Your Family on the Wall – OK with Buyers or Not?
It been commonly accepted that decluttering and depersonalizing a home for selling is a good, if not essential, thing to do. We don’t want to distract potential buyers and want them to be able to envision living in the sellers’ house.
It’s part of the advice most of us, no doubt, give our sellers, and is certainly a component in the staging professional’s repertoire.
But two recent discussions with buyers while out touring makes me wonder how important it is. Or at least if, for some buyers, seeing the sellers’ personal photos, whether family oriented or not, really is a detractor but might be more of a positive thing?
I’ve had 2 recent buyers ask me if agents were still telling sellers to get the personal photos off the walls, and wherever else they reside, and that this was important.
The reason for the question, in both cases, was that these buyers all liked seeing personal photos because it helped them to feel more personality in the home, and an attachment to the people who lived their lives there. Indeed, in both cases they all gravitated toward the photos upon entering and spent time looking at them and commenting amongst themselves.
For them it was appealing, and not a distraction.
Later they all said that they really liked seeing who lived there, how they lived, and gaining a sense of the personal lives of the residents, rather than being distracted by these photos.
So I wonder.
Does the family remain on the wall or get relegated to a box in the closet?
Do the personal and family photos create a problem? Or does that really depend on the buyers, which in some cases might help create a feeling of welcome?
I'm going to start asking buyers what they think.
Your thoughts?
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