The first thing I did when I moved into our current house was paint the paneling. Started two hours after closing and painted every night after work the rest of the week so the walls would be done before the movers arrived over that weekend.
She had had a number of the rooms painted in the last few years. She couldn’t remove the wall paper because her husband had hung it over 40 years ago. He passed away in 1979, so she always felt he was there. She added a gorgeous sun porch which will help sell the house. The kitchen will be problematic, but other than paint it, nothing will be done to it.
@jasmom wrote
Your pool of buyers who can “get beyond that” is smaller than the pool who can’t, in my experience. When I’m house-hunting, I will remember all the things that were a total PITA to replace (carpeting), and stuff that I can live with (counters in secondary bathrooms that were blue corian). If I’m walking through a house (or looking online at pictures), too many “maybe I can live with that” and “I’ll need to change that” and it’s off the list.
Teal carpet photographs badly, and it’s super dated. Nobody ever said “my dream house has teal blue commercial grade carpet with a geometric design!” It’s too specific.
The whole point of staging and remodeling is to make your house appeal to the largest pool of potential buyers. Unless you are in a smoking hot market, and even then the clean, updated, well staged houses are the ones who get top dollar.
I think this is a big deal-I always look for water damage when I’m looking at houses, and it’s a BIG red flag. Don’t hide water damage-repair it. The inspectors have moisture sensors that they’ll look for issues like that.
A few things you can do is look on the real estate websites for other homes similar to yours that have sold (NOT the ones on the market-who knows what those people are doing). But sold homes will give you a peek into what people are buying-you should be able to find DOM (days on market). That’s what you’re going to be shooting for. You can also get a sense of which realtors are getting the job done with regards to selling your house in the neighborhood. Don’t use someone who doesn’t know your neighborhood really well-that’s the kiss of death here-we see an unknown realtor’s sign go up and we’re all like oooooohhhh, bummer for them. They never know how to market this area correctly.
When you pick a realtor, pick someone who knows how to photograph your house-ask her/him “Do you use HDR photography”. If they don’t know what this is, don’t use them. It makes all the houses look amazing and it’s what the high end realtors use. If you want I can link to some zillow listings to show you what it looks like.
Also, hide all evidence of pets in the real estate photographs. And for god’s sake, don’t include the pets IN a photograph. This house had a picture of the master bedroom with two cats sitting on the bed. I made them do duct cleaning as a condition of the closing because I said “you have cats, we’re allergic”. That cute picture can cost you money or a buyer if you have someone who is REALLY allergic.
Also, I keep a big binder of all the deferred maintenance that we’ve done, all the warranty items on things like the roof, the furnaces, and other durable things like when the house was painted. This may not help you if you don’t keep records like this, but if you do, having them in a binder for a potential buyer is a huge bonus-they see that the house was taken care of.
^^
We’ll definitely replace any damaged wood. (just not necessarily the entire door frame). Your points are excellent ones.
We had a muted teal commercial type carpet with a geometric design in our first house. It was very practical and we had lousy pine floors under it. But I actually hate carpet and don’t have any in our current house.
“Also, hide all evidence of pets in the real estate photographs. And for god’s sake, don’t include the pets IN a photograph. This house had a picture of the master bedroom with two cats sitting on the bed. I made them do duct cleaning as a condition of the closing because I said “you have cats, we’re allergic”. That cute picture can cost you money or a buyer if you have someone who is REALLY allergic.”
Our cats will move to our new dilapidated shack with us before we list the home for sale! It is a total injustice to the poor kitties to be required to leave their home for showings and opens. 
Plus, the added benefit of not worrying about the buyers passing up the home because of the pets…
If you want to see a very STUPID example of an upscale home for sale prominently featuring a pet (and it is not even the owners’ pet), take a look:
http://summerwellhomes.com/videos/
You don’t even need to watch the video… The dog is right there, lol. This is a MODEL home - and a pricy one! - and they let the dog run through the house?!!
Wow–someone involved is clearly a dog-lover. H would probably automatically cross that home off his list.
And the other 12 or so they are building! This is a new construction… We poked inside to look at the kitchen cabinets. Totally cool interior design. The dog is unfortunate!
My impression was the dog was just artifice in a marketing blurb, much like the wine bottle and glasses in another shot. All the dog lovers will have their awww moment, how cute.
And the allergy sufferers and people who do not like pets will go “This is a NEW house?!” 
Yes, our house is full of allergy sufferers and a pet is a huge issue for us. There are growing numbers of folks with severe allergies.
@jasmom Our realtor mentioned Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter as a great gray to use as a neutral. Its being used throughout houses here. And I have thought Benjamin Moore White Dove is the perfect trim color for years.
That cute dog in the marketing products for the new homes? I would be thinking( most likely wrongly) of how many other animals, including cats (which my daughters and I are highly allergic to) had been through the houses with the obviously animal loving developer. We are absolutely crazy about our dog, by the way!
Just to show how dumb some folks might be… Photo #20
Wanna buy Palmer? Not for sale, but the little artifacts he might have left in the carpet are included. 
@BunsenBurner did the running faucets in that video drive you crazy? I was like, stop wasting water for a video! Get the dog off the bed! (full disclosure-I let our chihuahua sleep on the bed with me when H is on business trips)
So many things about that video just made me wince @-) Like the flat roof over the garage that had the wood siding touching it-no flashing, no apparent grade=wood rot, ugh. And who’s going to change that lightbulb in the 20 foot ceiling?
What’s up with the running water in all the sinks?? I can see it maybe in the shot of the tub filling. But otherwise it just looked odd and wasteful!
Running water is another artifice, lol. Prettier, more evocative, than just a faucet.
What bugged me in the first dog pic was the bed covers weren’t neatly stretched. Not bad, but this always stops me in real estate photos. As someone said, like the toilet seat up. And more.
Another prime example of what NOT to include in photos or leave out for the buyers to see… Animal skins, horns, etc.
This one took forever to go pending according to a local agent.
MOfD - Flat roofs do not scare me if they are membranes and have adequate dranage. That one does.
Torch down roofing otoh - yikes!!!
Oh that’s nothing with those horns! We looked at a house once years ago that had at least 50 dead, mounted animal heads and birds. Part of me wanted to leave right away, part of me was fascinated in an anthropological “who are these people?!” way. I just couldn’t look past the dead stuff to consider the home’s potential.
@bunsenburner, I think the dog is adorable. They probably have a puppy in the house for the same reason they have all of the faucets running. (THAT bothered me. Isn’t there a drought?)
It’s a MODEL. All of the furniture and so on will be gone when someone buys it. Sheesh!
Are serious that you look at one picture that has a tiny Westie in it and start thinking about dog poop? And you own animals that do their business in the house?
The thing that would drive me away from Horn house is all of that horrible carpeting.
What do you all think about houses where photos of the owners with politicians you don’t like are displayed? 