on other more structural matters.
Unless they’re a bit thick.

The sneering that this doesn’t work and it’s all location and price assumes the OPs house is the only one in that rough location at that size on for roughly that price.

When we bought this house, a 3 bed 1930s semi 20 mins walk to the station and comfortably within the “furthest distance offered” area for the good local primary - we looked at 2 others that were also 3 bed 30’s semis 20 mins to the station in the same school catchment. They were all on for roughly the same price.

Once you aren’t competing on location or price, you pick on “feel”. Of the 3, this one “felt nicer”- not sure u can completely put my finger on what it was. It felt larger than one of the others (on the same road as ours) even though we’d compared floor plans and it isn’t.

at the end of the day if ours had been significantly more expensive than the others I’d have picked on of those, what we paid for this is what I’d have paid for any of the three. I’m sure we would have been happy in any of them.

If your property is unique, unusual layout /size, or maybe the only house for sale currently in the catchment for an oversubscribed school, or perhaps very low priced for the size/area, then the fripperies won’t make a difference. But if you are selling a house like one of the 3 we viewed, good presentation might just make the difference when on paper there’s no difference (and you don’t want to lower your price to create a difference that way).

I agree, particularly those awful plug-in ones that smell sickly sweet.

I agree, there are quite a lot of developments in this area and if you go into the show flats they have shallow two-seater sofas, four foot beds rather than doubles, and small shelving units and dining table. Some even have illuminated pictures of the "view" in the window rather than clear glass!

My son was appalled by the size of some of the main rooms (which included the kitchen) as it was obvious when he checked the measurements that there was not enough room for a proper sofa and a dining table. If you were selling one like that that you'd need to hire a small dining table and a very small sofa, otherwise it would be obvious that there was nowhere to sit and eat apart from the sofa. I'm guessing that the companies who hire out furniture for this purpose know exactly what is needed.

Both were newish builds. So no real stand out features. What makes a buyer choose that new build 4 bed over another is often down to presentation.
I’m in an area with lots of similar newish builds. I enjoy looking in Rightmove. Those that are presented nicely sell, those that are a bit scruffy and tatty don’t unless reduced.