Your Furniture Is Awful!

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6 minute read

April 10, 2012

I’ve covered this topic before, but I feel we simply must revisit it!

Your ugly, old furniture is not worth anything to a potential buyer, and it’s actually hindering the sale of your home…

I’m positive I’ve written this exact same blog post at least once before.

But after five years and 968 blog posts, I can’t remember, and I think that it’s the kind of topic/lesson that can never get stale.

There are three major points that I want to get across in this blog post, and the points, while intended to be mutually exclusive, can actually work together:

1.  Your furniture has only a fraction of the value you think it does.

2.  Your house or condo could actually show worse with your existing furniture.

3.  Nobody wants to buy your furniture.

I can’t say it any simpler or harsher, and while I’m generalizing (some of you likely have brand-new, gorgeous furniture!), I think you see that I’m playing to the masses here.

Let me be a little kinder, and try to put a little more application behind this:

1.  Many home-sellers falsely believe that their furniture is a source of additional revenue.

2.  Many sellers’ existing furniture does not show the property in the best light, whereas new, rented, staged furniture can vastly improve the property’s appeal.

3.  It is very difficult to sell a house fully furnished, as furniture comes with personal preferences.

But time and time again, sellers ignore the above three facts, and it’s up to me to break the bad news to them.

I’ll be brutally honest here – it’s usually the older demographic, but not always.

Case in point: a west-end house I visited last week with my buyers, who are weeks away from moving in, and wanted to use one of their inspections.  The home-owner was there, and she certainly had an agenda: sell her furniture to my clients.

We came in the house and she very pleasantly said, “I’m going to be selling all of my furniture but I wanted to give you first crack at it.  Each piece for sale is labelled and there is a price.  Have a look!”

She was very sweet, and meant very well.  But I had seen this before, and I already knew how it was going to turn out.

My clients were there to take measurements and photos so that they could renovate the house, ie. remove the out-dated vibe.  So offering out-dated furniture likely wasn’t going to produce desired results for the seller.

I walked into the dining room and saw a label that said “Table & 6 Chairs; $1,200.”

I cringed.

That table and six chairs likely had $1,200 worth of sentimental value to the seller, but to me it had a practical, 2012 value of $0.00.

I don’t know anything about the furniture; whether it was made of rich, rare, and desirable wood, or whether it was purchased in 1967 for $300.  But I knew that it was ugly, old, bulky, and had no appeal to a pair of young 30-something buyers who are looking to furnish their first home in 2012; not 1967.

I’m sure that furniture has some value, but to me it has none.  What I mean by that is that, without exaggeration, I would not be interested in that furniture if it were free.  I would have no use for that furniture, and the only value, monetary or otherwise, would come from taking it for free and reselling it for a couple hundred bucks.  And that does not interest me.

I would not like to own that furniture, or possess it in any way, be it in my dining room, or in a storage locker.

There are some buyers that might be interested, but not many.

We’re not talking about an antique here either.  An antique might come from 1905 and have a huge value to a very select group of individuals.  But this wasn’t antique furniture; it was just old furniture.  There’s a difference!

The seller had offered about twenty pieces of furniture for sale, and none of it made any sense.

The two bed-side tables were both priced at $120, and again, I thought they were worthless.  They were way too large for a room of that size, and you could get something from IKEA for $60 that is modern, stylish, compact, and most importantly new.

The seller was a really sweet lady who is selling her home to downsize, and doesn’t need the furniture.  I later saw that she listed it with a consignment store, and I think that’s the best route.  I hope she gets some money for it, and I wish her all the best in her new home, wherever she is going.  But as for a 60-something lady selling furniture to a 30-something couple – it makes no sense.

The truth is, furniture is very hit or miss as it requires a personal taste to begin with.  What one person likes, somebody else might not.  So factor in that used furniture could also be old furniture, and not what appeals to every buyer, and you see how difficult it is to sell.

But the depreciation on furniture is massive!  If you paid $1,200 for your couch when you bought your condo in 2006, what do you think that couch is worth today?  If you think it’s worth even HALF of what you paid for it, you need a reality check.  Craigslist and Kijiji have certainly helped people unload crappy furniture at fantastic prices, but your $1,200 couch from 2006, that you’ve eaten dinner on every night since then, can’t be worth more than $300.

This is where I get into a lot of arguments with sellers.

Many sellers (again – primarily older folks) believe that they can sell their furniture to whoever buys their house or condo.  But the fact is, most buyers don’t want it at all, let alone want to pay for it!

