Riiiiight. 
Just like there are cat smells and then there are cat smells:
http://time.com/4151257/cat-perfume/
That said, I adore cats, but when the time comes to sell our place, we will move out with the kitties.
Carpeting in bedrooms is everywhere here in the cold North! 
Most people in higher cost neighborhoods look down on laminate although it seems big in California according to the HGTV shows. I did notice lots of âluxury vinylâ flooring in the new $1,000,000 + homes during the Parade of Homes Tour. People couldnât believe it wasnât tile in the bathrooms with actual grout lines. They kept bending down and touching it and knocking on it.
DH and I have sold many houses over the years (too many moves). I boil a teaspoon of vanilla in a cup of water in a mug in the microwave and leave it in there. (I actually do that sometimes even now just to make the house smell good.)
We leave a stack of flyers with the key points about the house inside the house, next to the notebook of information about the neighborhood and the lot description, that kind of stuff. Pens and extra cards from the agent.
Cleanliness and a lack of clutter matter enormously. We sold our last house in 2009 at the very depth of the market, in six weeks. Iâd spent four days working with a housecleaner to make the house completely spotless (weâd already moved out, we had to deal with our business her in Portland). All the tiny holes in the walls were spackled (toothpaste works very well if you have white paints); the floors were freshly waxed, it took me six hours to clean the oven and cooktop to where they looked brand new; the bathrooms had special staging towels (white, fluffy, and Iâm still using them seven years later). I used a ton of Febreze (which I highly recommend if you have dogs) during the cleanup. The refrigerator had nothing in it but a bottle of champagne. There was a chess set in the study. A small pile of books in the reading corner (leather covers, classics). The agent came ahead and turned on all the lights and the gas fireplaces before showings. The goal is to make people think âI wish I lived here.â
Even if you take out all the furniture, leave a table and three chairs in one room; the agent needs a place to sit down to talk to the clients if they like the house enough to make an offer.
@NorthMinnesota Iâll have to look into that âluxury vinylâ. I have 2000 sq feet of basement that currently has some butt-ugly laminate down there, and it has to go before we move in 2 years. I was going to do tile (in GA itâs not too cold in the basement for it), but the vinyl might be a better choice (less cracking on a basement slab, no grout).
@MotherOfDragons The Pergo type flooring works well in basements.
Sheet vinyl is nicer underfoot and has some padding that makes it comfortable. Basements MAY be damp if waterproofing isnât good, so make sure you have that covered first.
@doschicos laminate will never darken my doors again, lol. Thereâs Pergo down there now, and I loathe it. The basement is dry as a bone, but there is always the issue of cement being hydrophilic and making sure that thereâs a good barrier between that and the flooring.
Weâve been happy with ours. Not sure its Pergo brand but a similar type product. We do have a barrier specifically designed for concrete basement floors between the concrete and the flooring product. Itâs held up beautifully, easy to clean, had many compliments.
@MotherOfDragons â do you not want carpet in the basement? It is the only place in the house that I have wall-to-wall installed. I tried to purchase a lovely wool carpet and the man who owns the carpet store wouldnât allow me to put down wool, in case water ever came in. Well, water did not come into the basement, but when the ejector pump failed, 25 gallons of water from the washing machine seeped through the walls and eventually onto the carpet. Carpet was fine as it was glued onto concrete w/o padding.
@CT1417 , without padding is the floor comfortable? We had a similar situation in our old house and we were never happy with the floor.
@VeryHappy â I was concerned about the comfort before installation, especially since this was the boysâ playroom when they were little. It was never an issue, although I will admit that I was not the one sitting on the ground playing with trains and Lego bricks. The carpet is very flat (no pileâBerber perhaps?), and has held up very well for 17 years.
As point of reference, the two upstairs floors are hardwood, with rugs only in LR, DR, FR & MBR.
The luxury vinyl flooring used in the high end model homes were in planks not sheet vinyl.
@CT1417 in Atlanta carpet in the basement is considered a bit of a negative for a lot of people. Especially for people with allergies-it can trap mold and dust mites. Even though my basement is very dry (we run a huge dehumidifier down there connected to the furnace drain and keep it at 40% humidity year round), I have too many friends with carpets in their basement where I can smelly mustiness, and I just associate the two.
I could do it if were werenât living in the house when we put it up on the market, but I just hate carpeting so much that putting 2,000 square feet of it in the basement feels so wrong to me.
Itâs a âterrace levelâ basement, so the entire back wall is actually windows, so I donât worry about keeping it warm down there (with carpeting), and the direct connection to the back yard means that more dirt would get tracked in over the carpet (I have the willies just thinking of it!).
I really like the idea of the high end plank vinyl-it could really work well on that level.
Never heard that carpet int the terrrace level was an issue. Many are liking hardwoods in general but not aware that there is an issue with terrace levels and carpet. Know several with this, including myself, and its a non-issue. Yes it can get humid in the south, but with good waterproofing there shouldnât be an issue with musty smells.
" Unfortunately, these solid hardwood floors canât be installed over concrete and no manufacturer is going to uphold a warranty for solid wood installed below grade (anything below the 1st floor of the home). So, what real wood flooring CAN be put in a basement?"
Thatâs probably the biggest reason for not installing hardwoods in a basement-it voids the warranty on most of the floors.
http://flooringguide.hoskinghardwood.com/hardwood-flooring/the-basement-dilemma/
The article brings up another option-cork floors. We did that about 10 years ago in a mud room in a previous house, and I found it to be way too porous and soft to stand up to the foot traffic. We wore a groove in it within the year and one day the dog dug up a chunk of it trying to get out the back door. Scraping that off the slab (the last house was on a slab) was a BEAR! Iâll never stick anything to the concrete again, lol.
I have hardwood on a room on the main floor of my house that is on a slab. Fortunately that room had a step down so they were able to build up a subfloor above the slab, and they also put waterproofing stuff on the slab before building the subfloor. .I am more worried about the expensive rug ont he floor than the floor itself!