CHAPTER6

Putting Your Landscaping in Selling Condition

Marketers know that packaging can make or break a product. That’s why they spend billions on showcasing products and doing everything possible to wow you in the first few seconds. They know if they don’t, the product will stay on the shelf.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the importance of first impressions is an immutable law that governs just about everything: getting a second date, a successful job interview, making a presentation, and so on.

In selling your home the voltage of this law is turned up to the max.

For instance, buyers circling around a cul-de-sac or driving past homes make a decision to stop in the time it takes their car to travel about a 150 feet. Even if they slow down and gawk, that’s still less than thirty seconds.

Also, most serious drive-bys are going down a long list of homes to look at. That means they’re in elimination mode; they’re looking for reasons to cross homes off the list and shorten it to as few as possible. First impressions control their pen.

To carry this further, you might say that curb appeal is all about making it difficult for drive-bys to cross your home off their list. And you start by getting your landscaping in showcase condition, motivating drive-bys to pull over to the curb rather than burn rubber leaving for the next home on their list.

One owner who didn’t attach much importance to his yard experienced this when he needed to sell his eight-year-old home. Most of the backyard grew prairie grass and sunflowers, it had never been landscaped. The front yard wasn’t much better. It was brown and shaggy with a few untamed shrubs.

Agents in the area joked this home would make a great buffalo ranch and would drive their clients by to show what a good deal other homes in that price range were.

For over five months, the home had a lot of drive-bys but no showings. This was unfortunate because the owner was a carpenter and the inside was amazing. He had installed custom crown molding and wainscoting worthy of an English manor, along with wide-plank, heart pine floors. The kitchen cabinets were custom-made cherry wood with antique brass hardware. Too bad no one could get past the lack of attractive landscaping to see the inside. They would have pulled their checkbook out in a flash.

Eventually, a savvy agent listed the property and had a frank talk with the owner and told him what needed to happen if he wanted to sell the home. The agent soon found out why the home had gone through three agents and not sold. She couldn’t get the owner to follow through on any landscaping improvement commitments. It soon became clear that he was completely overwhelmed by the “green thumb stuff” as he put it and wouldn’t follow through.

In frustration, the agent finally set up a meeting with a landscaper she knew and got the homeowner to put $2,500 toward landscaping improvements. It wasn’t a lot for what the yard needed, but it was a start.

The landscaper installed sod in the front yard and added concrete edging for flowerbeds with a few trees and shrubs. He plowed the back yard, power raked it, and sprayed a solution of lawn seed and binder to get the lawn started. It was far from a garden club honorable mention, but it did show that the yard had possibilities.

A few days later, some buyers looked at the home and marveled at the inside but didn’t make an offer. They didn’t want to take on landscaping either and continued looking for a home with a yard that needed minimum work.

Other buyers looked at the home over the next two weeks and finally a young couple made a low offer. The owner countered offering to split the difference and the buyers accepted.

So what can be learned from this situation? The short answer is that bad first impressions end up costing you serious bucks. Also, if the owner didn’t have an aversion to yard work, his home would have sold for about $15,000 more and a lot sooner.

This is not to say that your yard has to be as structured as a Japanese garden or can’t have a single crabgrass blade on it, but it does need to be attractive.

Interestingly, many buyers who buy a home partly because of the attractive landscaping don’t keep it that way. Some new owners don’t realize the effort and expense to maintain an attractive yard; six months after moving in, the yard is on its way back to nature.

True, this is not your problem as a seller, but it’s important to be aware that even the most clueless green-thumb buyers respond to an attractive yard. Many veteran agents would agree that if they took the home seller in the above example out home shopping, he would buy a home with great landscaping.

Start with a Plan of Action

The first step in getting your yard in selling shape is to develop a plan of action. This involves two parts. First, walk across the street from your home and try to look at it as a buyer would look at it driving by. What do you see? Shoot some stills with your camera or camcorder and take notes on any problems that stand out.

For example, one homeowner was shocked to see how bad a towering sixty-foot fir made his house look. The previous owners had planted it many years ago as a seedling about eight feet from the house. Now it dwarfed the home and destroyed all sense of scale. Clearly, it would have to go.

As another home seller stood across the street from her home, she was amazed at how out of control her landscaping had become. Foundation bushes grew up past the middle of the windows and lilacs along the fence grew so big they obscured a corner of the house. To get her yard in shape, heavy pruning would be at the top of her schedule that week.

