Sweet S(m)elling House!

Clean is the best smell. Dust with a good smelling polish, or spot mop or clean a bathroom!
My Realitor gave me these tips.

Get a new black welcome mat.
Put a pot of red flowers by the door.
Put a bowl of lemons and limes on the kitchen table.

Good luck!

yeah, the air fresheners mostly smell like fake scents, don't they? real odors, and yummy food odors, seem to be the best. applesauce ingredients, or chocolate chip cookies, seem to be the favorites.
if you know a showing is immanent, cut a lemon or lime right before you leave and 'spritz' the entryway and kitchen with it.
:) khairete
S.

Every time we sold a house, I would by some chocolate chip cookie dough. When I knew we would have a showing I would bake some. It made the house smell good and I'd leave them on a plate :) Have know idea if it helped people like the smell of our houses but it worked all 3 times for us! Good luck!

Cut the top off an apple and sprinkle a little cinnamon on the apple and bake it. Your whole house will smell good.

When we were selling, I also bought a container of cookie dough and would bake a few chocolate chip cookies in the toaster oven. Mmmm.

We used to burn a vanilla scented candle before we left but always
extinguish it.

I rather chose the "clean" smell. Clean the house & if anything spray
some frebreeze lightly on the carpets/rugs through out.

I'd also squeeze a lemon down the kitchen drain.

When we were house hunting the couple things I hated the most were those air plug ins and lots of potpourri. I am highly allergic to both and would have to leave the house, leaving my husband to look at the rest of it if it had anything of interest or I would look as fast as possible if I had any interest in what was there.
Those smells also linger after you have moved out and the other person is moving in.
Houses that smelled like all those perfumes we often passed up just for that reason.
I'd rather a house that smells neutral than one that smells like a lot of perfume.

My opinion for selling a house is the best smell is NO smell. Good OR bad.
Fresh air.
Absence of stink.
Clean.
Not a "scent" at all.
IF a scent--a very subtle scent.
You don't want people to think you're trying to make your house smell good. You don't want them to think it smells bad.
At most, bake bread or chocolate chip cookies.
Good luck!!!

http://homes.yahoo.com/news/smells-that-sell-a-house----a...

Just saw this the other day

I heard brewing a pot of coffee is good for a homey smell...or putting a handful of coffee beans on a baking sheet in the oven on 200 for a few minutes and then turning the oven off...

Give your house a good cleaning but dont use strong smelling cleaners. People dont want to smell bleach or harsh chemicals either when they walk in. If the weather is nice open the windows and get some fresh air inside.

Some fresh flowers or a bowl of fruit works great too.

Simmer some cinnamon sticks on the stove.

Try boiling a pot of water with cloves, orange peel, and cinnamon sticks. You can also just shake cinnamon in it. Yummy.

You might have these things handy already, and candles are expensive. It really works.

We love the smell of homemade roasting granola.

Some people associate the smell of cleaners to the smell of clean. I associate it with poison LOL. Flowers and open windows would be my suggestion.

Bake cookies before the open house. This is the NUMBER 1 way realtors/home sellers get people to love a house. The smell triggers visions of a family living in the home. You can also boil cinnamon before people arive. Make them natural smells that would appeal to the human nose. Don't go the air freshener route. Good Luck.

When we were selling the first house we built and I knew the realtor was bringing someone over, I would have either chocolate chip cookies freshly baked OR I would have garlic potatoes or something that smelled great...baking in the oven.

Good luck!

Go get frozen bread dough and bake a loaf of bread in the oven. take it out of the oven right as you walk out the door.

Last time we were house hunting almost every house we viewed had a vanilla scented candle burning somewhere on a kitchen counter or on the fireplace mantle.
That's what the realtors were telling people to do in 2007.

There are some plug-ins that are decent. Some you can set the smell "volume" on. I would turn them on "high" when I left and unplug them when I got home cause they gave me headaches. The "fresh scent" ones were ok.

home should smell like home. when we house hunted a few months ago, i used to gag at all the 'sweet' smells people had in their homes: brownies, cookies etc.
so instead of concentrating on the house, i'd concentrate where we should go out for lunch/dinner.
when my house was on the market, all people were smelling were cleaning products, because that's how my house normally smells 'clean and disinfected.'
it sold.

When I was having open houses to sell my home, I used to bake cookies right before the open house. Made house smell great, plus had some "snacks" for any potential buyers.

I also used oil diffusers rather than standard air fresheners. They give off subtle scents and are not overpowering they way many sprays can be.