I would never be so blunt as to tell one of my sellers that, but sometimes an agent just has to bite their tongue and try an end around.

When you’re in a house day in and day out sometimes you just don’t smell what others can smell. Pet odors, smoking and ethnic cooking are just some of the odors that can turn a buyer off. Most buyers can put up with cooking odors which tend to be temporary but pet odors and smoking…ugh.

Some odors just seem to seep into the paint and carpet. A buyer coming into one of these houses just knows there will be a lot of work to do before they’ll want to move in.

Masking odors with store bought fragrances doesn’t work most of the time. Buyers, and their agents, can smell the underlying odor, and now you have to deal with them thinking that you were trying to hide something.

Painting can certainly help with sealing walls and reducing some odors. Pet and smoke odors on carpets are rarely corrected by getting them cleaned. Many times you just have to replace carpets if the odor is too strong.

Psychologically, buyers viewing a house that has a strong, offensive odor, think that the house isn’t clean and spend less time in it giving it the once over. With all the houses on the market, “next” is the comment agents hear most frequently.

When you’re competing to sell your Bowie home or Crofton home, it has to be in the best possible shape. Clean and odor free is a minimum standard in this buyers market.