Selling Your House? Here’s How to Handle that Carpet

Thanks to Paula Henry for this great guest post. Paula’s one of our favorite Indianapolis Realtors. Check out her website at HomeToIndy.com. 

This may sound corny, but it’s absolutely true: You never get a second chance to make a first impression — especially when it comes to selling your house. In fact, most house-hunters decide whether a house is worth considering within sixty seconds of walking through the front door.

If your carpeting is stained, stinky, worn out or just plain ugly, replace it. New carpeting is one of the easiest and most effective ways to upgrade your house before you put it on the market. Sure, you can always give buyers a new carpet “allowance” so they can replace it themselves after they move in. Problem is, that does nothing for your house right now, before buyers cross your threshold, when that first impression matters most.

Other than giving your house a quick facelift, there are other good reasons to replace the carpeting:

Unifying: If your house is a patch work of carpets –blue in one room, green in another, shag here, berber there–new flooring is a great way to give the house a crisp, unified look.

Neutralizing. Purple shag may be your idea of carpeting nirvana, but it’s also what decorators call “taste specific,” which means it’s specific to your taste. The trick to preparing your house for sale is to make it appealing to the greatest number of buyers. Go for neutrals like beige and gray around the home, which allow buyers to envision their furniture in those rooms, and, more importantly, focus on your house and all its great features.

New-ifying: (Yes, I just made up that word but you get the idea.) You know that new car smell everyone loves? New carpeting has it too, and it makes the whole house feel fresh and clean.

The best reason for freshening your home with new carpet is you will maximize your value and sell more quickly.