Stop me if you’ve heard this story, but about 4-5 years ago, I went to see a lady at King George Square who wanted $320,000 for her $270,000 condo.  I told her that she was way, way off on price, and she said, “Well then I’ll sell all the furniture as well.”

Now there’s no way that she had accumulated $50,000 worth of furniture, so I have no clue where she was getting her math from.  But assuming that her couch, chair, TV, cabinet, coffee table, end table, bed, dresser, night-table, desk, and other items cost around $15,000, I honestly don’t think any buyer would pay more than $1,500 for it.

She told me that she paid $900 for her JVC television, and I told her that buyers today wanted flat-screen plasma TV’s; not tv’s from 1995 that were 36-inches thick.  I told her that I wouldn’t pick up her TV if I saw it sitting on the curb with a “PLEASE TAKE ME” sign, and I think that’s around the point that I lost that listing…

I was trying to be honest, but sometimes, sellers don’t want honesty.  They want to be told exactly what they want to hear, and then they’ll wake up to reality on their own time.

I told this lady that the presence of her furniture would actually hinder the sale of her condo, and upon further reflection, I think it was at THAT moment of brutal honesty that she asked me to leave.

But it’s true.

We all know how staging works and how creating a very generic, inoffensive, model suite with mass appeal is the best way to showcase a property.  But many sellers laugh when I suggest that they remove their couch and sofa in order to rent a different couch and sofa.

It reminds me of Steve Martin’s character in “Father of the Bride.”  Talking to Franc the wedding planner, “You want me to take out sofas?  Where are people going to sit?”  Franc replies, “We bring in chairs!”

Well think of the logic in that: only ten people can fit on three sofas, but you can place twenty-five chairs in the space where those three sofas were!

It’s the same logic with staging: many buyers will be turned off by the existing furniture that the seller knows and loves, but bringing in neutral, modern pieces will help appeal to ALL of the buyer pool!  Sometimes what is already present just doesn’t work, and you have to add by subtracting.

Many sellers refuse, because they’re personally invested in their furniture and they just can’t see their home through somebody else’s eyes.

I once had a seller tell me, “That’s very expensive dinnerware from El Salvador!  That’s been passed down through generations and people who appreciate the finer things in life would know how expensive that is!”

Okay, but those people likely aren’t buying your condo, and that expensive dinnerware, that for some reason is proudly displayed on your wall, makes your condo look like Spirograph from the mid 1980’s.

Having said all this, once in a while, I walk into a house or condo where I stop and say, “Wow……you guys don’t need to do a single thing!”

Many of today’s home-owners have incredible taste and design, and much of it comes from the sheer amount of television shows on HGTV and magazine articles that guide home-owners into creating showpiece properties.

If only they could all be like that, but sometimes you just can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

And when the old dog says, “These buyers aren’t buying my furniture; they’re buying my home,” you start to realize that the forest and the trees have blurred together and are absolutely impossible to separate…

Written By David Fleming

David Fleming is the author of Toronto Realty Blog, founded in 2007. He combined his passion for writing and real estate to create a space for honest information and two-way communication in a complex and dynamic market. David is a licensed Broker and the Broker of Record for Bosley – Toronto Realty Group

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5 Comments

  1. Lisa

    at 12:17 pm

    While I agree 100% with this post and would certainly consider paying money to stage my home for sale, I actually sold my first home last year and the 30-something-year-old buyers actually asked to buy some of my (Ikea) furniture! So you never know!

    1. David Fleming

      at 12:38 pm

      @ Lisa

      IKEA never really goes out of style! 🙂

      My brother actually sold $500 worth of patio furniture to the buyer for $700, so you’re right – you never know!

      1. Krupo

        at 12:18 am

        We were gifted the old picnic bench for the backyard. Good starter piece of patio furniture, albeit needs some fresh paint and the like.

  2. Perfect Fit

    at 5:27 pm

    That is the biggest problem: separating the home, and all that it implies, from the house that is now being sold and treated as an asset. When we work with clients to do large renovations, one of the questions we ask is whether it is for the clients for many years of enjoyment, or are they going to be selling in the near future. It helps us determine which direction to steer them during the reno process. Home = safe. Remove “home” from the “house” and you’re yanking the safety net out from under them. This makes them clutch even harder on to what is familiar and the only things left is their s… stuff. Yeah, let’s stick with that s word, stuff. 😉

  3. Pingback: More MLS Musings! - Toronto Realty Blog

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