Mission Viejo Home Sellers - Take Heed Heading into the Holidays

With holiday festivities in starting up earlier and earlier each year, it seems like it’s the perfect time to talk about what it means to have your Mission Viejo house on the market this holiday season.  So let’s talk about Halloween first.

1. Less is more.  Limit yourself to one room if you must decorate for Halloween.  Your children really will not be traumatized because you didn’t go all out this year.  They’ll get over it.  Take their annual Halloween photo at the pumpkin patch down the street this year, not the Haunted House you created in your house. Which brings us to point number two.

2. Don’t volunteer your house for the neighborhood Haunted House this year.  Pass that baton to someone who’s not trying to get their home sold.  You don’t need the added stress.  Buyers can go to Knott's Scary Farm or the Costume Castle to immerse themselves in all things Halloween.  Your home should remain timeless - not be forever stamped on the buyers’ minds’ as the Haunted House.  They want to buy a wonderful home.  Not a Haunted House.

3. If you must decorate for Halloween while your Mission Viejo home is for sale, limit your decorations to the simple and innocuous.  Stay away from creepy, freaky, scary and grotesque.  That means no witches, ghosts, ghouls, skeletons, or zombies.  Zombies don’t help sell houses.  Stick to un-carved pumpkins and candy corn.  What’s a happier welcome sign than a bowl full of candy corn?   The original orange, yellow, and white candy corn. Not the black, orange and red scary candy corn.

4.  Do not decorate the exterior of your home.  No spider webs strung from tree to tree or draped across your threshold.  No witches on brooms crashing into your chimney.  No bats flying around your front porch. No signs advertising the way to the dungeon or the torture chamber. This will distract buyers from seeing the wonderful curb appeal of your house - perhaps their future home.  And if their small children are terrified of your home and start crying out of sheer terror because of your decorations, the family may have cross your home off of their list altogether.

5.  Lastly and perhaps most obviously, do not build a cemetery in your front yard.  No tombstones and crypts recreating the graveyard out of the “Thriller” video.  Nobody wants to buy a house in a graveyard.  Death does not sell houses.  And just to be really clear, if your decorations make the buyers’ kids cry, they won’t even stay long enough to come inside.

You can still have a Happy Halloween while you are trying to sell your Orange County home, just tone it down a bit this year.  And keep it happy, not creepy.

I'm Leslie Eskildsen.  Just keeping it real in Mission Viejo, Coto de Caza, Rancho Santa Margarita, Dove Canyon, Robinson Ranch, Painted Trails, Ladera Ranch...  well, you get the idea, right?

Call me.  Text me.  I'm here to help you.  949-678-3373