When selling a home, it’s natural for folks to want to get as much money as possible for their property. That’s why people often put money into repairs and upgrades right before listing their house, and why people hire stagers to make the place look its best. But not all home-selling tactics are above board: Some unscrupulous home sellers resort to dirty tricks to convince you to overpay for their homes. Here are some of the tricks you should watch for on your next open-house tour.
Which is why some home sellers might try to deter this by simply removing serial number stickers or plates from appliances, or scratching them to make them unreadable. Sometimes they might even use a marker to try to change installation dates, if they’re marked on the unit. If you can’t easily locate and read the serial numbers on appliances, be suspicious at the very least and insist on finding out how old the units actually are.
Sellers could try to re-label appliances with high-end brand badges
And it might be a ruse. You can actually buy appliance badges for brands like Viking online, adhere them on your mid-range appliances (covering or removing the real emblem), and hope buyers don’t know what the actual high-end models look like. This obviously won’t work on anyone who knows their way around appliances (or who has used high-end models in the past), but for a few bucks, it’s an easy way to make a kitchen look way more upgraded than it is. It’s only slightly less terrible than folks who leave brand-new appliances in place for the open house, then swap them for old, beat-up versions after closing—taking the good stuff with them.
There’s nothing wrong with sprucing up a tired old kitchen using some of these techniques, of course—as long as you’re open about it. It becomes problematic when a seller lets you assume things are newer and in better condition than they are and does nothing to disabuse you of the notion. A few common tricks include:
Upgraded oven grates, knobs, and hardware. Combined with a stainless steel decal, swapping out old, crusty burner grates for fancier new ones and replacing plastic knobs with metal versions can make an old oven look brand new. Again: If disclosed, there’s nothing wrong with this.
Home sellers could make isolated upgrades to high bigger problems
Everyone does some work to get a house ready for sale. Deep cleaning, fresh paint, and necessary repairs get done shortly before the listing goes live so the house looks its best and looks well-maintained. But sometimes those necessary repairs are hiding a chronic problem the seller is hoping no one will notice because they’ve fixed it “for now” and covered up the damage.
Sellers can stage furniture and decor to hide defects in the home
Another way home sellers try to trick potential buyers and hide problems is probably the oldest trick in the book: Simply hiding the problem under something else. If the house is being shown furnished and possibly staged, the clutter and interior design can distract you from checking out the bones of the place—and, after all, we don’t often move furniture around when checking out an open house. A few common tricks to watch for include:
For-show drapes and curtains. If you see voluminous, floor-to-ceiling drapes and curtains in a room, pause to ask yourself if there’s actually a window behind them. They may have been added to hide a water-damaged wall or other problem.
Door propping. Did the seller helpfully prop open all the doors so you could move freely through the open house? That’s nice. Now remove the doorstops and make sure the doors actually close properly.
The freshest air. Making a house smell nice is an old technique when selling a home. A fresh batch of cookies or a quick airing-out is fine, of course, but if the house smells like someone splashed a gallon of Febreze everywhere they might be hiding an ominous smell—like mold, or cigarette smoke.
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