Let Your Yard Help Your Home Sale, Not Kill It

When selling your home, your yard can either help you or harm you. We’ll walk you through some do’s and don’ts when it comes to landscaping and successfully selling your home.

“Landscaping often makes the difference between a prospective buyer getting out of the car for a closer look at the house and simply driving by,” says Cynthia Bee of Solscapes Landscape Design in Salt Lake City, Utah. Many real estate agents confirm this, adding that good landscaping can provide more return for your investment than almost any other home improvement, provided it’s done well. Elaborate patios, invasive plants and trees and outdated or high-maintenance landscaping can squelch buyer interest in your home just as quickly as an avocado-green kitchen or a disgusting bathroom.

Bruce Butterfield, research director for the National Gardening Association, says that buyers today want landscaping that is easy to maintain and requires less water, while offering benefits like shade and privacy. In other words, sticking a pot of geraniums by your front door will not seal the deal. “There’s really a trend toward landscaping that is both functionally and environmentally correct,” Butterfield explains. “You want to have the right plants in the right places.”

If you want your landscaping to work for you rather than against you, here are a few landscaping pitfalls to avoid or correct, according to a recent MSN.com article.

Throwback Landscaping

Squared-off boxwood and holly bushes, rounded junipers and topiary shrubs point out that your house may date back to the 19060s or 1970s, agents say. Buyers today want landscaping to look natural, incorporating more native plants and attractive, varied foliage. Large pine trees and other evergreens can also be a turnoff to buyers, depending on their placement and your neighborhood. These trees can get too big and need to be hacked off at the top (very unattractive) or be removed completely to avoid interference with roofs and power lines.

Nauseating Gnomes

You may think a plastic flamingo or lawn gnome is kitschy and cool, but most buyers will not. Put them away, and while you’re at it, work on de-personalizing and de-cluttering the inside and outside of your home. This includes putting away children’s toys, sporting equipment and tools.

High-maintenance Landscaping

You may be proud of your green thumb and your rows of vegetables or beautiful, blooming flowers, but a buyer may balk at the responsibility. Jack Rhoads, a real estate agent with Murney Associates Realtors of St. Louis, recalls one property he showed with an elaborate English country garden, complete with a key that mapped out every manicured shrub and gardenia. “People were just mesmerized,” he says. “For a minute, they would say, ‘I’ve always wanted a place like this.’ Then they started talking about it and said this must take a long time to maintain every week.” The house stayed on the market for quite a long time, precisely because its beautiful garden required heavy maintenance.

The solution? “What we are hearing from our customers is that they want more flower power with less maintenance,” says Joe Stoffregen, owner of Hornewood Nursery & Garden Center in Raleigh, N.C. When planting, look for fewer annuals with short bloom times, more native plants and hardy perennials.

Too Much Outdoor Living

One of the big trends in home improvements over the past few years has been to blur the line between the indoors and outdoors. More and more homeowners are creating elaborate outdoor living spaces, complete with fireplaces, kitchens and outdoor showers. Depending on where you live, this may be a big selling point (your Realtor can advise you), but when the work gets too extensive or ornate, it can detract from your home, especially if you live in a colder climate. At the very least, if you put in these types of improvements, you should not expect to recover the cost. “If you go overboard, you are going to limit the number of people interested in the property,” says Joe Schnurr, a real estate agent with Prudential Colorado in Denver.

Pesky Plants

Some plants are more trouble than they are worth. Many knowledgeable buyers will pass on a house with certain species, just because they know the havoc they could cause. For example, the shallow, fast-growing roots of ficus trees can crack pavement and destroy foundations if they are planted too close to a driveway, house or patio. Ivy and other vines are also pesky in that they can proliferate quickly, destroying other plants and possibly windows and roofs. They can also be a big draw for bugs. Other trees may dump leaves or fruit on the lawn, creating clean-up for the owner, or may die after a relatively short period of time.

If you are buying a home, you should take pictures and leaf samples to a local nursery to investigate the kind of maintenance and hassle you can expect if you buy. If you are selling, consider doing the same, but to find out whether there are any plant species in your yard that should be removed.

Large Lawns

Many homebuyers today are looking for less lawn to water and mow. “People don’t want a yard that makes huge demands on their time,” says Butterfield. Sacramento landscape architect John Nicolaus groups plants by water need. By doing this, you waste less water and you can spend less time watering, he says. You should also consider your yard in relation to your house. If you have a larger house where you might expect families or pets, you better have a yard rather than intricate xeriscaping with cacti and gravel. Even more important, agents say, is maintaining the landscaping you do have. Overgrown or dying landscaping sends a message to buyers that your house could be in disrepair, just as the yard is. ”Maintenance is the key to maintaining your value,” Rhoads explains.

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