“The Importance of Plants for Residential Real Estate- Especially When You Want Top Dollar For Your Home, Health, and to Save the Planet”
Realtors commonly provide a checklist of things homeowners should do to ready their home for a sale. A typical checklist looks like this:
- De-clutter
- Fix and replace- issues with lights, electrical, plumbing, and appliances
- Paint
- Clean
- Renovate
- Focus on accents pieces- fresh towels, art, and indoor plants
- Focus on the front entry, yard, driveway, and sidewalk
Adherence to checklist items will guarantee the highest and quickest offers.
This article focuses on the importance plants play in selling your home.
Let’s start with the curb. First impressions are extremely important to attract buyers. An unattractive entry can prevent potential buyers from entering your home. So you must get this right. According to the Wall Street Journal a new study quantifying the impact of curb appeal found that the attractiveness of a home can boost its value by 7% or more.
Search the internet for images of curbside appeal. You will find hundreds of images of beautiful homes with three things in common:
- Sellers select and place plants of natural varieties that accent the home nicely.
- Sellers maintain healthy, colorful, and vibrant plants.
- Sellers properly manicure lawns, neatly edge landscaping, and precisely trim plants.
Think of it this way. Plants dress up a home for a showing the same way adults prepare for a date or a job interview. Proper clothes selection, a healthy body, and grooming are key. Accent pieces like a colorful tie can win the date or interview. In the same way a small bright flower against the backdrop of a well manicured lawn can win over a buyer.
Once a buyer goes inside, plants need to evoke a sense of peacefulness, energy, and beauty, so that a buyer wants to linger, stay, and look around as this could be a place where they will someday live.
Brian C. Smith is a realtor with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices focused on selling Luxury residences in Miami Beach and Edgewater. Many of the modern residences in South Florida are very neutral design spaces with right angles, floor-to-ceiling glass windows looking out on water, white walls, lots of natural light, tall ceilings, and light colored natural stone or porcelain surfaces. These types of design spaces are spectacular architectural achievements that provide the perfect canvas for pops of color and the beautiful shapes that plants provide.
Lonesome corners are good candidates for small potted trees. Coffee tables are nicely accented with flowers or small green plants. Balconies provide a great place for everything from raised planter boxes for herbs and vegetables to potted plants of many varieties.
Brian suggests picking plants that will compliment the space nicely and not overpower it. The great thing about plants is they don’t have to be too big. A few small succulents including cactus can provide the perfect center piece for a modern dining room or kitchen table. The goal is to create attachment with the buyer. Every subdivision of space within a home invites the buyer to stay a little, breathe, relax and think about how much they would love to buy and live in the home.
Giamo Van Kanten and Elizabeth Durozel of Essencia Air focus on selling plants for the home that are both beautiful and provide health benefits. They note that people are spending more time inside homes that are hermetically sealed. Plants help to decrease chemicals, decrease bad gases, and increase humidity.NASA supports the same through a report published in 1989. Health benefits of plants include less fatigue, less headaches, less nausea, less anxiety, better mental health, and better sleep. Outside of hermetically sealed homes plants have ecological benefits for real estate as well. As buyers become more earth friendly, many are seeking estates that will provide a habitat for endangered wildlife and will select properties to buy on this basis.
