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You dont have to break the bank to make buyers love your home.

Home buyers are a picky lot.

Most of them have long wish lists, strong opinions, high expectations, and tight budgets.

Let’s just say that it’s easy for them to name deal breakers and find ways to whittle away your asking price.

Your job is to remove the hurdles to a purchase offer and a good selling price.

If you’re unsure what hurdles your home might present, scan this list of the seven big ones – the obstacles that most buyers can’t ignore, along with my suggestions for the best fixes.

Your kitchen doesn’t necessarily need all top-of-the-line stainless appliances, tile flooring, brand new cabinets, and granite counters. But it can’t have a microwave from the last century mounted over your stove, butcher block laminated counters, a carpeted floor, and no dishwasher, if you want your home to sell quickly for a price you like.

Real estate experts agree that remodeling your own home just so you can sell it doesn’t make economic sense. Making it bright and contemporary does make sense.

Here are some fixes to consider if your kitchen needs a facelift. Paint dark cabinets white. Replace obsolete appliances with new ones without changing the plumbing or floor plan. Add inexpensive but stylish cabinet hardware. Make sure the kitchen looks as roomy and functional as possible.

Remember, too, that “clean sells,” especially in kitchens.

Cleanliness is even more important in bathrooms. Do your baths have crusty old faucets, dated light fixtures, wall mirrors with bad edges, wallpapered walls, and a pink Formica counter over a particle board vanity?

You might be thinking, "The buyers can replace all this with what they like." Yes, they can, but they will ask for a discount or give you a very low offer. Any price discount they ask for will be based on their own high estimate, higher than what you could get by shopping around for the best deal. 

Bath and kitchen remodels are not cheap, so any way you can update on a shoestring without sacrificing quality, you’re on track. The smaller the space (Im looking at you, powder rooms), the more realistic it is to update it economically.

New faucets, shower curtains, towels, light fixtures, mirrors -- they all have big impact for the money spent. Depending on your homes price and the local market, it may pay to install a new vanity, sink, and countertop, or new flooring. Keep the plumbing where it is, and pay attention to current trends.

Any bath can look more modern when you choose classic accessories. Restoration Hardware.

  

3. Dark rooms

Rooms appear dark because theres not enough natural or artificial lighting, or perhaps because there are too many dark surfaces in the room. 

So, youll be smart to replace any lighting fixtures that dont illuminate enough. Then, install the highest wattage bulbs recommended. Add additional lights and lamps or add sun tunnels to dark rooms. 

Welcome sunlight by staging with window treatments that dont obstruct light. Wash windows inside and out. Trim trees outside that create shade around windows. Choose wall paint colors that reflect light. Finally, remove, repaint or re-cover dark furnishings. 

When your potential buyer gets a whiff of anything unpleasant, it could signal a “thumbs down” to your property. Scents hold power. They create strong emotional responses, for good or not-so-good.

Heres some suggestions that might help. Discover the source of bad aromas and solve that problem. Make sure the filters on your HVAC system are clean. Deal with the cat box regularly. Fix leaks under sinks that make cabinets smell moldy. Limit smoking to outside. Take garbage and soiled diapers outside daily. Use natural fragrances to telegraph that your home is fresh and desirable.

Nothing is more offensive to more buyers than a grimy house. In fact, many small defects can be overlooked when a home is spotless. Cleaning is also the most economical step you can take to prepping your home for sale.

A home on the market cant be too clean because you will be competing with properties that sparkle. A once-over isn’t good enough. A deep cleaning and detailing are what’s called for. After thats done, it’s a matter of maintenance. You might even learn to love living in your staged home. 

Interior walls take up lots of visual space. They’re the first thing to meet buyers’ eyes when they enter a room.

Most people want a home to be move-in ready, and when they see things like wallpaper, unusual or bright paint colors, wall stencils, stripes, murals, or faux finishes, what they see is work for them.

I give you tips on doing a good paint job here, here. and here.

If any of these wall treatments sound like your home, there are DIY remedies. Removing wallpaper can be an uncomplicated project. You should then patch and paint your walls a color anyone can like.

If painting is beyond your skillset, and you decide to hire a painter, ask what you can do to prepare the rooms to make the job easier (saving you money). Sometimes, just emptying a room, or clustering the furniture and offering to replace outlet covers after paint is dry can save you some cash. 
  

Real estate appraisers use the term “functional obsolescence” to describe certain undesirable situations.

Examples are a bedroom that can be accessed only by walking through another bedroom, a bathroom thats the first thing people see when they walk in the front door, a bedroom that’s too small to accommodate anything but a bed, or a door that swings into (rather than out of) a small room like a bathroom or closet.  

