Want to Avoid Selling Your Home?
Use These Home Buyer Turnoffs

Regardless of why, there may come a point where you want to NOT sell your home. Sure it is listed as being for sale, but you REALLY don’t want any buyers to make an offer on it. To that end, I bring you my top ten ways (plus one) for making sure you NEVER SELL YOUR HOME!

1. Make Sure Your Home STINKS!

Don’t want to sell? Then the BEST way to keep buyers from making an offer is to make your home smell as bad as possible. I suggest closing up your windows and inviting 10 to 15 chain smokers over for a week. When the walls turn yellow and the whole place smells like an ash tray, you have got it right. The other absolutely perfect way to make your home reek is to bring in some stray animals and let them pee everywhere! This is particularly good in the summer time.

2. Post Guard Dogs In the House or Yard

Small dogs will work, but BIG dogs are even better. The buyers don’t care if ‘they are friendly’. They will absolutely run when they see a 100# Cujo running across the yard barking at them. He may want to play ball and lick their face, but they will never know that!

3. Dirty Bathrooms Keep People From Buying Homes

To keep buyers from being interested in your home, shoot for this effect in your bathroom! Never underestimate the power of a truly filthy bathroom to send buyers screaming for the hills. Put everything from the cabinets on top of the vanity and dump some toothpaste on top, that is a start. Leave some old clothes on the floor and soak them down. You can even leverage this with #1 above and lock some pets in the bathroom for a couple days. Want to play a trump card? Use the toilet a lot and NEVER flush, in fact turn the water to the toilet off!

4. Buyers Really Hate Homes That Look Like Caves

If buyers can’t see your house, they won’t buy it! Pull out a few light fixtures and replace the lights in the rest with 40 or 60 watt bulbs. Make buyers guess at what is hiding in the corners of the rooms and under the beds. Play on their primal fears and make every hallway a dim trip into the unknown.

5. Clutter Up Your Home Dramatically

Stop throwing anything away. If you are really committed to not selling your home, this includes your trash. Have a spare bedroom or basement? Consider making it your own personal landfill! Potential buyers should ideally have to walk down predefined paths through your stuff and even not be able to enter some rooms without going ‘off road’.

6. Turn Your Basement Into a Pit

Have a basement? Make sure it is damp, wet and smells funny. Turn off sump pumps and let it get good and soggy. Make a couple loves of bread dough and hide them in the damp spots. This is also a good place to keep your stray animals for a few days. Leverage in #5 and store a few months of garbage. Combining all these elements will really push buyers out the front door!

7. Leave and Encourage Bugs

Roaches, spiders, any insect that shouldn’t be in the house are great for scaring away buyers. I have actually had clients scream when they went down a stairs and hit a spiderweb in the dark. Leaving lots of food out will encourage ants and cockroaches. Spiders will really love the damp basement you created in #6.

8. Poor Curb Appeal

Keeping buyers from actually coming into your home is ideal. Step back and look at what you can do to make them want to keep on driving. Consider piling up some garbage along side the house. Some tires in the front yard perhaps. Anything you can do to make them not want to get out of their car is what you are looking for!

Use trash to destroy any curb appeal your home may have!

9. Growing Things in Your Gutters

Nothing tells buyers that no one is maintaining a home like plants growing out of the gutters. If you don’t have enough dirt in them to grow anything, then throw some in there and then drop in a few weeds. Try and get the gutters to back up and dribble down over the front door if you can.

10. Follow the Buyers Around the House

Whatever you do, STAY THERE while buyers are viewing your home. Hover, watch them, and talk about how much you love your home. Tell them all about the things that you have been meaning to fix and how your favorite dog died on the living room floor. Tell them how much you love that bedroom, and not to mind the stains on the carpet.

BONUS TIP!

If you are really wanting to make sure buyers flee from your home, answer the door in your underwear or overly revealing clothing and be REALLY friendly. It doesn’t hurt to have your clothing be dirty as well. This combined with #10 will be great entertainment as the prospective buyers work frantically to avoid any sort of contact with you.  If you are still worried that they might want to look around, be sure to ask your drunk friend Larry to come over and pass out naked in your guest room.

Guaranteed Success!

If you utilize all the above techniques, I can virtually guarantee that you will never find a buyer for your home. At least not a buyer that is in their right mind.