How Boomer (Ages 40's-60's) Home Sellers Can Effectively Sell Their Homes To The Millenials ( 30's-40's ) - Newest Largest Group of Buyers

The housing market is snapping back – prices of single-family homes rose 9.3% over the past 12 months, according to the S&P Case-Shiller index.

 Homeowners who are in their 40s, 50s and 60s face both short-term and long-term challenges if they want to hook Millennial buyers in their 20s and 30s (who are also known as members of Generation Y and echo boomers).

Millennials and Gen Xers [roughly age 36 to 49] expect to walk into homes that are straight out of HGTV and look like they’re falling out of a magazine page, with modern colors and furniture styles.  Homes that don’t look like that may sell, but their owners could get a bit hurt on price.

Here is how the experts recommend making your home more fetching

Millennials want to use living rooms as rooms where people actually live.

That means using the rooms for the full range of life’s activities, including entertaining friends and watching TV.  They want their home to allow for easy entertaining. In a PulteGroup survey, 76% of Millennials said “TV, movie and sports watching” was extremely or very important to them in a new home. (Presumably, it would be important in an older home, too.)

Neutral walls “There’s been a popular belief over the years that painting your walls a neutral, off-white is the best thing to do for home buyers, but our research tells us differently. We find that certain bold colors work very well.

Carpeted floors -  Younger buyers want hardwood floors.

Homes located far from public transit and poor for “walkability” A new study by the American Public Transportation Association and the National Association of Realtors found that home values performed 42% better between 2006 and 2011, on average, when the properties were located near public transportation.

Walkability is the buzzword that describes how easy it is to walk to stores, schools, work or public transportation. In a Zillow blog post, walkability is one of the “10 things that make a home a good home.”

Poor cell and wireless service. If it’s not easy to get a cell or wireless connection, that would be a definite turn-off for this generation. Consider installing a cell booster device.

How to Make Your Home More Alluring to Millennials

You can’t move your house, of course, so if it’s located far from mass transit, scores low for walkability and is far from cell towers, you’ll just have to live with that and hope to find a buyer who’ll accept the drawback.

If your home has any of the other flaws cited, here’s what to do:

Visit nearby homes for sale to see how yours compares. That’ll let you know whether you need to launch a minor renovation to make your house look like the competition.

You might also learn that although your house looks a little dated, so do your neighbors’ homes.  If the other houses for sale have old kitchens like yours, you may be OK.

Hire a home stager. Terry Naber knows good ones. This pro will swoop in and make your house look more presentable to would-be buyers.

The expert who stages your home might put some of your dining and living room furniture into storage, so prospects could imagine their own tables and chairs there. Or the stager could replace what you have with contemporary, rented tables and chairs from the company’s warehouse.

Most younger buyers don’t have a keen sense of imagination when they walk into a home. If they go into a house with a lot of outdated stuff, it can be difficult for them to see through the clutter and picture what they’ll do with those rooms.

Buyers feel more connected to a house when it’s staged.

Again, Terry Naber can recommend a good stager.

Persuade buyers that your dining room could be something else entirely. Chris suggests putting tent cards in your dining room that say “Dining Room or Office.”  Alternatively, you or your real estate agent could draw up floor plans for the dining room and other spaces that show potential furniture arrangements that differ from your layout and suggest other possible uses.

If your house doesn’t have a home office, real estate pros say, it’s important to indicate where prospects could set one up.

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