Do You Want To Sell Your Rehabs Fast?
That’s an obvious question – we all do! So what is the trick? So much time and money is spent on systems updates, roofs, and structural issues, that many times there’s nothing left for what really makes the sale: what your potential buyers see. And more importantly, what they fall in love with.
People don’t walk into your house, and say, “Wow, they have all new electric. Let’s buy.” That’s just a core expectation. The trick to selling houses fast is to seduce your customers to fall in love when they walk through. It has to feel like a home to them.
The two most inexpensive yet surefire ways we have found to create this atmosphere is through color and through decorating.
A tastefully decorated house really stands out from the others. New house builders learned this a long time ago. Why do you suppose they hire interior decorators? But they have the advantage of creating one masterpiece to sell many. Rehabbers don’t have that luxury. But we discovered that a house can be “staged” to feel like a lived in home. Staging is the art of artistically placing décor items around the house. Perhaps a colorful place setting on the kitchen counter along with open coffee beans for aroma, and an open recipe book turned to a colorful picture. Bathrooms dressed up with beautiful towels, sweet smelling soaps, and window treatments as shower curtains. Finally, fireplace mantels decorated as if the family was already living there.
But even staging doesn’t create the ambience you need. It is the warmth that comes from color. You may have heard to use a white-on-white color scheme to remain neutral and not turn anyone off. The truth is – no one is turned ON either. Buyers aren’t attracted to all white houses. At best, there’s no emotion. With the use of contemporary designer colors, however, these same people fall in love with the home. That’s the emotion that sells. When they love, they buy. And they fall in love with houses that are brought to life with full color.
Since we have no talent for color selection, and didn’t want to have our visitors running and screaming from the house, we decided to hire a local decorator, Angelina Brown or PaintColorSolutions, to design all of our color schemes. What a brilliant idea, because the real estate agents always tell us that the buyers bought the house because they fell in love with the look and feel inside.
Joe and I knew that this was a critical service that all of our friends in real estate needed, so we convinced her to create something that could easily work for investors around the country. We’re so excited by what she developed. She has put together a whole palette of different color combinations for all types of houses, in all types of areas, so that all we have to do as rehabbers is select the combination that we want to use, and we’re done. She has already matched colors that complement each other, and entice buyers. She offers packages with both interior colors, and exterior as well; along with which colors go with which rooms. You even receive the paint manufacturer, and the color code. Just give all that information to your painter, and you’re done. It’s that easy. And to make it simpler, she packaged a bunch of combinations together so you’ll have an array of choices for all your future projects – you could probably retire with all the selections she made available.
If you want to add the difference to your rehabs that sells them quick, be sure to get Angelina’s new paint color selections at www.paintcolorsolutions.com. We have been amazed at the power this one simple tool has had on our sales. If you plan to rehab another house, you absolutely have to see what she has done.
Best of fun, happiness and success!
Lou Castillo
