Tips For Selling Your Home
Don't Let Your Yard Sabotage Your Home Sale
A Few Do's and Don'ts
Buyers today expect landscaping that's easy to take care of and water-wise, and offers benefits like shade or privacy, says Bruce Butterfield, research director for the National Gardening Association.
A pot of bright annuals by the front door isn't going to do it for most discriminating buyers.
Here's a look at the top landscaping turnoffs for buyers and what homeowners can do to make sure their landscaping efforts enhance, rather than detract from the value of their home.
1. Your Father's Landscaping
Rounded junipers, squared-off boxwood and holly bushes, and topiary shrubs scream that the house is a throwback to the 1960's and 1970's, agents say. People now want their landscaping to look natural, with more native plants and interesting, varied foliage. Big pine trees and other evergreens planted decades ago can be a turnoff to buyers.
2. Gnomes Gone Wild
It should go without saying, but put the lawn ornaments away. Other buyers may not share your love of lawn globes, gnomes, and plastic deer. The same rules for depersonalizing and de-cluttering inside your home apply to the outside, as well.
3. High-maintenance Yards
While many buyers fancy themselves green-thumb gardeners, few want to invest serious time in pruning, spraying, mowing and fertilizing. Beds of non-disease-resistant plants such as hybrid tea roses can eat up a buyer's weekends with pruning and applying fungicide.
4. Bad Seeds
Some plants send up a red flag with many knowledgeable buyers because they are so invasive. High on the list are ficus trees, especially those planted too close to a driveway, house or patio. The fast-growing, shallow roots of the ficus crack pavement and can wreak havoc on foundations. Similarly, ivy and other vines can proliferate too quickly, posing a danger to other plants, as well as to windows and roofs. They can also attract bugs to the house.
5. Too Much Green?
Many people are asking for smaller expanses of grass so they spend less time pushing the lawn mower and running the sprinkler. Just as important, consider the landscaping in relation to the house. If you have a house with four bedrooms you better have a yard.
Most important, agents say, maintain whatever landscaping you have. Overgrown hedges, dying flowers and leggy bushes send the message that the inside of the house is ill-kept, as well. Maintenance in key to maintaining the value of your house.
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