Why Home Buyers Run From An Old Paint Job
When you prepare your home for sale, you focus on curb appeal for a very good reason. Failing to make your home look great because of an old paint job could make buyers turn away from the property without out ever stepping foot inside. Here are four ways that your old paint job could damage your home selling goals.
1. Makes Home Appear Older
Unless you live in an area that was completely built up in the 1950s and has stayed more or less the same way, you have to compete with new construction. There is a reason that the government and professional organizations separate home sales by new and existing homes. Older homes have a harder time preserving value against a new home with entirely new systems and landscaping. One of the ways you can fight for your home’s priority of place is to keep it as updated as possible. An old, faded exterior paint job ages your home prematurely, and a fresh paint job may make it seem newer to the untrained eye.
2. Provides Inadequate Protection for Exterior
You put paint on your home for more than just a change of color or to make it look better. Some kinds of siding for your home need paint to keep them in good condition. Paint, as thin as it is, can protect your home from the worst of the weather. Heavy winds, rain, snow, ice and even the heat of the summer sun can weather your home’s siding or cause it to rot right off your home. Replacing your siding is a much more expensive endeavor than repainting, so a new paint job might actually save you a fair bit of money in the long run.
3. Turns Home Into Obvious Eyesore
You know the home on a nearby street that never gets maintained? It’s the one that often has a notice from the homeowners association on the front door, with a dead or dying lawn and overgrown trees. Now that you know what lousy curb appeal looks like, you understand why buyers do not want to get involved with such a property. Unless your home is truly selling as-is, you hope that buyers will see that you have put some work into it. Some buyers want a fixer-upper, but they pay a lot less for homes in that category. Your home deserves to keep up with the neighborhood, and this one task may make the difference between selling and not selling at all.
4. Makes Buyers Wonder What Else Is Wrong
Curb appeal and staging for the home are not supposed to hide problems under the surface, because there can be legal effects of concealing information from buyers. However, curb appeal is definitely supposed to show the home at its very best. If the view from the curb looks outdated and inadequately maintained, buyers may think that this is a sign that the home is really in bad condition inside. Some may be so concerned about the outside representation of the home that they abandon their plans to go inside and find out more. Fixing this relatively minor issue of home exterior paint makes it far more likely that buyers will take an interest.
If you want to sell your home at an ideal price, you have to ensure that your curb appeal is in order. By getting a new paint job, you can help avoid these four problems.
