While many people are gearing up for vacations and time off this holiday season, those in the process of selling a home don’t always have the same luxury. The holidays don’t remove the urgencies involved in selling a home and the home buying and selling processes tend to continue to move forward any time of the year, regardless of whether it’s a holiday. It can actually be a great time of year for home showings since time off from work can mean more flexibility for prospective homebuyers to attend showings.
There are some important guidelines to keep in mind when preparing to show your home over the holidays. With its beautiful festive decor, the holiday season presents great opportunities for home showings when done tastefully and within reason. Over the top decorations can be a turnoff for prospective home buyers. In order to help guide you through this, we’ve compiled 4 tips to keep in mind when showing your home over the holidays.
Keep holiday decor to a minimum
While some holiday decor is acceptable while showing your home, a good general rule to keep in mind is to keep your decorations to a minimum. Classic decor items such as stockings hung on the fireplace, a cedar wreath on the front door, a tasteful garland on the entryway staircase, and a decked Christmas tree create a great festive foundation for your home as you show it over the holidays. Having very unique items around can impact prospective home buyers’ perceptions of the house, so when in doubt stick with the classics.
It may not be your usual style, but if you are planning to show your home over the holidays, it would be helpful to decorate your home with a theme. A cohesive decor strategy will help your home look its best during showings. There are endless sources of inspiration for holiday decor available on home websites and blogs.
Minimize clutter around the house
Keeping clutter to a minimum is important no matter when you’re selling home, but the holidays can often bring an increased amount of stuff laying around the house. For example, receiving and displaying holiday cards are a favorite part of most people’s holiday seasons. If you’re in the process of selling a home, it’s usually best to remove personal photos so the prospective home buyers are able to fully envision themselves in the home. This suggestion should be extended to holiday cards. Enjoy the cards then designate a place to store them that’s out of view of visitors.
Another place that can easily appear cluttered is the Christmas tree. While it can’t be argued that they are fun clutter, gifts can quickly take over a corner of the room, especially when you have a lot of friends and family to buy for. In order to keep things neat and orderly, select a few of your most beautifully wrapped gifts to keep under the tree during showings, but wait to set out the rest until Christmas Eve.
Decorate the yard tastefully
The day after Thanksgiving may be the day you finally get to reintroduce your gigantic Snoopy blow-up to the neighborhood to you, but it’s safe to assume not everyone agrees these blow-ups deserve a place in the front yard. In fact, a recent study about holiday decor found that 25% of Americans consider Christmas inflatables tacky. If you’re really serious about selling your home, it’s best to take a year off from the inflatables.
In addition, another important place to not go overboard on your outdoor decorations is your lights. While it’s perfectly possible to pull off a tasteful outdoor light experience, if you prefer a Clark Griswold style lightscape, it’s also best to take a year off from outdoor lights for the sake of selling your home.
Consider the weather
With its colder temperatures, winter brings snow, ice, and layers of coats and scarves on visitors to your home. It’s important to have a place set aside to store winter clothing items for prospective home buyers at your showings to keep them out of sight. Coats and scarves strewn about the house create clutter and can take away from the visitor’s experience at your home. In addition, invest in some high quality door mats that fit with the theme of your home’s decor to prevent visitors from tracking in snow and slush.
If you live in one of the cities lucky enough to experience frequent white Christmases, take advantage of the opportunity to have some professional photos taken of your home. The picturesque vision of your home decked out tastefully for the holidays covered in snow makes a great addition to the collection of photos on your home’s listing online. Prospective homeowners will see the snapshot and imagine all of the wonderful Christmases they can have in your home.
While there are some best practices and guidelines to keep in mind when decorating your home while it’s being shown, it doesn’t mean you can enjoy your holiday season. Focus on finding fun holiday events you can do outside the home. From Christmas tree lightings to ice skating, there are plenty of things you can do to still have a festive season while keeping your home neat and tidy for prospective buyers.
