How to see your home through a buyer's eyes

Your eyes and a buyer’s eyes are not the same. You’re probably looking at your home through rose-colored glasses. A buyer’s eyes, meanwhile, are zeroing in on flaws big and small.

But you can learn to see your home through a buyer’s eyes. In a way, you probably already have the basic skills. Have you ever visited someone’s home and wondered why on earth they painted their kitchen purple or why they’ve never replaced the disco-era green shag carpeting? Do you notice that the toilet rocks and the tub faucet drips, or the bare spots in the lawn? If so, you’ve looked at the home through a buyer’s eyes.

The truth is, it doesn’t take things as obvious as avocado-colored appliances or a sagging roof to turn off buyers – although either will certainly do the trick. To look at your home through a buyer’s eyes, try to think less like a decorator and more like an architect.

Why? Well, decorators tend to think about filling up a space, while architects think about creating a space. As a seller, you want to show off a space where buyers can imagine creating a home. That’s why one of the first pieces of advice real estate professionals usually give sellers is to “clear the clutter.”

“It can be a touchy subject,” says Kathy Opolski, a RealEstate.com agent in Salt Lake City. “People are often proud of their home and how they live in it. They take it as a criticism of them.”

Indeed, she says, “their house looks perfect in their eyes. It’s comfortable to them.”

To start looking at their home through a buyer’s eyes, Opolski often suggests sellers think back to homes they liked and didn’t like and what created those impressions. Since most people who are selling their homes also are in the market to buy, these images often are fresh in their minds.

If you were turned off seeing signs of deferred maintenance like a cracked window, think about what a buyer might think about something similar you’ve learned to live with in your own home. If you left feeling a home was crowded or out of date, think about how someone with tastes different than yours might feel about certain rooms in your own home.

If you still can’t think of your Star Wars collection as clutter, maybe you could trust your real estate agent to look at your home through a buyer’s eyes and make some decisions for you. He or she is trying to help you get top dollar, and generally knows what helps a home sell in your area.

“Or,” Opolski says, “a staging person might be the way to go.” Home stagers are trained to highlight a home’s strengths and minimize its weaknesses – or at least what a majority of buyers would see as strengths and weaknesses. They are becoming increasingly popular as sellers seek a competitive edge in a slowing market.

So toss those rose-colored glasses. They clashed with the appliances anyway.