What you can do: If the floor plan is bad, you can often minimize or fix it with corrective furniture arrangement. If you cant easily fix the problem, you may choose to get a price quote from an experienced builder to determine what it would take to make it right, since deficiencies like these will reduce the appraised price of your home.

You can stage rooms to distract from what can be considered problem areas like dormer rooms and windowless or closet-less rooms. You should return rooms to their original use. In other words, stage your bedrooms as bedrooms, not an exercise rooms or a home office. Stage your dining room as an eating and entertaining area, not homework central. You can read more about how to fix awkward floor plans in my $4.99 furniture arrangement eBook.

If your home has been on the market and you’re not getting offers (of course it’s staged, right?), or if you are just now prepping your home for the real estate market, I hope you’ll be able to use this list of the seven things that bothers buyers the most, and use it to better understand your home’s cash value.

Make it easy for buyers to love your home. You’ll get a better price for it, and in less time. 


Top Photo: Better Homes and Gardens 

Christmas and fireplace mantels are a tight twosome. With or without the traditional hung stockings, you can make your mantel the nostalgic and charming focal point of the room.

Because nostalgia and charm resonate with home buyers.  

Here’s what I did to dress for the season a  driftwood mantel on a rugged stone fireplace that needs to be the focal point of this family room. 

Your idea might be a particular color scheme or a specific topic.

When it comes to colors and style, at holiday time you have an excuse to go glitzy or dramatic.

For example, metallics and saturated colors that you might normally avoid while staging your home, are perfect for holiday décor.

On the other hand, monotone color schemes and minimalistic styling can be smashingly elegant. It’s one way to simplify your life, because putting decorations up at the start of the season takes time, and then taking them down and storing them away takes time again in January. Keep it simple.

For this mantel I decided to concentrate on traditional reds and greens for my color theme. My topic theme was nature, because this house sits on a densely wooded lot. In fact, all the greenery came from the property. 

Some examples of specific topics would be themes like antique toys, Mercury glass, shabby chic angel ornaments, ceramic animals, or the classic nativity crèche. If your home is for sale, you might want to choose a theme that accentuates whats special about the house or the room.   

If you are undecided about an idea to tie your mantel decorations together, begin with step two. Shop your home and see what elements you have available. Use your imagination to repurpose items. An inverted vase can become a pedestal. A necklace can become a swag.  Books can become wrapped gifts.    

Don’t ignore what’s growing in your vicinity (pinecones, greenery, logs, seed pods, bare branches…) as well as what you’ve tucked away in closets and other storage areas like the garage, garden shed or storage building.

Remember that paint will transform almost anything into what your color scheme calls for. That old plastic flower pot can look like granite, and those thrift store vases can look like silver or gold  once they are spray painted.

This step isn’t always necessary. You may have all the things you need on hand. And if you are like many crafters or budget decorators, you’ve already scooped up Christmas decorations at summer garage sales and last year’s post-holiday sales.

Your materials should include some items with different textures, sizes, and materials. For example, don’t make everything transparent or everything solid. Instead, include some of both. Include dull surfaces and glossy surfaces, large forms and smaller shapes, some round objects and some hard edge objects.

It’s best to begin with a clean slate. So, remove whatever is on the mantel and give yourself room to work in front of the fireplace. Spread out the possible objects you’ve collected.

Next, place one large object as the background for the mantel grouping. You will be surprised what a difference this makes. It gets you off to a great start. 

I hung a round wreath of artificial red berries on the chimney breast to get my arrangement going. You could use a mirror, an empty frame, a painting like I did for the autumn mantel I blogged about, or something vintage like shutters or a door like I’ve see Angela at Cottage Magpie do when she stages a mantel.  

     

I often begin by hanging or draping something the length of the mantel. This is another way of unifying and balancing the grouping that’s to come. 

On the driftwood mantel, I strung the garland that I purchased at Michaels. I fell for it the moment I saw it. I adore the warm colors and woodsy feel to it.

I placed one item – the red berry tree – on one end of the mantel and some oversized  greenery at the opposite end. Now I had some balance and I could fill in with smaller items.

I added a string of glistening red berries to the center of the mantel and some more springs of greenery that included real red berries. I wasn’t about to complicate things with too many colors since I was going for tradition and natural simplicity.

To tie the brown garland into the green arrangements above it, I wove some evergreen sprigs into the chain. That’s all it took to finish the entire mantel. 

In the staged home, too many details will draw attention to the mantel itself, instead of the mantel calling attention to your selling point – the fireplace. Keeping decorations simple saves time, money and stress. When your home is on the market, you need easy and quick ways to add festive touches.