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Hi, this is Gina Mullen with Gina Mullen Realty and today we are going to talk about what buyers want, which also affects sellers as well.

When we look at listing a home and the seller asks, \\u201cwell what should we do to our home?\\u201d Well we definitely should only do updates that are going to make an impact and updates that will appeal to what people are looking for today. We want to put it in the right spots, where nobody wants to break the bank before they put the house on the market, but we do want to make an impact so that buyers can get a vision for what the house can look like when they're in there.

So what are buyers looking for? Buyers are currently looking floor a flooring that is the same all throughout the first floor common areas, whether that be hardwood floors, whether that be an engineered floor or a tile that looks like wood. Those are the types of flooring that people are expecting to see right now in homes that have been updated, or if they're going to update the homes themselves.

People are looking for painted cabinets in the kitchen. I have a lot of sellers who tell me that it's a crime to paint the kitchen cabinet since they were real wood, and I can completely understand that. However, buyers today are wanting painted cabinets in the kitchen as well as in the bathrooms. So while we may see white cabinets in the kitchen, we are starting to see a little bit of color in the secondary bathrooms. We see gray, we're seeing some navy blue, we're seeing some colors peak in into those secondary bathrooms. The master bathrooms usually seem to be gray or white. The kitchens also can be gray as well and maybe we have an accent color on the island, such as navy blue or something along those lines.

We're looking for gray on the walls. I know that a lot of people are not a fan of gray on the walls, but that is what most of the buyers today are looking for. So when a seller paints their home, they really should consider painting it gray, especially gray with a brown undertone because that will go with all the things that are currently in their home that were installed when cream was, you know, the big trend on the walls. It's as much of a neutral as cream, gray with brown undertone. They're also looking for white trim, so maybe not stark white but not cream either. Sherwin Williams \\u201cSnowbound\\u201d is a great color to use on your trim. It is a white that is a little bit of an off white, not quite stark white and people really seem to like using that color on their trim.

Windows. We like to see windows open, no draperies, no cornice boards, no sheers. Plantation shutters, yes, blinds yes, but we liked the windows open and clear.

We have buyers, most of them, who want to see the secondary bathrooms be updated. So that would mean the countertop. It doesn't necessarily have to be granite. We're seeing quartz and quartzite and other solid surfaces entering into countertops in houses and people really seem to respond to them well. Especially if it gives that clean, streamlined look that they're looking for. The counters seem to be taking more of a solid appearance, more so than a lot of the modeling and movement we used to see in the granite. The sinks even in the secondary bathrooms if they're built into the solid surface, if they are a standard rectangle, that seems to be what the buyers are looking for the most.

Buyers like to see that the house has been taken care of well. So we want to make sure that our air conditioners have been serviced and we can provide receipts for that as well as any other maintenance issues on the house. The biggest questions we get from buyers is \\u201cHow old is the roof?\\u201d \\u201cHow old is the air conditioning?\\u201d and \\u201cHow old is the hot water heater?\\u201d If any of those are needing to be replaced, now would be a great time to do that because more than likely that we'll be caught at inspection time.

Buyers are not really keen on carpets"