by Jim Gillespie
Special to Realty/Builder Connection
When preparing for an open house, you want the home to show very well to the prospective purchasers who venture into it when you are holding your open house. When people are touring a home, they are looking for a certain feeling from the home, and anything you can do to create this feeling for them is time well spent. People want their new home to simply “feel like home.”
Two of the most powerful senses that we have in our day-to-day lives are those of smell and hearing.
Many times when we smell or hear something we are triggered to an incident from years ago in our lives which the smell or sound reminds us of. You may have already experienced this many times in your life with different smells you have noticed or songs or sounds you have heard. Many times when hearing a song we are transported in our minds back to a time when a particular event in our lives was associated with that particular song.
With these experiences in mind, anything you can do as an agent to have a home filled with the smells and sounds that trigger people to experience the ideal “feeling of a home” is a good investment of your time.
For many people, the smell of baking bread or the sound of soft music has this effect. People don’t even have to be big fans of music in order to experience the desirable effect it can have on them when touring a home. It’s not the music we’re really talking about here, it’s the feeling that the music produces in people. When people are walking around inside of a home and imagining if this is a home they would like to live in, good soft music in many situations will assist the people in feeling that they like the home.
Of course, the home also needs to have the features that these people want to have in their new home, too!
The smell of baking bread is a smell that most people love. If you can create this smell in the home, or another smell that you feel will have a similar effect, you will greatly assist your prospects in liking the “feeling” of the home.
In addition to this keep looking for new and creative ways to implement your own ideas on what smells and sounds you feel will have the most desirable impact on the people who will be touring your open house.
— Jim Gillespie is a
California-based real estate coach and can be reached at [email protected].