How to Make Your Kitchen and Bathroom Appealing to Buyers
The kitchen is the heart of the home which is why its the first place potential buyers view when touring your home. If your kitchen is unappealing to buyers in any way, they probably won’t consider your home unless they are planning to renovate after the purchase.
When you’re preparing your home to go on the market, you need to look at each room through a buyer’s lense, especially the kitchen and bath. These two rooms are crucial to buyers because one is the nucleus of the home and the other is the place we go to relax, refresh, and take care of personal hygiene. They are also the two rooms that show the most tell-tale signs of how well a home has been cared for.
Concerns to Address in the Kitchen
If you’ve done your research on increasing home value, you know that renovating an outdated kitchen is one of the top ways to achieve the increase. If you can’t afford a total renovation, you can take a few, more affordable steps to update it, like changing out cabinetry hardware, painting cabinetry, and updating old appliances. Giving your kitchen an update no matter how big or small is super important, but only if the updates are done right. A shoddy renovation job is a quick way to send buyers right out the door.
You’ll also want to clear your kitchen of other buyer concerns such as:
Baked on stains, messes, dirty dishes in the sink, food odor, and clutter. Filth is a sign that your home isn’t well-maintained.
Evidence of pets like litter boxes, pet odor, crates, and even food bowls.
Trash. Take out the trash before any showing and if you can, hide your trash cans away in a cabinet or broom closet.
Signs of pest infestation. If you’ve addressed an infestation problem in your kitchen or any area of the home but failed to get rid of the evidence, you might as well have left the infestation, too. It will be tough convincing buyers the problem is gone if evidence points to the contrary.
Oddities. Running an unlicensed hair salon in your kitchen? Time to relocate the salon chair. Using your kitchen as a makeshift showroom for your skincare business? Shut it down for showings. Keep your holiday decorations up year-round? We love your enthusiasm, but they gotta go. Not sure if you’ve got something odd in your kitchen that doesn’t belong? If it’s not kitchen-related, it doesn’t belong.
Concerns in the Bathroom
Think of home tours as job interviews. The kitchen will likely be the first room buyers view when they tour your home. If your kitchen passes the test, your bathroom will be the second interview. Here’s what buyers don’t want to see:
An outdated or ugly bathroom, especially if you’ve updated the rest of the home. A modern designed kitchen with a bathroom that’s stuck in 1989 will send buyers running out the door. If you can’t afford a total renovation, a few fresh coats of paint over the ‘80s wallpaper and cabinets plus some new hardware should add a great deal of appeal.
Weird or inappropriate artwork or photographs. Nude maternity photos, breastfeeding images and naked baby pictures are all no-nos. To be safe, don’t put any images or portraits of people in your bathrooms. To some buyers, looking at people while they handle business isn’t just weird, it’s creepy. Another popular type of art buyers hate to see in the bathroom is word art. Most of us don’t look at the bathroom as a place to live, laugh and love. Keep your artwork limited to pleasant nature scenes or abstract art.
Unconventional storage. From using a jacuzzi tub as a makeshift storage space for extreme couponing finds to placing a mini-fridge in the corner by the toilet, realtors and home renovation contractors have seen it all when it comes unconventional storage in the bathroom. Like we said for the kitchen, if it doesn’t belong in the bathroom, get it out of there.
Extreme toilets. High-tech smart toilets that nobody but the homeowner knows how to use and toilets with bidets are simply too much for some folks. Most people prefer to see the traditional “porcelain throne”.
Bad bathroom smells. You know which ones we’re talking about. Invest in a few cans of Poo-Pourri and make sure your toilets are clean of debris before showings.
Need to update your cabinets and countertops before listing your home? McCarley Cabinets can help and we’ll work with you every step of the way to make sure your home is ahead of the competition. Request your free project estimate here. (link out to free quote page)
