As real estate agents, we sometimes get accused of trying to blandify the world. If you look at homes for sale in a given city, you may see why it can seem that way.
When you are selling a home, conventional wisdom holds you need to strip the home of elements that are personal, get rid of anything too eclectic, and try to mitigate any aspects that could possibly negatively impact a buyer’s perception of the home.
For personal elements, this typically means that sellers are advised to take down their family photos or other indicators of who actually lives in the home. You’re proud of graduating from that university? Sure, but take down that degree. Your kids had a piece of art commissioned using license plates from your home province to spell out the family name? Fun, now take it down.
On the eclectic side of things, vibrant paint colours or unusual pieces of furniture are often recommended to be changed up for a sale. Paint that lime green living room to a more neutral colour and let’s put that tiger striped sofa with the actual tiger head in storage so it doesn’t get..uh…damaged.
When we talk about potential negative perceptions in the eyes of a buyer, we mean any evidence that some aspects of the home may not be ideal for how people actually live. If you put an IKEA cabinet in the kitchen because there isn’t enough storage otherwise, that has to go. If you have the living room beside the kitchen so you can watch the kids while you cook, let’s switch it back to being a dining room, so buyers envision the lovely dinner parties they can have at their new home.
As a result of this depersonalization, most houses end up looking pretty similar. Similar paint colours, similar artwork, similar staging furniture. The truth is that this happens for a reason, and it’s not because good design and bold styles aren’t appealing. It’s because as listing agents, we’re looking for sellers to envision themselves in the home. We don’t want it to be the seller’s home they are visiting for the first time; we want it to be your future home.
Naturally, not all homes for sale follow these rules and you can end up with properties that need some cosmetic updates, that have a very eclectic and personal style and where the way the current owners live makes it clear the home isn’t ideal for how people live these days.
On other occasions, however, you see places that are unique in quite puzzling ways. Whether they were built that way, or subsequent owners decided to do their own thing, we sometimes go to homes and end up shaking our heads in confusion.
A unique-in-a-bad-way home has aspects that make no sense to the majority of buyers and they aren’t easily fixed. Such homes take longer to sell and when they do, it’s for a lower price than for comparable properties that don’t have those issues.
Here’s three unique things in real estate we strongly recommend you avoid!
Hope you don’t fall down the stairs in the middle of the night.
Our first unique-in-a-bad-way example is a home where someone decided to renovate and remove something that pretty much everyone wants.
Here’s a story that illustrates what we mean. We were recently showing properties to a buyer who was looking at homes in the Long Branch area of Toronto. There are lots of cute, small bungalows in that part of the city and they are decent condo alternatives if you want a small home but with your own driveway and backyard. One of the properties we showed was unique, and not in a good way.
It was nicely decorated and while there was a lot of personalized art on the wall related to the seller’s last name, it showed well. It was when our buyer commented on the basement bathroom only having a curtain for a door, that we suddenly realized we hadn’t seen a bathroom on the main floor. Now, it’s not too unusual for homes in Toronto to not have a powder room or washroom on the main floor, but that’s when the second floor is where the bedrooms are located, and that’s where the bathroom is also located.
At some point in its history, the owner of this home decided to remove a full washroom from the main floor. We’ve seen countless bungalows of this style and they are never built without a washroom on the main floor. When built, the basement is unfinished and homeowners may choose to finish it and add a washroom, but this house absolutely started off with a washroom on the main floor.
Whoever decided to remove the washroom from the main floor of the house made a terrible decision. Any home where there is not a bathroom on the same floor as the bedrooms is very unappealing to the majority of buyers. Waking up in the middle of the night and having to sleepily go up or down a full set of stairs in order to use the bathroom is just not something people enjoy. It’s unique in a terrible way.
That basement is well and truly finished.
Our second unique-in-a-bad-way example is a home where the basement is overly finished. We don’t mean a marble counter in the laundry room, we mean where every part of the unfinished basement was finished, even if it makes no sense.
Here’s the story behind this example. In working with buyers looking in the Newmarket area for a new family home, we went to a property that had been on the market for a number of months. It was in a nice neighbourhood and while it had some quirks in the layout of the main floor, it was the basement that made us scratch our heads.
The basement had been finished with what appeared to be four different types of flooring materials. While some variety might be nice, these floor materials covered the gamut from laminate hardwood to carpet to stone tiles to terracotta tiles. It looked like if you went to your local Habitat for Humanity Store, went to the flooring section and said we’ll take it all.
In addition to there being a wide variety of flooring materials in place, the homeowners decided to use them everywhere. What you call a flooring material is also a wall material and a ceiling material if you are willing to put in the effort. If you have not ever seen a carpeted ceiling, have you truly lived?
As the final touch, the sellers made sure that every part of the basement was finished. The furnace needed to be tiled underneath it and the space between the furnace and the wall needed to be drywalled and covered in flooring material as well. Throughout the basement there were irregularly shaped spaces where considerable time and money had gone into finishing them. A 12 ft long by 2 ft wide room was created between the washroom and the stairs, in order to finish that space, and then done in terra cotta tiles. We’re not sure what you would use it for, but it’s ready for you when you figure it out.
This lesson applies to not just basements, but any area where spaces are created that most people won’t ever use and then finished to a high extent. The number of buyers who are looking for a home with an ornate attic or an L-shaped basement retreat is quite small and it makes that home unique in a puzzling way.
Privacy is for chumps.
Our final unique-in-a-bad-way example has to do with homes where the owner is an open book. Whether it is privacy for people living together in the home, or privacy from the outside world, we have encountered a few properties where the separation between rooms or the neighbours is not a priority.
We once visited a home for sale where the top half of the second story was devoted to a master bedroom retreat, complete with luxury bathroom. The large space was closed off by a pair of doors, but once past those doors, open concept was the rule. A freestanding soaker tub stood about 5 feet away from the bed, with a double sided gas fireplace being the only thing separating the two spaces. If you were walking over to use the toilet, you’d be able to have a conversation with the person in the tub, and you wouldn’t need to stop that conversation if you were using the facilities, as the toilet was in a nook facing the tub, with no door.
In a different home we found a conventional bathroom with a large jacuzzi tub, set in front of a large window. The window had no curtains or drapes, and the window began at the point where the tub ended and went up for about six feet. The window faced the neighbouring house, where no less than three rooms with windows were located. The neighbour’s windows were just a bit higher than this bathroom window, so anyone looking out of any of those rooms would be able to look directly down into the jacuzzi. Unless the tub produced copious amounts of steam to fog up the window, it seems like bathing with an audience was the intent!
While everyone may have different ideas around how important privacy is in a home, we’ve generally found that home owners like to be able to decide upon the level they can have and with whom. Any home where the design or layout removes that option makes it unique in a very perplexing way!
It really is remarkable the choices that some home owners make about their home. While personalizing a home and making it your own is understandable, some decisions are expensive to do, hard to correct and largely unappealing to most people. If you’re considering selling your home and want some advice on what would add value to the property as opposed to taking value away, then don’t hesitate to get in touch!
