Lost Art of Landscaping

You don’t get it. The house is in a perfect area. You updated everything, the carpet, the appliances, the paint. It is the desired 3 bedroom and 2 baths. But the house just won’t sell. What could it be?

Have you thought about how the yard looks? Landscaping can pull buyers in or make them keep on driving. Did you know that outdated, high maintenance lawn features or extreme style  and overgrown foliage can kill interest in your home? What a lot of flippers may not realize is these days, what a yard has or doesn’t have can kill buyer interest in a home almost as quickly as an outdated kitchen or orange shag carpeting. So let’s look at some tips from our team on landscaping.

Trees, trees and more trees

Our team has seen our share of over grown trees at an investment property. While a lot of buyers will enjoy the shade a nice big oak tree will provide, not everyone will want to rake their yard every fall. Also large trees pose a roof hazard like in our Flipping House Series, The Tree House, where we had to clear several large trees from the front of the house and repair roof damage from fallen tree branches.

Roaming Gnomes

This may be an obvious one but not everyone thinks the  Travelocity Gnome is cool. That goes the same for the Hail Mary, deer, and any other concrete statue out there.  The same rules for depersonalizing  the inside the  home apply to the outside, as well.

Designer Lawns

Don’t put too much thought into the landscaping. Unless your potential buyers fancy themselves to have a green thumb most people do not want to spend hours of their weekend maintaining those fancy flowers you planted in the front. Apply the K.I.S.S. method to your greens and landscaping. Keeping it simple so that it looks appealing and they are able to add to the landscaping easily if they so desire.

 Over the Top Outdoors

While in certain parts of the country outdoor living spaces with high end functions is desirable, make sure you know what you are getting into. In some colder climates, an $80,000 outdoor kitchen may not mean that much to a potential buyer. Remember that outdoor living spaces are still personal preference; what may be one man’s treasure could mean a heap of trash to another.

Invasive and Overgrown

It goes with out being said that if the landscaping is overgrown that will be the first item on your landscaping list. Check the area for ivy and other vines that can proliferate too quickly, posing a danger to other plants, as well as to windows and roofs. Not to mention ivy attracts bugs to house.

See if the landscaping has any invasive trees such as the Callery pear. Although it can be beautiful when flowering, it has an unpleasant smell and can dump a lot of litter on the lawn. The trees also are very brittle, making them susceptible to storm damage. Other species like the ficuse can have invasive roots that can crack pavement and can wreak havoc on foundations.

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Erik Hitzelberger has been Real Estate Investor since 2007. While learning the ropes in the market down-cycle, he now teaches others how to use his systems and leverage other people’s expertise to achieve their own goals.

Erik Hitzelberger – who has written 194 posts on Part Time REI.

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