The Power of Painting Your Home

I have a wonderful listing in the Hunter's Ridge community of Fontana that hasn't sold quite as quickly as the sellers expected. A four bedroom home with bonus room priced right around $320,000 should sell pretty quickly in this market if all is 'right' with the home.

I decided to poll the agents who had recently shown the home to get their feedback on how the showings went. As expected, there were some comments about things that we couldn't do anything about (no downstairs bedroom, position of the house relative to an incoming street, etc.) But another common comment was about the paint - which I had already expected was a 'distraction' to some of the buyers.

So during a recent period of rain, we did what you are 'never' supposed to do on a rainy day and that was paint! The decision to paint on a rainy day was made based on a number of factors: it was a day off for the seller, it was a Thursday so few distractions and because of the heavy rains we didn't expect any showings. With 'Parisian Taupe' in hand we set off on the project and four people after four hours of work had the following results:

Before After

Clearly the changes were pretty dramatic and the home immediately felt cleaner, larger, more open and somehow warmer even though the prior colors were already considered 'warm' to most people.

So how did it work out painting in the rain? Perfect! We had no distractions and no one came to see the house that day. So despite the fact it probably took a little longer to dry than painting on a warm sunny day we weren't bothered because the sellers had already moved from the house. By the time I took the 'after' photos on Saturday all was completely dry.

Late on Sunday night, I sent an email to all the agents who had shown the home with the before and after photos that you see above. One agent hurried her clients out for a second showing on Monday morning and my clients had an offer in hand on Tuesday! The agent told me that the paint made all the difference!

So for an investment of about $100 and 16 people-hours of sweat equity these sellers have a much different home to present and potentially have saved thousands of dollars that they did not have to invest into a price reduction.