Second, find out how your yard compares with other homes that recently sold. Drive by similar houses in the area that sold in the last sixty to ninety days. Note the price they sold for and their curb appeal. Next, look at homes currently on the market that are your competition. How does your curb appeal stack up to theirs?

If you find your yard is as good or better than the competition, that’s great; you’re a leg up on getting your home sold first. Take notes on where your curb appeal excels so you use the info as sales points in your flyers and ads.

However, if you need to do some work on your curb appeal to be competitive, make a list of where you need to improve.

First on your list should be the lawn. Buyers often zero in on this first. If the lawn is green, lush, and recently mowed, it gives them confidence that they’ll like the rest of the yard and home.

In fact, several homes that sold for top price had nothing but lush, green lawns for landscaping. No trees, flower beds, or shrubs. The buyers were thrilled; to them the hard work was putting in a lawn and sprinkler system. With that done it was like a blank canvas, they could add the trees and shrubs they wanted.

Here are some tips on making a thick, barefoot-friendly lawn:

•If your lawn is more weeds than grass, it may be easier to start over by spraying with Roundup™ or other herbicide. Yes, you can use black plastic to kill the weeds, but do you have a couple of months?

•Next, rototill the yard and rake the soil smooth into a good seedbed.

•Once you have a good seedbed you have three choices: seed it by hand, hydro seed, or lay down live sod. If you’re cutting costs, hydro seeding—a solution of mulch and lawn seed—is a good way to go and the resulting lawn often looks as good as or better than sod. Sod is instant lawn, but you pay for the convenience. Seeding by hand is cheap, but not as effective. It’s hard to get consistent coverage. Check the yellow pages under landscaping for cost comparisons in your area.

•To jump-start an existing lawn, spreading a nitrogen-rich fertilizer can help. However, you may want to ask a local nursery or extension service for other additives needed in your area. For example, acidic soils may need limestone pellets and western alkaline soils may need sulfur for lawns to green up.

•Every lawn has a few brown spots, but if you have some that are eyesores then you’ll need to remove the dead grass and till the area. Rake the soil into a good seedbed and reseed. Cover the newly seeded area with mulch and keep moist until the seeds sprout. You can also cut out the brown area and replace with a section of sod. You’ll need to pamper the sod and keep it moist for a couple of weeks until it’s established.

•Edging the lawn with a power edger gives it an attractive manicured look. Also consider adding metal, wood, plastic, or concrete edging around the lawn and flower gardens.

•When you mow the lawn, use the grass catcher. Dry clippings scattered over the lawn detract from its appeal. Also, don’t cut it too short, set the blade height at about an inch or an inch and a half for thick-looking turf.

•Don’t let the lawn dry out. Check with a garden center in your area on how much water is needed weekly.

After the lawn is on its way adding to your curb appeal, the next items are bushes and large plants. This is probably one of the most neglected parts of yard maintenance. True, it’s an ongoing pain to keep shrubs and bushes trimmed consistently, but while the home is on the market this is important.

Start off by looking at your yard again from the curb. Is the view unobstructed or is it difficult to see the home because of jungle? Ideally, the home should be framed by trees and bushes that compliment the house.

Trees planted in front of a house can make it look smaller and block light from reaching the inside. The best way to handle this is with a chain saw and pruning tools. Admittedly, this approach is controversial, but in a competitive market, homes that are trimmed neatly and visible from the curb nearly always sell faster and for more money.

Of course, exceptions to this are homes in dense forests, wooded lanes, and other areas that clear-cutting to the end of the driveway would put you in the firewood business. There are also some areas like Tucson and other water-scarce areas that landscape with sand, rocks, and cactus. If you live in those areas, check out the competition and note how you can be just a little more attractive.

When earth-toned colors dominate the landscaping and home exterior, adding a few splashes of color here and there makes your home a little more buyer-friendly. For example, put bright flowers in colorful containers outside the front door and along the walkway. Add paintings and rugs with lots of contrasting color inside the entryway and look for ways to add splashes of color in the home and around the yard.

