Scent Sense for Selling Your Home!

Just read a great article published by American Home Shield (the Home Warranty Company www.hwahomewarranty.com ) on using scents to better showcase your home when trying to sell.  So in addition to staging your home (which we plan on writing on soon), try to utilize some of these tips on scents to set the mood of your home prior to showings.  Think about your buyers?  Are they young, hip Austinites, older retirees, or working families with children?  Each age group responds differently to different scents.  Here are the tips for you to use from American Home Shield’s article called, “Show and Sell: Part II”,

Smells Sell

Retailers have been enticing prospects to buy their goods with thousands of scents for thousands of years. Scent has a power of its own.

We instinctively know the power of scent can be good or bad. Strong smells from pets, cooking or other activities can make prospects run from buying a home. But the right, clean scent can have quite the opposite affect.

Scent Suggestions

Let’s say you are selling an updated, contemporary condo and loft in a hip urban neighborhood where younger singles and newlyweds are buying. You may decide you don’t want these prospects to be highly relaxed, but rather attentive and excited instead. This will help them make decisions more quickly. In this case, use scents of rosemary, peppermint or grapefruit for alertness and stimulation.

If you want to enhance the mood of an older home with many rooms that may invoke a bit of uneasiness or confusion, use any citrus scent. Citrus is refreshing and energizing, eases tension and promotes mental clarity. Or use lavender to promote calming.

Some Scents and their reactions:

• Chamomile: Calming and soothing. Eases anger and anxiety.
• Clary Sage: Relaxing, euphoric. Eases anxiety, tension and stress.
• Eucalyptus: Fresh cooling and invigorating. Promotes alertness.
• Jasmine: Alleviates anxiety and depression.
• Lavender: Calming
• Lemon: Refreshing and energizing. Eases tension. Heightens mental clarity.
• Mandarin: Relaxing and calming. Relieves insomnia.
• Neroli/ Orange Blossom: Relieves stress, anxiety and insomnia.
• Peppermint: Refreshing and stimulating. Increases alertness.
• Rosemary: A stimulant that promotes mental clarity and alertness.
• Sandalwood: Warm, sensual aroma. Euphoric and seductive

By the way, as I recently learned whatever you do, do not mix scents!  I lit a wonderful cinnamon candle recently at a showing on my own property in the apartment over the garage and forgot that I had plugged in one of the Febreeze air freshners about a week earlier.  The combination was NOT a good one and we spent the next hour before the showing trying to air the place out!  Sometimes you just have to laugh….so do relax with your showings as I have promised myself I will from now on and don’t go overboard on the whole scent sensation!