Are Your Neighbors Affecting Your Home Sale?

The time has come to place your house on the market. You’ve done all the proper preparation such as updating the bathroom and replacing that old carpet, and your property is in pristine condition. It should be a piece of cake to sell at or above asking price, right? After all, you have done everything you needed to do in order to sell your house.

In a perfect world, all the factors that go into selling would be within your control. However, sometimes we must look to those close to us, like our neighbors.  How they care for their home can directly impact the sale of yours as the overall appearance of the houses around yours can make or break what people think of your neighborhood as a whole. So, let’s see what matters:  

Curb appeal

Just as we talked about curb appeal of your home in our blog Get Top Dollar for Your Home in 2018, it matters for your neighbors, too.

  1. Cleanliness – Hoarding is on the rise in the United States with up to 5% of Americans meeting the criteria for being a hoarder. This could mean seeing discarded furniture or other collectibles and even excessive trash build up, in your neighbors’ yards.   
  2. Landscaping – Their grass should be cut, the flower beds mulched and maintained and trees should be trimmed.
  3. Good repair – Falling shutters, peeling paint or mildew growing on the outside of a house can be a major deterrent, even if it is a neighboring house.
  4. Loud animals – When showing your house, if people drive up and hear loud dogs barking the entire time they are looking at your house it can have a negative effect on how they would feel living next door to such activity.

What can you do?

Obviously, you cannot control how your neighbors choose to care for their home or landscaping, but you aren’t completely helpless in the process. Even if you aren’t planning to sell, there are some good standard practices that will help to maintain a friendly relationship.

Build a good working relationship with your neighbors because you never know when you might need each other. Not only does it make daily living easier, but there are many issues that can bring your neighbors into the sale of your home, like a driveway easement or shared fence repair. Having a good relationship will help make these issues easier to handle.

If you find that your neighbor’s house or yard is really in a state of despair, and you are selling your home, you could offer to make it look more aesthetically pleasing to them.  No matter how you handle it, keep the lines of communication open. If you are planning to sell, give your neighbor the courtesy of telling them before the signs go up. It will make them feel valued as a neighbor and perhaps even make them more willing to help you, should you need it.

 

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