Smokers' houses harder to sell

Wilmington (DE) News Journal ^ | September 26, 2003 | Maureen Milford

[Gabz]

As tobacco has become less socially acceptable and home buyers are more aware of indoor air quality, houses that reek of cigarette smoke are becoming a harder sell, experts report.

"It definitely is a major turnoff," said Michael Wilson, a real estate agent with Prudential Fox & Roach Realtors in Brandywine Hundred. "Buyers immediately think about what they'll have to do to eliminate the odor. It's a real drawback and a real negative."

[MrsEmmaPeel]

Have you seen this book? My House is Killing Me

I'm a great champion of under floor heat as opposed to ducted heat. I believe more harm is done (via allergies etc) through ducted heating systems than smoking.

[HamiltonJay]

You may be right about vilification of smoking, however on the same token there is also a knee jerk reaction by smokers whenever anyone states anything that is pretty much the obvious, if it involves smoking. To the point, like some here, of denying reality, that smoking does have physical components that can and do affect their properties.

I suspect had this article said something like "PET OWNERSHIP NEGATIVELY IMPACTS RESALE PRICE" you'd have just as lively a knee jerk from the pet owners as well.

My point has never been in this discussion that smokers are or aren't a targeted group... my point was simply that the article points out what is pretty much obvious. Houses that smell like smoke and show visible signs of smoke are by and large less desirable than those that don't by buyers.

This isn't an indictment against smoking, its just a statement of the general realities.

As to furnished homes, this is not the trend in my area either, but there are some places of the country where I am told it is not uncommon. Generally places where transfer taxes and things are very high, from what I have been told sell furnished more often as sort of a counter to the higher tax amounts extracted.

I have seen houses sold furnished, but I would definately agree its not routine in this area. Though drapes and things are often left, since they tend to be specific to a particular home.

[appalachian_dweller]

>> I have 17 and they all are working properly <<

LOL!! Do you have a sister?

[HamiltonJay]

You are correct, perhaps I have worded myself poorly. In my experience being "suprised" to find out a house is owned by a smoker (ie no visible or odiferous clues are there) is very rare in my experience.. I am not saying they aren't out there, just saying they are very rare.

Smoking indoors permeates over time everything in the home, the duct work, the walls, the carpets, the drapes, the ceiling tile, etc... And while ventilation can help, it doesn't solve the issue, particularly in a climate where you are pretty much indoors 4-5 months of the year. It is a rare case where I have not known the instant I walked in that the owners were smokers, particularly if they are heavy smokers.

Even if the home does not visibly appear badly smoked in, and various air fresheners and cleaning products keep the ambiant odor down, the minute the furnace kicks in, the smell is unmistakable. Layers of nicotine and Tar build up in the ducts as well, and they largely are not cleaned by home owners, (not that no one does it, but its rare indeed).

I am not saying that there aren't smokers who are avid clean freaks and can keep their properties pristine, I am sure there are. However the case where I am shocked to find out the home is owned by a smoker, is very very minute in the single digits as a percentage if that.

Obviously the volume of smoking that occurs in a house has a direct correllation to the homes smell and appearance. The very light smoker who enjoys an after dinner cigarette nightly isn't going to be as bad as the 3-4 pack a day each couple.

To me, this is not some health issue, and its not an anti smoking issue, its just reality. People are generally spending the largest amounts of money in their lives on their home, and they don't want something that looks or smells bad if they can afford not to have it. Face it, you make 30k-40k a year combined income, you are getting ready to sit down and purchase an 80-120k house.... the single biggest purchase of your lives, you by and large do not wish to have to "FIX" the home after you buy, and if you do, you won't pay top retail for it.. if you can find a house that needs nothing for the same price, which in my market can easily be done.. its not a hot market, the population is relatively stable and choices abound.

Just as anyone who's ever been to a bar can tell you, even if you are a non smoker when you come home that night, your clothes smell... that's just reality. Smokers homes are subjected to that smell and polution daily... and it does have an impact. The impact can be minimized, but it is still there.

[HamiltonJay]

As was said more than once on this thread, unless someone is buying a newly constructed property most people do plan on redoing floors and walls after buying a pre-existing home

This is a patently false statement. If a buyer has say 75k to spend, and they get 2 choices, 1 is a house that needs new carpet and paint, and is say 1500 sq ft.. .and the other is a house without the need for paint or new carpet and is also 1500 square feet... and are in same location with same ammenities and both homes are priced 75k They will without question far far far far more often than not, take the house that needs no work for their money!