We instinctively know that color is important in creating first impressions, and to help keep your green thumb on track and incorporate color in the yard, use the following checklist:

CURB APPEAL CHECKLIST
ITEM	SUGGESTED ACTION
Curb or Driveway Entrance	Make sure the concrete curb and driveway entrance in front of the home are in good condition. If they are deteriorated, check with the city; it may be their responsibility to maintain curbing. Adding a small planter or two with colorful annuals can send a welcome message.
Driveway	Planting strips along the driveway with colorful annuals in a bed or bark is an attractive way to add color where it counts. Also important: Cracks in concrete driveways should be patched and asphalt drives may need to be resurfaced or sealed. Home centers have patching and asphalt products that do a good job for both types of driveways. Also check out this website: www.hotmix.org/driveways.php
Trees	Normally trees should frame a house not block it’s view. If your situation doesn’t make this possible, thin the branches to create as much light and as clear a view of the home as possible. Also consider edging around the trees with flowers and bark.
Bushes	These usually need to be pruned way down or removed. Bushes, like trees, shouldn’t hide the house but rather compliment its architectural lines. Lilac and rose bushes, for instance, take over too much of the yard and need to be trimmed back.
Shrubs	Many homes have shrubs such as Tams growing along the foundation, porches, and fence lines. These should be trimmed down to about thirty-six inches.
Bare Spots and Eyesores	Mulch or beauty bark is a great cover for flower beds and along fences, foundations, and walkways. If you have a spot where grass won’t grow, consider tilling it and turning it into a flower garden. Put some edging around it, plant colorful annuals, and fill in with bark.
Foundations	If your home’s foundation looks bare and has mud splattered on it from rain storms, you may want to create a three- to four-foot planting strip. Plant five-gallon-sized shrubs every few feet in a bed of bark or mulch. Power wash the concrete first, though, to get rid of the mud stains.
Fences and Gates	An attractive fence is critical to landscape appeal. If you have a wood fence that doesn’t look good, spray or brush on a good quality stain or paint. Broken slats or posts should be replaced. Chain link fences can be improved by spray-painting black or green and adding vertical or diagonal slats woven in the mesh. Fix gates so they work flawlessly and replace any rusted or broken hardware.
Flower Beds	These should be planted with colorful annuals in a bed of bark or mulch. Take lots of pictures of your yard at peak growing season. You’ll want these to show fall or winter buyers what the yard looks like in the summer.

One example of the importance of color was when Wes and Carol put their home of twelve years on the market when they retired and decided to move into a townhouse. They both loved gardening and were regulars in the local garden club.

Of course, their yard was breathtaking. In the spring, flower beds along the fence were a kaleidoscope of color with red, yellow, and orange tulips bordered by daffodils and other early perennials. Other flower beds planted with annuals created islands of color in a manicured lawn no one in the neighborhood could match.

The house was nice and well maintained but average in that it had not been updated like some other homes in the area. Since the owners were not in a rush, they decided to put the home on the market and see what reaction they would get. If feedback was negative, they would consider some kitchen upgrades the listing agent thought might be needed to make it competitive.

Well, the home went on the multiple listing service and the third couple that went through that week made a full-price offer and a month later the deal closed. Everyone was delighted and the agent was a little surprised and humbled because he felt they would need to do some upgrades to get a full-price offer.

As it turned out, the buyers were first-time homebuyers who had lived in a drab apartment for a few years and were captivated by the yard’s curb appeal. It was their long-time dream yard, and they could do nothing else but make an offer. That the inside was in good condition also helped, but as for the slightly dated décor, it faded into the background as a nonissue.

A few months later the agent happened to drive by the house and the flower beds were a mess. The lawn was no longer manicured and green. The new buyers didn’t have a clue about how to take care of a yard.

Yes, it’s sad. When you sell a house you are really selling a dream, but the buyer’s are the only ones who can live in it. Sometimes the home fits their dream and works out, other times it doesn’t.

The biggest lesson learned from this is that people often base home-buying decisions heavily on emotion. As a seller hoping to get the most money possible, you need to tap into that emotion with color and appeal. The alternative is attracting bargain hunters who don’t care about color; their emotion is getting a good deal at your expense.

Occasionally, you’ll have landscaping problems that are a little harder or more expensive to solve, such as too much water in the wrong place. These are critical because they can kill a sale fast.

Landscape Problems That Can Nix Sales

According to the National Association of Home Inspectors (www.nahi.org) one of the most common landscaping problems is improper grading and drainage around the house. This can lead to water penetrating the foundation and can create problems in the basement or crawl space.

Drainage problems should be corrected before you put the home on the market. If you get an offer and a home inspector flags this kind of problem, you could lose a buyer. Nearly all states have clauses in their purchase agreements that make the sale subject to a home inspection. Not surprisingly, water problems are at the top of the list of what scares buyers into canceling their offer.

