Dress Up Your House For A Quicker Sale

Say you walk into a house you’re considering for a summer rental, and you see a scene set with light summer slipcovers, casual wildflowers, a glass of lemonade by a window seat and an open book by a cushy chair.

Chances are that you’ll choose this house over one where it’s harder to picture yourself having fun.

That’s how Sarah Parsons Zackheim rents out her home in Connecticut each summer, and that’s how she tells people to get serious about selling their houses.

And even if you’re pretty sure your house will sell in today’s hot metro market, how about selling it faster and for more money? Her new book is full of people who use props, stage their houses like magazine shoots and get thousands of dollars more than real estate people had told them they’d get.

“Dress Your House for Success” (Three Rivers Press, 192 pages, $12) gets quite specific about how to accomplish this.

Some pointers are fun: fresh flowers, a game set out in the family room, a bowl of M&Ms.

Some pointers are the bad news you should be grateful to hear because no one else wants to tell you: The pipes under your sink look icky; the junk in your cupboards is depressing, and your house smells like a litter box.

It takes about 10 days to do the whole project outlined in “Dress Your House.” That could be 10 straight days if you have them, or it could be two months of Saturdays if you don’t. You can also, of course, do just part of it.

But remember the book’s main rule: You need to package your house like a product for sale. You need to create moments of powerful emotional impact that buyers respond to immediately.

To get to this point, you need to look at your house without emotional attachment. A camera can help. Take snapshots, then view them as a stranger would.

For most people, the fun part of this book’s advice will be staging - pretending you’re an editor on a magazine shoot. You clear the kitchen counter, set out a cookbook open to a recipe, set fresh fruit or vegetables next to it. You buy bright new kitchen towels, roll them up, tie them with raffia and fill a basket nearby. Zackheim and Webb call this “dynamizing.” But before you dynamize, there are four other things to do. They are:

Unclutter: That means everything. “If you follow only one step in this book to the letter, this is the one,” Zackheim says. Throw away everything you can. Make your rooms look more open; make your closets and shelves look spacious.

Clean: This is not your everyday cleaning, but spring cleaning to the nth degree. It includes the pipes under your sinks, the bottoms of drawers and little-used cupboards, curtains and blinds, the exterior siding and the windows.

Repair: Fix every leak, every blemish, every loose doorknob, every spot that needs paint.

Neutralize: Get rid of loud wallpaper; paint neutral colors; remove distracting lawn accessories.

Repairs are one step that sellers often miss, Zackheim says. But small signs of damage can spook buyers into thinking the house has a lot of problems.

Some friends in Connecticut, for example, had been trying to sell their house for months.

“The problem was just a lot of little repairs. For example, the back deck badly needed staining and had two broken stairs. They thought the buyers are going to want to choose the stain themselves. But somebody like me walks around thinking, ‘Oh, dear, there must be deeper problems underneath.’ ” Zackheim gave them a copy of her book. She says they did her whole program, put the house back up for sale, and got two offers on the first day.

According to “Dress Your House,” buyers form an impression in the first 15 seconds. If they pull up to an immaculate yard, window boxes bursting with flowers, freshly painted trim and a polished door handle, they’ll start looking for more ways your house fits their needs.

So you should look at your house entrance critically from the street. You can paint the door, add brass hardware, spread fresh wood chips on the flower beds. “Overplant” with flowers and evergreens to make an instant lush picture.

Bathrooms are emotionally important as well. Do what you can to make them feel larger by clearing out unnecessary things. Then put back a few good symbols - a shell with small scented soaps, a sumptuous towel over the edge of the tub, a small bouquet of flowers on the windowsill. Buy a new shower curtain; tie it back so the space looks more open.

Here are some other pointers from “Dress Your House”:

Strip your toiletries and cleaning products down to what you really use. Gather them into attractive baskets and put them away.

Empty your closets down to the amount they can hold neatly. Use nice hangers; group same-size jackets together. Use clear storage boxes to stash things neatly on the shelves above. Line up your shoes on a rack underneath.

Make linen closets look as neat and organized as a linen shop.

Steal a tip from the grocery store by “facing” everything in your cupboards - turn each jar or box to have its best side forward. That’s not just for groceries, it’s for your kid’s stack of games and your own toiletries..

Replace dated ceiling fixtures with a strip of track lighting.

Do all your cleaning with lemon-scented products.

Borrow artwork for bare walls.

Replace heavy, roomdarkening window treatments with mini-blinds.

Make sure shades and blinds work effortlessly.

Remove the things that make strong personal statements - unnerving art, political or religious symbols, loud paint colors.

Realize that other people probably do not like your pet. Get the pet out of the house and remove pet paraphernalia.

Ask a friend to give your house a sniff test, because you’ve probably stopped smelling the unpleasant odors.

“Dress Your House for Success” ends with a checklist of things to do at “showtime” - those times when house shoppers are coming to look. It has 28 items, like “pick up lawn tools and toys,” “arrange show towels in bathroom and kitchen” and “play soft music and turn off television.”

With that down-to-earth advice for sellers, Realtors alone will probably buy out the first printing.