They will not spend 75k on the house needing work, and then go out and spend 5k fixing it up. If they do decide they want the one needing work, they are going to pay no more than 65-70k for it.

I have improved homes values by over 100% in a few months, obviously adding ammenities ups the value of homes. That's not the issue. The issue is when you compare apples to apples, the house needing work will almost ALWAYS sell for less than the house needing no work, and if a buyer has a choice between no work on move in, and some work on move in, they will pick no work nearly all of the time, and if they do pick work, they will require that the purchase price be reduced to reflect the fact the home needs work.

That's reality, that's the free market at work. Sure occassionally you get someone who will deviate from this norm, but they are by far the exception.

[CSM]

"you by and large do not wish to have to "FIX" the home after you buy, and if you do, you won't pay top retail for it.."

That is the whole point of this. You are in the business of buying homes as fixer uppers, therefore you are seeing the extreme in the market. That extreme is where you thrive. On the other end is the extreme where the clean freaks live and can get a premium for their homes. In the middle, a wide variety of homes and lifestyles exist.

At the time I bought my home I had an opportunity to buy one for a few thousand less but it needed EVERYTHING done to it and it was smaller than the one I am in now. Those few thousand wasn't worth it to me to have to do the work fixing it up!

The point is (and I saw you reference this later) that the SMOKING isn't the issue. It is the overall condition of the home and the buyer is free to make an offer or walk away from whatever work is necessary.

How do you know that all of the homes you go into that don't smell of smoke weren't inhabitated by smokers? You don't, you only know that the ones that smell of smoke were. So, if you go into 100 homes and 10 smell like smoke, then you also went into 15 homes that didn't smell like smoke but were inhabitated by smokers.

[HamiltonJay]

Point of order Gabz,

Show me once where I stated your house was NOT in pristine condition, or that no smoker could EVER have a pristine house?? I have NEVER claimed that anywhere in this thread.

I have never called smokers slobs, or untidy, I have never suggested they don't bathe, or clean their homes. I have stated that by and large you can tell a smoking home from a non smoking home. Which is a demonstrable fact in the general case. Just as you can tell the home of a person who has multiple cats almost immediately... this is just reality.

You taking my statements as personal attacks speaks to your interpretation, not my statements meanings. I have never disputed your claims of corruption in Deleware. I have challenged your claims that your 2 data point example is proof of an overall trend or conclusion. But beyond that, have not challenged anything you have said regarding Deleware corruption.

And I will state one more time, for the record, that an article that states the obvious, which is homes that need fix up or are viewed as defective sell for less and slowler on average than homes than don't. And like it or not, most smokers homes have very tell tail signs, particularly if they are heavy smokers living there.... which the vast majority of the buying public DOES view as a negative.

This is not JIHADDIST, this is just the market at work.

[Bubba_Leroy]

But you're right, it is absurd. None of the people claiming that houses previously owned by smokers will always go for less are willing to acknowlege that I sold my house for exactly what I wanted.

I acknowledge that you sold your house for exactly what you wanted. I also acknowledge that if your house smelled like smoke, then you probably got less for it than you would have gotten if your house did not smell like smoke.

My brother and his wife smoked. They reeked, their house reeked and their children reeked. Everyone who did not smoke was aware of it, but they could not smell it. Last year they both quit smoking cold turkey. Within a few weeks they had to move out of their house while they had it repainted and had all of the carpets replaced because they could not stand the smell. Within a few weeks of repainting, the smell was back. They have to run an ozone air cleaner all the time to live in the house.

I friend of my wife's has 4 cats in her house. She insists that there is no smell because they are all properly trained to use the litter box and she cleans out the box every day. Everyone who does not own cats can smell the stench as soon as they walk in the house.

The difference is, unless the cats pee on the carpet, the cat smell can be eliminated with a fresh coat of paint. Cigarette smoke permiates the walls and is not easily removed.

Most non-smokers are not going to want to buy a house that smells like cigarette smoke. That is a fact. As a result, the market price for smokers' houses is generally going to be less than the market price for identical non-smokers' houses.

[HamiltonJay]

Exactly, in the middle is where the majority of the market is... the people claiming smoking doesn't affect price are those citing the "CLEAN FREAK" side, which is by and large NOT the middle (majority) of the market.

