Buyers think they love Italian tile and other hard floor
surfaces, but they actually feel happier when they're walking
on softer surfaces such as padded carpeting and padded
laminate. Even so, you'll want to give some serious thought to
the floors in your home if you want to sell quickly, and for
the highest profit.
Flooring Colors for Quick Sales
Choose neutral, light colors for floor surfaces, because they
won't clash with a buyers' furnishings. Buyers can easily
paint over colored walls, but changing floor surfaces is much
more difficult and expensive. Therefore, the colors you bring
into play when staging your home for resale is best left to
areas other than flooring.
Hard Floor Surfaces and Marketing Psychology
Always weigh the cost vs. benefit ratio before making flooring
decisions. For instance, tile floors in bathrooms increases
property value and sales appeal, but learning to install tile
floors takes time, and the cost can be prohibitive. However,
many types of linoleum simulate tile surfaces, and your cash
outlay for professional installation will be considerably
less. Using carpet instead of hard flooring in bathrooms saves
even more money and ties spaces together for a more spacious
feeling, such as in a main bedroom suite.
Install kitchen flooring before you install new appliances.
Usually, you save money by hiring the same installers to put
in new hard flooring and carpeting. However, that can also be
a balancing act, because you want to finish painting and
construction prior to installing carpet.
Carpeting and Buyers
Before making the decision to replace stained wall-to-wall
carpeting, try cleaning it first. I tested a trick suggested
by my carpet company owner on the badly-spotted bedroom carpet
in one of our investment properties. Following her advice, I
sprayed Windex directly on the spots, scrubbed gently with a
brush, and then wiped with a wet rag, and the spots
disappeared!
Buyers love new carpeting, especially if they get the chance
to pick it out. If the existing carpeting is truly awful, rip
it out and clean the floors. Then, if the home doesn't look
too terrible, some investors find it worthwhile to offer the
house for sale at that point and offer a carpeting allowance.
Personally, I think properties show much better with all
flooring in place, so we always install it.
Earth Friendly Flooring
Upscale buyers love cork and bamboo flooring. They're
environmentally-friendly choices, because both are easily
renewable.
Cork oak trees aren't destroyed; the bark is harvested every
nine years, and they can continue providing bark for 200
years! Buyers love cork's feeling of softness under their
feet, and cork flooring provides a great sound barrier.
Bamboo is both sustainable and beautiful. It's actually a
member of the grass family and is one of the fastest-growing
plants on Earth, growing to full maturity within five or six
years. Buyers love the distinctive look of bamboo. Natural
bamboo colors range from light tan and caramel to honey
browns, and the subtle grain patterns accent both linear and
horizontal planes, adding visual depth and making rooms look
larger.
Using the concepts of Design Psychology, you'll either choose
simple or elegant flooring for your home, depending on your
prospective buyer's income level, and employing Design
Psychology strategies will help you create floors that buyers
won’t be able to wait to walk on barefoot!
(c) Copyright 2004, Jeanette J. Fisher. All rights reserved.
Professor Jeanette Fisher, author of Doghouse to Dollhouse for
Dollars, Joy to the Home, and other books teaches Real Estate
Investing and Design Psychology. For more articles, tips,
reports, newsletters, and sales flyer template, see http://www.doghousetodollhousefordollars.com/pages/5/index.htm
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/
June 2:
