Dear Olivia,
We’ve decided to sell our home, and it will be going on the market soon. With the holidays coming up, we’re wondering, should we decorate or leave the house as-is? Will decorations turn off buyers?
Sincerely,
Happy Holidays
In short, the answer to your first question is YES! You should decorate for the holidays. In general, holiday decorations do not turn buyers off, assuming you don’t go overboard with them.
That’s really the key here – decorate tastefully and edit your decorations down so your home looks good for the holidays, but also so the decorations don’t distract from your home’s features.
In fact, staging your home to sell during the holidays isn’t much different from staging it to sell any other time of year. Just follow the steps I’ve outlined below, and you’ll have a beautifully decorated home that invites buyers to come in and see more!
Clean & Declutter First
The first thing I tell my sellers to do is to clean and declutter their home before we put it on the market. If you’re about to put your home up for sale, you should do the same.
After all, no amount of Christmas decorations will distract a buyer from a messy kitchen or dirty clothes piled up in your kids’ closets. Before you pull out all your holiday decorations, give the place a good once-over so you start with a clean palette.
Highlight the Positives in Your Home
If your home has really tall ceilings, put up a really tall Christmas tree to show them off. If there are interesting architectural features like arched doorways, hang garland to show off their shape. If there’s a cozy bay window in the breakfast nook, by all means, show off that space by putting decorations in the window.
The point is that your holiday decorations can actually help draw buyers’ attention to the best features of your home. Before you decorate, make a quick list of the features you like about your home, and see if your holiday decorating can make those features stand out.
Take It Easy on Large Outdoor Decorations
Photo by James Wheeler on Unsplash
When potential buyers drive by your home, you want them to notice things like your cute front porch or the long driveway for off-street parking or the new roof you just had put on.
But if you have a 7-foot-tall inflatable snowman in the middle of the yard, guess what buyers are going to see? Yeah, the inflatable snowman!
It’s also a good idea to keep the exterior lights clean and simple. Christmas lights can give your home a classic, elegant look, or they can look like Clark Griswold’s house in National Lampoons Christmas Vacation. You need to strive for the former, not the latter!
Take This Opportunity to Organize
If your holiday decoration storage area is anything like mine, it’s a hot mess.
One thing that will immediately turn buyers off is if they open a door into a storage area and find a disorganized, cluttered mess. It tells them that there isn’t enough storage in the home, and it might make them question just how well you’ve taken care of the home over the years, too.
So, when you head to the storage room to get your decorations out, take a few minutes to tidy things up. A little bit of organization and a little bit of restraint when putting up your holiday decorations will go a long way.
Happy holidays!
~Olivia