Vacant House Smells

When buyers enter a vacant house and wrinkle their noses,  "Ewwww, what's that smell?" is a kiss of death to the sale.  An experienced buyer's agent will explain that vacant houses are shut up and the smell will dissipate when a new family starts coming and going from the house.  The space is what's important, not the stale smell.

All houses smell, not just the dirty ones!  If we had the ability to sniff out odors like a dog, we would be more aware of the individual house smells when they're occupied, but frequently we remain unaware until a house is closed up tight for a period of time with no opening of doors or windows, no use of exhaust fans, or any other means of circulating the air.  Under those circumstances the inside air becomes stale and the house reveals its unique odors.  Sometimes the odor originates from favorite cooking spices; sometimes its a frequently used perfume; sometimes its because of smoking; occasionally its from lack of regular cleaning or pet odors.  Some of the worst are foreclosed homes which lay vacant for months before ever being marketed.  My moniker for the particular smell that frequently strikes at the front door of repossessed homes that are dirty is "HUD house smell".

The challenge to marketing a vacant house is in keeping the house smell from becoming apparent.  In temperate climates, windows can be left slightly open on upper levels with fans to circulate the fresh air, but most climates do not allow this solution.  Some agents suggest air fresheners or sprays.  My experience has been that clients can sort out the stale smell from the freshener and find the combination distasteful.  Better Homes and Gardens suggests putting a bowl of vinegar in each room.  Others suggest using air purifiers.  If they work, that'd be a great idea.  Baking bread or cooking cinnamon isn't practical for the vacant house either.

So, what's a seller to do?

• Make sure your house is left sparkling clean.  Windows, walls, carpets, lightbulbs, appliances, etc., all need to be spotless.
• Ask your agent to go into the house regularly (maybe once a week) to open doors, run fans, flush toilets, pour water down drains, and run a lemon through the garbage disposal.
• Have professional cleaners come into the house at least once a month to dust, vacuum, and clean the bathrooms with pine scented or bleach scented cleaners.  Even though no one is living there, dust still settles and makes the house dirty and water in the toilet still leaves a ring.
• Keep a dehumidifier running in the basement.
• Have an air purifier run on a night scheduled timer.
• If pet odors are left behind from "accidents", they have to be dealt with aggressively either through replacing badly soiled carpet or by using bleach on hard surface floors and subflooring.
• If the refrigerator is turned off, place a box of baking soda in each compartment and tape a spacer over the appliance door opening to keep it open.  Even clean refrigerators smell awful when opened after being shut off a while.
• Check with a stager to see what suggestions they might have.

Comments

[Bonnie Erickson]

Thanks for the hint, David.

[David]

For any realtors or homeowners dealing with the odor problem. I have found the miracle solution. I am the property manager to a large apartment community. Every month I deal with odor problems some more severe than others. One of my maintenance guys brought me a product called Room Shocker. This product works like no other product I've ever tried it's simple to use and relatively inexpensive. It's not a masking agent and gets rid of the odor at the source by destroying the source at the molecular leve. That includes heavy smoke smell pet urine, mold and mildew smells. It not only gets rid of the smell but it completely Decontaminates and disinfects the whole room. The product is fairly new. It's only been around for less than a year So it's a bit hard to find but you can get it from a website called BiocideSystems.com I swear by it and highly recommend it to all the realtors and apartment managers.

[Kathy]

Why scents may not make cents when trying to sell your home.

For many home sellers who believe the TV commercials that claim chemical sprays “sanitize” the air, plug-ins “freshen” the air and Fragrance emitting devices actually clean the air, well…this may not be good news.

The savvy home buyer has added chemical fragrances to their list of what they don’t want to smell when they are looking to buy a home. These chemical fragrances are now listed right next to mold, cigarette smoke odor and animal urine by many home buyers.

Home buyers today are more educated than ever. Even inexperienced first time home buyers understand that fragrances do not clean the air, they contaminate it and more often than not make people very sick. They have kids with asthma and allergies. They themselves might suffer from migraines, anaphylaxis or fragrance sensitivity.

Home buyers know that clean should not have a smell. So, while the location, square footage and price of your home might be perfect for your would be buyer, the smell of your home just might be the deciding factor on why an offer was not written up.

What does your house smell like?

Once plug in style fragrance emitting devices are used in a home, the oil / fragrance permeates the sheetrock as well as flooring. Similar goes for the fragranced dryer sheets in the laundry room. These chemical odors then circulate in the air vent system and will never come out, no matter what you do.

With the growing population of people suffering with fragrance sensitivity, Asthma and allergies, house hunting can often prove to be quite a challenge.

If you are in the market to sell your home, increase your odds of getting top dollar and more offers by discontinuing the use of fragranced products. Open your windows and let the fresh air in. Clean with non-fragranced products. . Your house will then be marketable to all potential buyers... even those with health issues.

After all, you do want your home to take a buyers breath away... but not literally.

[Bonnie Erickson]

Teresa, My client came to your house and started sneezing the minute we hit the door because she's allegic to "perfumes"!

[teresa boardman]

Had a smelly house once. my sellers announced that they were moving. The day they left I went from my office to the nearest store and bought a very large bottle of fabreeze (Sp?), and some glade plugins and a sented candle. I drove to the house, put the candle on the stove and lit it and then I went through the entire house spraying the ancient wall to wall baby blue carpet to remove the pet odors while distributing my glad plug ins through out the home.