Sellers Masking Common Home Odors Has Powerful Effect on Buyers

have a fireplace, a dog,  teen aged boys and I like to cook….a lot. Odors are nothing new in my home. I get it. I just don’t care, because I’ll probably have to be carried out of my home. I’m not selling anytime soon, or hopefully not.

As a Realtor, I do see lots of houses. The first steps into the house tell me a lot. They have kids. They have a dog. I like what they cook. That’s with a breath. My first impressions are always scent. It just hits me harder at first. There’s the scents mentioned above, which I consider fun scents, but many don’t think the same way. Then there’s less fun scents. The bitter, acrid smell of fire damage. The cough-inducing heaviness of mold and mildew infused air. I’ve been in properties so mistreated that hazmat teams needed to be called in. I won’t even try to describe that.  

I do visit and explore new places all the time. It’s part of the job I like. Crawl ways and attics are my favorites. Basements tell such stories about a property. That’s just me. My buyer clients, they pick up many of the same scents I do. They may not know what it is, but they know what they like and what they don’t. Do you like to kick off your shoes and leave them by the front door after a long day of work? I had a buyer client who’d turn around and walk right back out the front door of a showing because of that very thing.

Staging the visual and the textures of a house are important, but scent is key too. You’ve heard of the old Realtor’s trick of baking cookies for an open house? So has everybody else. Candles? Might as well put up a sign saying your covering something up. The best one I’ve experienced was Texas Chili. I found the mold eventually, but, OH My God,  I was loving life while I did it. The funny thing was. He thought he was covering up dirty laundry odors in a bachelor pad and making a fine, FINE chili. Multi-tasking! Yum!

When it comes to serious issues, like mold, water damage, insects etc. There is no substitute for licensed, professional and INSURED mitigation providers. A seller can be held liable for hiding known, serious hazards or structural issues that the seller knows are an active problem. The penalties are often more fierce than the costs of cleaning the issue up in the first place. To make matters worse, after you pay the penalty, you still have to clean up the issue.

Back to the dogs, boys and my cooking, You know, it’s just possible that not everyone appreciates the same things I do. My Mountain Man Breakfast might turn non-meat lovers a little green. (Get it?) My 60 lb. black lab Shadow definitely has powerful wet dog odor and loves to run in rain. My boys, well, some things are best left to the imagination. You get the picture. These aren’t serious hazards or structural issues. This is just living. And Living scents we can take care of. We have work to do.

I used to smoke only in the great outdoors, but the fine particulate emissions settle on every surface they touch. The ones settling on clothes and skin follow you around. If you smoke in the house, they still settle on every surface. Not just the up-facing surface either. Every surface. Blow smoke on a rose. Every piece of every petal is covered. Remove every soft surface and wash it over and over until yellow stains are removed. Have upholstery professionally cleaned, but expect that the scent might have settled beyond what the cleaners can reach. They will at least get out the worst of it. Formula 409 and tons of elbow grease might remove the yellow stains on walls, but rarely helps with the odor after the 409 scent dries out. You can paint walls and ceilings. Paint does cover up the yellow stains and seals in the odor.

In a stuffy, winter-sealed home, Open the windows. No seriously, open them right up, even in Winter. Even an hour a week could make a big difference. Cold Clean air does remove odors well. With modern insulation, window and door trim, newer homes don’t have the circulation that older homes do. That fresh air is important for nice odors, but great for healthy living too. Once the stuffy air is out, buy some nice plants. They’ll help clean and scent the air as they do it. Talk to your local florist about the best options for your home and lighting. Add a few drops of citrus and/or coconut oils to a spray bottle filled with water and lightly spray around the house. This helps keep that stale taste to the air from forming in the first place.

On to active kids…. Sweat socks, old dirty laundry, forgotten snackies, spilled drinks. All typical and smelly teenaged issues. The locker room aroma that may mean the sweet smell of success to them. It means anything but, to the buyers holding their nose and wiping at watering eyes as they pass by the room. On so many levels, it’s vitally important to just clean up the room, then dig deep to remove the ground in items that are causing the odors. If a scent is in the air long enough it impregnates other items in the room, wallpaper bedding, upholstery, carpeting and more. Disorder and messiness cause so many reactions in a buyer’s eyes:  Clutter, distaste, revulsion?  You have to remove the mess, just so you can reach and work on these underlying odor generators. After tidying up, you could spray a mixture of vinegar and water(.5 cup vinegar to gallon of water) and wiping the place down. If the mess has been there awhile stronger means will probably be required. The next, most extreme method to fight this miasma is an ozone machine. It emits gaseous particles that bond with the nasty particles, spores, bacteria and such floating around and lessen/eliminate odors in the air. Lastly, You can also try changing the soft, upholstered furniture, carpet, removing wallpaper and painting. If that fails, well, you could try carpet-bombing.

Ever have a family member drop rotten bananas or some other bit of produce that passed it’s prime into a fresh garbage bag. Well before the time that bag is ready to be put outside, you have a fly ridden cloud of noxious gas emitting from the bag. Frequently, that lovely scent escapes the bag. It buries itself in wallpaper or clothing nearby to the garbage bucket. You can pulp lemons or oranges – anything citrus really -, skin and all, in a food processor then boil the mixture up. Wipe down the bucket and the area surrounding it to remove the odor. The same type of thing happens in your garbage disposal from time to time, particularly in warm weather. Dump a little baking soda down the disposal followed by the remainder of the citrus mixture to finish that off.

Whether you need a few taps with a ball peen hammer or you need to drag out the nuclear options, you want to make sure your house smells fresh and inviting to as wide a margin of potential buyers as possible. Many people don’t realize they think with their nose. They get a feeling and run with it without even realizing that it was an odor that turned them off. That means you have to be pro-active, because buyers will walk and neither you nor they, may ever realize why.

Lew McConkey, Realtor

Coletta Cutler Realty