Selling Your Home During the Holidays? Here's How to Add Some Festive Cheer Without Frustrating Buyers
With the holiday season in full swing, you're probably thinking about adding a little festive cheer to your home—except that your home is also up for sale. Having your home on the real-estate market can complicate things when it comes to Christmas decorations. After all, the last thing you'd want is for prospective buyers to feel uncomfortable buying your home.
Fortunately, selling your home doesn't mean you'll have to give up giving your home a little festive cheer for the holidays. The following offers plenty of tips you can use to tastefully decorate your home without losing buyers in the process.
Decorate with a Light Touch
With all of the Christmas ornaments you might have accumulated over the years, it's easy to go a little overboard with the decorations. Unfortunately, a heavily decorated home can easily scare off potential buyers. To keep that from happening, go for a minimalist approach toward decorating. Use simple color schemes and resist the urge to inundate every surface with ornaments.
Ease Up on the Lighting
This year isn't the year you'll want to get into a competition with your next-door neighbors over who has the biggest and brightest Christmas lighting. Decking the outside of your home in a large array of multicolored lights and elaborate ornaments can easily give prospective buyers second thoughts about viewing your home.
Instead of going wild with multiple colors and elaborate setups, this year's aim should be to keep your Christmas lighting as simple as possible. A thin string of white LED lights around some of the most notable architectural features on your home can do wonders for creating a festive exterior without the risk of going overboard. You'll also want to severely limit the number of outdoor ornaments you plan on using—or better still, don't use any at all.
Choose and Trim Your Tree Carefully
Christmas trees are the staple of practically every decorated home during the holidays. This year, you'll want to pay close attention to the type of tree you choose, as well as how you trim your tree once it's in your home:
If you have a two-story great room or living room, you can use a tall Christmas tree to highlight the room's spaciousness. You may have to visually disguise the tree's wide base so that it doesn't dominate the floor space.
Have a smaller living room? Stick with a smaller, thinner tree to avoid overwhelming the limited space you have.
Ditch the gaudy ornaments and keep your decorations simple and tasteful. Your Christmas tree décor doesn't have to be sparse, but it should be relatively light and have a cohesive theme that's appropriate for your home's overall décor.
If you're purchasing a real Christmas tree this year, keep it in good health at all times. A water-starved tree can be a tremendous turn-off to prospective home buyers.
Using an artificial Christmas tree? Make sure the one you're using mimics the appearance of a real tree as closely as possible. Check for any bent or missing leaves and branches as well as other signs of damage.
Decorate with All Creeds in Mind
It's important to remember that Christmas and Hanukkah are religious holidays that most people celebrate, but potential buyers can come from a wide range of faiths. To maximize your home's selling potential, you should take steps to keep your home as neutral as possible without completely robbing it of its festivity. For example, you may want to skip the big nativity scene for this year and use fairly generic ornaments instead of those with a heavily religious theme that may make some potential buyers uncomfortable.