house stinks

Does your house stinks?

There are certain smells that sometimes are unavoidable in an empty old house but some are so bad that they can ruin your real estate business altogether. If your house stinks it can be a big problem.

Have you ever been at a house viewing and the first thing you noticed when entering was a musty mouldy smell?

Well, it’s not very pleasant to say the least. It immediately gives a bad impression. Nobody wants to live like that. But if you see it from a business point of view it might be a different story. If a house stinks, you might be able to see what the problem is and be confident in how to remove it.

It happened to me when viewing a house in Germany.  I was visiting an old house together with my family and when that musty smell hit us at the time of entering our immediate reaction was “no way!”. After a couple of months though we had to admit, there was no other house available anywhere near our budget.

That’s why we came back to it and actually looked at the problem. It turned out that the problem was some humidity in the basement. The basement was all panelled up with wood which also didn’t help much. After a long family meeting we decided, we go for it.

It definitely paid off.

We removed the mouldy wood and did some treatment to the basement walls. The smell was gone and never came back. And best of all, we were able to get our family home within our budget.

That’s the advantage when buying, you are able to get a house with a bad smell cheaper. Of course, you have to be confident that you are able to remove the problem causing this smell.

When selling, it would be wise to spend some money in solving the problem before. Or, maybe there isn’t even a severe problem. Sometimes it just needs a bit of care, like opening the windows regularly in an empty house. Especially before a viewing.

Bad smell that is really harmful

There are certain smells though that are really harmful for your business. It’s those that can’t be solved on a low budget or maybe they can’t be solved at all. Therefore, it is advised to make some counts before jumping into a “smelly” business. One example of a smell problem that can’t be solved would be a nearby pig farm.

Bad smell that can ruin your real estate business

I recently came across a neighbourhood in Portugal located near a paper factory. On photographs all the houses look lovely and it seems to be a really nice place to live. Unfortunately, visiting and smelling the place ruled out any real estate business in this area. Unless you have clients that lost their sense of smell. ?



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