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Designer Taylor Spellman of “One Week To Sell” is an expert at turning ugly homes into hot properties. However, her latest project seems perfectly fine at first glance. So why hasn’t it sold?
In the episode “The Great Indoors,” Spellman is called to a home in the tiny village of Tuckahoe, NY. The house is beautiful, in a great location, and listed at a good price—but buyers just aren’t biting.
It’s up to Spellman to figure out what’s holding buyers back from this house. Read on to find out what this mysterious problem is, which you might be overlooking in your own home, too.
Closet space isn’t always a good thing
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In truth, there’s nothing really wrong with this house—but there’s also nothing really impressive, which is important to persuade buyers to step up and make an offer.
The house is also plagued by puzzling layout problems. When Spellman first walks into this house, she’s surprised to see that the nearest closets flank the living room fireplace. She points out that this is quite a hike just to hang up your coat.
So, while taking away closet space is usually a no-no, Spellman decides that these closets aren’t doing the house any favors, and turns them into built-in shelving.
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“By adding these custom shelves in the living room, the space is going to feel much bigger and will actually be a lot more functional,” Spellman explains.
After ripping off the doors, installing cheap shelves with leftover wood, and painting, Spellman is able to turn these weird closets into two charming bookshelves. Amazingly, the worst part of this room becomes the best!
Bold color can be a home’s best friend
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Another missed opportunity to make this house more eye-catching is the paint, which needs some work.
“The paint looks really beat up,” Spellman says.
She chooses to paint the living room and master bedroom dark green, which helps accentuate the views of the big backyard.
“It’s going to play really well to the indoor-outdoor feel that we’re going to create in this whole, entire home,” Spellman says.
The dark green is a bold choice, but it looks great in this house. It gives the home some character, and it helps Spellman accomplish the outdoor feel she wants.
Use a mural to create visual interest
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While Spellman uses dark green in the living room and bedroom, she decides that the dining room needs something extra special. After all, this space is so large that it can’t help but be a major focal point in the house.
“It has to be super impactful,” Spellman says of the paint job. “It has to make this space feel cozy, interesting, exciting.”
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Spellman decides to paint a mural on the dining room wall. She uses soft shapes and nature-inspired colors, adding to the indoor-outdoor vibe she’s hoping to achieve in this home.
In the end, the mural is a statement piece. It makes the dining space feel spacious, and it brings the eye to the back door, highlighting the view of the yard. This mural is a great feature—and a great use of paint!
Add extra seating to make a large room feel cozier
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While Spellman’s dining room mural makes the space much more stylish, the room is still quite large, maybe too large.
“The dining room is so big, it actually just looks like wasted space. If I were to put a bench on the left-hand side of the wall, all of a sudden, the space becomes conversational, fun,” Spellman says. “It triples the amount of seating.”
She commissions a custom bench with built-in storage and paints it black to make it stand out.
Once the bench is installed, it adds a ton of function to the space. It adds some seating and storage, plus it makes the space feel a bit less expansive.
Buyers love a great backyard—an area sellers often overlook
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While most sellers know that staging a home’s interior and front yard are very important, there’s one area they often leave out of the equation: the backyard.
Yet to buyers, a backyard is crucial—after all, this is where they will gather. And Spellman’s latest backyard has oddly shaped, cracked cement and is almost creepy.
“Before, it just looked kind of scary,” Spellman says. Yet after the yard is staged, “now it feels like this really special gathering area you could imagine being in with your family, having a cup of hot cocoa, roasting a marshmallow.”
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In the end, Spellman finishes this project just in time, spending five days and $9,917 on updates. The house looks amazing, and the sellers are able to list the house for $650,000 and receive a cash offer. Once again, Spellman’s designs are a success!
The post ‘One Week To Sell’ Reveals the Subtle Sale-Killing Problem That’s All Too Easy To Overlook appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.
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