I buy houses at the low extreme and middle of the market, and even occassionally at the top end when the situation is right. FIXER UPPERS are a part of what I do, but not soley what I do.


I operate in the low to middle section of the market far more often than the clean freak, no doubt. And every property I sell (with the exceptions of the occassional very high end) falls into the bread and butter middle of the road home... which means my houses are competing right alongside the average home. I know what sells and what doesnt, and I know that a bread and butter property needing paint and carpet doesn't sell as fast or for as much as one that doesn't... if it did, believe me I would not spend the 2-3k per home replacing the carpet if buyers were just itching to pay top dollar to then do more work.


I talk to sellers and visit them in their homes routinely, my purchases don't happen in vaccumms. You are correct it is possible that on occassion the house is so well kept that I didn't even know the person smoked... odds are fairly low, as if I have been in a house and its been smoked in routinely, the signs are not hard to detect.

Think of it as kissing a smoker... just because you didn't see her smoke, you better believe you'll know it when the toungues start their dancing... I don't care what mouthwash they use, way way way more often than not you know.

The vast majority of home owners are not clean freaks, they are cleanly, but hardly freakish about it. Their houses when put up for sale reflect the lifestyle of their owners, I don't care if you are a smoker or own 7 chiuauas it doesn't take much to know, particularly if your lifestyle does things physically to your property, for even a laymen to see the evidence.

[Junior]

Hey, it's market forces at work here.

[HamiltonJay]

Price reduction for LBP? I don't know where you live, but you aren't going to get that here. Any house built prior to 1978 is almost guaranteed to have lead based paint! ANy house pre-1900 CERTAINLY has LBP. Irraddication of LBP can only be accomplished by completely ripping the home down to the studs, and rebuilding the entire interior... removing all that lovely molding that often has been painted over many times and stripping it down or replacing it with new which must be specially ordered as they don't make trim in those sizes anymore... and by the time you are done doing all that, just lost all the original character of the home.. you now have a reproduced interior in an original shell... which would cost you many many times market in most places to accomplish.

[MrsEmmaPeel]

Irraddication of LBP can only be accomplished by completely ripping the home down to the studs

I've met many contractors who told me that they could remove the LBP while preserving the molding (its depends on how you take down the molding and how you treat it.) Its extremely labor intensive and therefore very expensive.

Its a moot point, because we never saw a house that we really, really, really liked enough, that was worth the trouble. Another worry that I had was underground home heating oil tanks. The yard has to be excavated, tank removed, etc. Saw one adorable house, but the owners decided to build their water garden on top of their (now defunct) oil tank. When I saw how that magnificent garden was going to have to be ripped up, I just wasn't interested.

[HamiltonJay]

You can preserve the existing molding but it is costly, but to completely remove the LBP from the home you must gut the house, removing all the original plaster and start over... which means you are going to pay many times the market value of the home to do it.

There just aren't that many LBP free 100 year old homes out there that you can pressure a seller to discount for it. Because to make them LBP free makes them many times the market price to begin with... the cost is just prohibitive.

You just don't get discounts for LBP on 100 year old homes. At least not in my experience.

[MrsEmmaPeel]

that you can pressure a seller to discount for it.

Its not a question of pressure. I don't work that way. If someone is trying to tell me a 100 yr old home at the extreme (high) end of the price bracket for its lot size and sq footage, and I have to add the costs of rennovation on top of that, it doesn't take long to figure out that it becomes cheaper to build.

[Publius6961]

BUMP

[Bogey]

My daughter smokes & sometimes when she kisses my cheek she gets the smell on my face.

---

I somehow don't think I'd enjoy hanging around you. Even if you weren't my mother.
I doubt she does either.
Your comment says alot about you as a person.

[Zack Nguyen]

The lady in the next door apartment smoked like a chimney. It seeped through the walls in my closet, my clothes smelled of cigarette smoke. It wasn't until she moved out that the odor went away.

The interesting question is whether you should be forced to put up with that. I confess I would feel a tad bit violated in your circumstances.

[auggy]

Really?

I would have never thunk it. What tobacco do you use. I smoke a off brand called Canyon. Generic priced. About $12.50 a carton here in Kentucky.

I've noticed some brands really do have a strong and or rotten odor.

[Old Professer]

They didn't realize how much the smoke permeates the wood and drywall. Same can be said for used cars.

I knew a guy that lived right at the corner of a busy intersection; he was always trying to get used cars off his walls.