Have you ever been to a smelly home?  Here in the Washington DC region we are lucky to have such a diverse community of cultures and races.  One of the best things is that almost every community around here has restaurants with food from around the world.  Unfortunately most food leaves a mess and a smell (good or bad).  When selling your home remember that no one wants to look at a dirty, smelly home — especially not prospective buyers. So make sure your house or condo shines from top to bottom and your house does not smell like Moby Dick’s House of Kabob in Georgetown!

We here at VMDC Realty recommend cleaning and deodorizing a home before every showing.  The goal is to help buyers imagine themselves living in the home with their own mess and smells.  Unfortunately when buyers see an unkempt home or smell something when they first walk in, they become turned off immediately thus making it much harder to sell. Potential buyers can rarely see past it to look at all of the great features in the home like that amazing view of the Blue Ridge Mountains from your condo in Reston, Virginia.

We suggest having the house professionally cleaned so that everything is spotless: windows, sliding glass door tracks, garage, basement, ceiling fans to inside and outside of all cabinets and more!

Some smells that might actually help are baking cookies in the oven, bringing cinnamon sticks to a slow boil in a pot of water or using air freshener to mask smells before each showing.

Also if you have any pets make sure their area is clean.  Ridding the home of litter boxes is a must, cleaning the back yard of dog pop is extremely important: imagine a potential buyer stepping on your dogs pop while looking at your backyard?!?!

All of this can be done by yourself but we recommend hiring a home cleaning service, which typically costs less than $200 to clean a four-bedroom, 2,500-square-foot home. Cookie dough runs about $3 and its very similar to giving a teacher an apple for realtors 🙂