First impressions help sell homes

By Matt Weafer
Messenger-Inquirer

To sell a home, buyers must first be drawn into the home. You accomplish that with curb appeal.

Although the adage says don’t judge a book by its cover, when a buyer is preparing to drop several thousand dollars on a home, and hundreds of homes sit on the market for sale, that is exactly what buyers do.

First impression is key in selling a home. A poorly manicured lawn, dirty siding, cracked paint or dangling gutters speak volumes about a home’s condition to a buyer.

Even if your home isn’t for sale, but you want to make sure it looks nice, the front yard and façade of your home are often times the only thing people ever see.

David Jones of Fosters AAA Siding said there is a great deal of variety in vinyl siding. And color is an important factor in giving your home the pop to make it stand out.

The most popular colors at the moment, Jones said, are gray, linen, clay and white.

Updating porch railings and posts can add a fresh look to a home as well.

Another popular trick to help create contrast in color is accenting with gutters, trim and shutters. “Some people do the siding and guttering in one color,” Jones said, creating a seamless flow between the two.

Shingle style siding is also available. “(Shingle siding) is very attractive and can be used in combination with other styles of siding to accent a wall or an eave,” Jones said.

Jamie Carrico of A-1 Windows, Siding and Gutters said, “Without gutters, the house looks incomplete.”

The functional aspect of gutters is a necessity as well. Not having gutters can “tear up the foundation of your home,” she said. Plus they are good for landscaping and they keep water away from the building and the basement.

With a manicured lawn and clean flower beds a home is one step closer to achieving eye-catching curb appeal.

But one aspect many home-owners overlook, Chris Mitchell, general manager of NiteLiters, said, is how the home looks at night.

“People that spend all this money on all these things that are important for curb appeal,” Mitchell said, “but then it gets dark and it’s gone. Without light, there is no curb appeal at night.”

But lighting is not just a matter of sticking some little lanterns in the ground in your flower bed, he said. It’s about drama.

When manipulating the spread of light and the focal point, Mitchell said, “people are only seeing what you want them to see — creating drama, controlling things. That’s what you can do with lighting an outdoor space.”

When lighting a home, Mitchell first looks for a focal point, which is not necessarily the front door.

“You can put a couple 1000-watt halogens and let them see everything or put hundreds of one-watt bulbs and let them see what you want to see,” he said. “But when somebody drives by, if you put light everywhere it can be confusing. You want to draw people in driving by the home.”

And lighting a home can be as simple as 10 lamps. “You want a fixture that disappears into the landscape during the day but shows off at night,” Mitchell said. “It’s not the quantity of fixtures or the brightness of the lamps. It’s how you use them both.”

Curb appeal does not depend on the amount of money spent on products or the type of products; the important factor is the first impression.

“A lamp is a lamp is a lamp,” Mitchell said. “It just depends on what you do with it.”

Reprinted with permission from the Messenger-Inquirer.