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Landscaping and it’s impact on your home sale price…
At this home we had the shrubs trimmed back to help provide some height contrast on the home and to give it some architectural interest since this style of 60’s rambler is pretty simple in its styling. We also wanted to give more light to the interior and most of these rhody’s were blocking the views from windows in the house. Other items completed were edging the patio, putting in beauty bark to give extra color and to show off the greenery. Bedding areas (out of this photo view) were cleaned up as well. We also brought in a table set and put out colorful pots with bright flowers (primroses) to help provide some much needed punch for visual interest when people were touring the property since the regular plantings weren’t yet ready to bloom.
You can see with this house we did quite a bit of work with the owner including even painting the exterior to update the color scheme. New lighting fixtures were put in on the garage area to better fit the scale of the home and to provide balance. We also had the lighter trim color done on the trim areas of the garage doors to offset the strong visual presence of the home’s windows, particularly in the peaked area of the roofline. A single type of flowering plant was used in the flower boxes to give more uniformity and to soften the lines of the home. The color of the front door was chosen to help draw the eye to the center of the home and the previous addition of the storm door removed during the sale period (it was left in the garage for any buyer that wanted to still use it after the sale). Pressure washing was done on the driveway to clean it up along with everything else as it had grown moss on it and accumulated lots of debris/dirt over the years.
Posted: August 24th, 2007 under Agent Advice, General Real Estate, Seller Information.
Tags: real-estate-photography, Real-Estate-Stats-2007-1st-Half, Staging
About the Author: Rebecca Haas
- Author's website: http://www.TeamReba.com
- More posts by Reba Haas
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Comments
2.
Comment
from Deborah Burns
Time August 24, 2007 at 7:23 pm
I just came back from watering one out-of-state clients lawn and flowers, then stopping by a home I will be listing in a few weeks to let the homeowner know that I will be trimmng the ornamental pine and overgrown rhodies in the entry to open up the house, and voila! Here is a great example of why with before and after shots…good illustration!
3.
Comment
from Jillayne Schlicke
Time August 24, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Huge?
I really don’t mean to be too terribly critical here, but in the first set of photos, the shorn down shrubbery still doesn’t make the house look any less like a stubby rambler.
In the second photo, the shrubs appear to only have undergone a mild pruning and there’s now a huge pine tree in the front yard, even though the picture is closer to the house. The before picture doesn’t have the pine tree.
I don’t see landscaping in the photos.
I do see teensy weensy flower pots in the “after” shot of the first set and I see flower boxes on the basement windows in the second set.
A more accurate title would have been, “easy, fast, and inexpensive ways to cheer up your home exterior.”
Please let us know if these (and only these) changes netted the seller 7 to 15% more.
4.
Comment
from R Duke
Time August 25, 2007 at 4:01 am
Jillayne,
I dont really agree w/”stubby rambler” in first set of photos.I for one think thats a fine looking mo-bile home listing Reba got her self a hold of there.
The second house,its the angle from the street that crops the huge pine.
I like this site,you guys are funny.Reba seems to have a sense of humor,that chicken little gimmick was great.
5.
Comment
from R Duke
Time August 25, 2007 at 4:05 am
Oh,
Plus,they added a mighty fine new pink front door,prolly to attract those pink ponys Sniglet was talkin about,Im startin to “get”it 
6.
Comment
from czb
Time August 25, 2007 at 4:55 am
As with most before and after pictures, there are many features in these pictures that seem to deter from the aesthetic appeal of the former while enhancing that of the latter. Kind of like those plastic surgery examples in airline magazines where the patients are pasty-skinned, somber, shabbily dressed, in a poorly lit and unappealing setting in the ‘before’ pictures but smiling and tan in the midst of a tropical paradise in the picture after their mole removal or tummy-tuck. This is particularly true of the first house shown, where the ‘before’ picture is simply a closeup of a wall with two shrubs. The house definitely looks better after pruning the bushes - it even sprouted a patio and garden furniture. The appearance of the large tree in the second series of pictures and focus on the more appealing (ie non-garage) part of the house in the ‘after’ picture has a similar effect. I think Reba’s point is a good one, but the examples provided seem somewhat deceptive. I doubt that nice landscaping will raise the house value by 7-15% any more, but the extra investment in time and $$ may actually mean your house gets sold rather than sitting indefinitely like the non-landscaped ones for sale next door…
7.
Comment
from Bill Waters
Time August 26, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Pink trin and a white door to white trim and a pink door. Why?!?
8.
Comment
from Joel
Time August 27, 2007 at 12:12 am
Remind me to avoid looking at houses with good landscaping. I’d hate to pay (on a half mil house) $35k to $75k for a couple hundred bucks worth of landscaping. In fact, is that a good way to find bargains? Look at houses with crappy landscaping?
9.
Comment
from Reba Haas
Time August 27, 2007 at 11:42 am
Unfortunately the system doesn’t let me change the photo size to get all of the photo in here so some of them got cropped off. Sorry about that but not much I can do with it at the moment.
Joel, sometimes you can get a slightly better deal when there is no curb appeal but it’s no guarantee.
The 70’s house was done prior to my beginning to use a pro photographer so perhaps the color contrast isn’t perfect. There is no true “pink” there but the door was a salmon color in the after shot but it was also the chosen color palette from the paint supplier for that grouping and in person was quite striking - I personally wouldn’t have chosen it for my own home but for this development the color scheme fit right in to what the other homes had been updated to over the years. Believe me, it was WAY better than the original gray and maroon color combo that was truly dated and made the house a little depressing compared to the neighborhood.
The before and after of the one story home are going to be different kinds of shots because one is taken by me and the other by the photographer I use. He has wide angle lenses and I don’t. I would have had to post several more photos to show the full exterior and I chose not to to save space - simple enough.
10.
Comment
from andy capelluto
Time August 27, 2007 at 10:19 pm
This is exactly why I preach that every home - no matter what the price point must be staged and that includes ’shabby ramblers’ What you have accomplished here dear Reba is a perfect example of upgrading the curb appeal - enormously. That at the end of the day is what exterior staging is all about. The cost incurred was minimal and the changes will definitely get the houses noticed (rather than some seller think that he’s found a bargain or a tear down. ) Both these ‘after’ photos show homes with a far better ‘presence’
Good job - again!
11.
Comment
from SpellingNazi
Time September 3, 2007 at 8:16 pm
“Landscaping and it’s impact on your home sale price…”
is actually spelled
“Landscaping and its impact on your home sale price…”
1. Comment from cindy@staged4more
Time August 24, 2007 at 5:24 pm
WHAT A HUGE DIFFERENCE! These are great before and after photos that can convince the sellers to stage the exterior as well.
Cheers,
Cindy