Here are some suggestions so this doesn’t kill your sale:

•Check your basement or crawl space for water seepage. If it’s a serious problem you may want to consult a landscaper or contractor. Installing a sump pump, coating the basement walls with a waterproof coating, or re-grading often solves the problem.

•Before you hire a contractor to do expensive trench work, grading, and drain piping, get three bids. Handle the hiring and paperwork the same way you would a remodeling project. How to find a contractor is detailed in Chapter 5.

•Make sure your rain gutters are working and the discharge water is routed away from the house. Gutter extensions and large flex-plastic hoses that fit the bottom spout can help.

•Look closely at your yard’s grade. Is it sloped away from the house at least one inch every eight feet? If it isn’t, you’ll need to re-grade so it does.

•Check the basement/foundation walls where pipes or ductwork enter. If these entry points are leaking, they can be sealed with waterproof caulking available from home centers.

•Check around basement windows. Leaks often occur when water gets in the window well from sprinklers, improperly placed gutter discharge and grading. If you have a basement leak that you’ve corrected, be sure to remove the water stains from the walls. Old water leak stains can cause buyers to wonder if you’ve really solved the problem. Home centers have concrete cleaning products that usually work.

•Check your sprinkler system often. Sprinkler heads get knocked by mowing, people, or pets and can fill up a window well or run down the foundation wall.

Of course if you have drainage or water problems and don’t disclose it to a buyer, it can come back to haunt you. When the first heavy rain floods the basement, the buyer’s first phone call is likely to be to their attorney.

In one such case, a contractor found a home he and his wife loved and they were going through the home for the second time when their agent suggested they get a home inspection. The contractor told the agent he could do a better job than any inspector and to write up an offer.

The home closed three weeks later and the couple moved in. A few days after the new owners moved in it rained heavily and the basement ended up with a foot of water.

The basement walls had some cracks low down that were hidden by boxes when the buyers went through and they didn’t bother to look behind them. Plus, a floor drain was clogged or not working and that allowed water to back up. It was a big mess along with a mad and embarrassed buyer. Guess who he phoned first the next morning? Right, his attorney.

The sellers had filled out a disclosure form but hadn’t disclosed the defect in the basement or that the grading didn’t drain water away from the foundation as it was supposed to.

In the end the sellers settled, but it cost them to fix the problem plus hefty attorney fees. It would have been far cheaper for the sellers to correct the problems than try to get away with not doing anything about a known problem.

Would a home inspector have caught the problems? In a heartbeat; that’s what they’re trained to do. Contractors may be good at what they do, but few are trained to look for problems involving all the components of a house.

Other potential problems to be aware of are:

•Trees that are too close to the house and can damage the siding or roof.

•Fences, driveways, or even the house that encroaches on another property.

•Ditches, gullies, unstable earth that could cause problems.

•Runoff problems that regularly occur when there’s a heavy storm.

•Damaged sprinkler or irrigation systems when you’re selling in the spring.

Sometimes hidden problems pop up at the worst time. In one case, a seller had removed a large tree in the front yard and planted grass on the site. Two years later they sold the home. The buyer hired a home inspector who did a thorough inspection but found no problems.

When the buyers moved in, they turned the taps on full in the upstairs bathtub and two sinks to flush the drains. All the water going into the sewer at once caused it to back up and flood the finished basement.

The new owner called a rooter company who checked the sewer line from the house to street with a mini-camera. In running the camera through the line, they found the blockage about where the removed tree had been. Its roots had infiltrated the sewer line and partially blocked it over the years. Even though the tree was removed the roots remained. The previous owners never had problems because they never ran enough water down the drain at one time to back it up.

A home warranty that was included as part of the sale picked up the cost of the drain work. Luckily, the homeowner’s insurance that went into effect the day before paid several thousand dollars for the cleanup. Had the buyers entered the house early, before their insurance kicked in, this could have posed a huge liability for the sellers.

The lesson learned here is if you have an older home or one that is more than ten years old, you need to go the extra mile in inspections. Also:

1. If your have lots of trees close to the sewer line, you may want to get an inspection to check for invasive roots or other problems.

2. Include an extended home warranty as part of the sale.

3. Don’t let the new buyer take possession until the paperwork records and the new owner’s homeowner insurance is in effect. Check with your insurance agent for details on handling this move-out-move-in period.

The next chapter shows how to pull all the information together and create a selling package. It’s show time, the fun part. You’re getting close to seeing the results from days of cleaning and decluttering. As one owner said: “Getting four great offers in one day made the effort more than worth it.”