Melody Scott, Alex Aguilar

By Toby Welch

Some homes are inherently fatally flawed. Consider the following:

* A bungalow steps away from a railroad track.

* A condo tucked behind a McDonald’s.

* A house where a cult leader committed a mass murder-suicide.

* A dwelling beside a cemetery.

* A duplex underneath power lines.

* A residence within throwing distance of a highway.

* A house with a gas station for its next-door neighbour.

* A home near an airport and under a flight pattern.

Unfortunately for sellers, a home identical to theirs without the fatal flaw will sell for a lot more than their home with the defect. The upside is that any home can be sold.

Location, location, location is often touted as the main selling point for properties but price is another major part of the equation. For buyers who have a fixed price point, a bargain home may be worth it even if it has some unredeeming qualities. To prospective buyers, a flawed property allows them to get a little of what they are looking for when otherwise they wouldn’t be able to get anything. Bad locations and negative stigmas do affect the value of a home, but hopefully it won’t be impossible to help your sellers see that and convince them to lower their price.

Melody Scott is a former Realtor turned writer of real estate novels; her most recent work of fiction is Auraria Dead, about two sales reps who make a gruesome discovery on a property they have listed. Scott had a property that she considered unmarketable. Despite it being a healthy market for sellers at the time, the home wasn’t attracting any attention because it had been owned by a renowned Satanist.

“Every house has its strong suits, but this one was woeful,” she says. “What had been a fenced Oriental meditation garden was now concrete and stone. Then there was the asymmetrical black room – ceiling, floors, walls, all black. One neighbour said it was for devil worshipers with lit candles. The only people who saw it were Realtors. Nobody had a client for a Satan house.”

Luckily a licensed nurse was prepared to remodel the house as a small group home for elderly patients. The nurse was able to visualize a locked tropical garden for her Alzheimer’s patients where there was only concrete. The selling price was adjusted to cover painting the hideous black insides and to accommodate for the stigmatization. The nurse was the only potential buyer who had even been willing to look at the home.

When viewing a fatally flawed home, potential buyers often focus on the main issue that is the home’s cross to bear. Do whatever you can to draw a buyer’s attention to all the positive aspects of the home (which usually includes the price). Shine a million-watt spotlight on the upsides of the property. For example, if a two-storey home is on a lot next to a 10-storey apartment complex, highlight the great views from the windows that don’t look out at the apartments or plant trees to conceal the view of the apartment. If a home is by a cemetery, point out to prospective buyers that noisy neighbours aren’t a problem. Most negatives can be turned into positives with a creative spin.

Ask the sellers what attracted them to the property in the first place. Those attributes are often things that can attract the next buyer.

There truly is a buyer for every home; you just have to work extra-hard to find that person. After all, a house that seems fatally flawed to you and the sellers will be perfect for someone else and the point they are at in their life. As Alex Aguilar, a Realtor with the Axia Real Estate Group in San Diego, Calif. says, “The right combination of curb appeal and aggressive pricing should be more than enough to appeal to motivated buyers. If there is a good enough deal to be had, a buyer will overlook almost anything.”

If you take prospective buyers to view the flawed home, scope the neighbourhood out beforehand. Make a list of the positives in the surrounding area and be sure to point them out as you head to the property. If the buyers have children, show them the schools. Drive by the shopping centres, coffee shops and restaurants. When you list the property online, include driving directions that take people by the local amenities, even if it isn’t the most direct route to the property.

Incurable defects keep a home’s property value from being as high as a comparable home without a flawed history or in a more desirable location. We keep coming back to selling price; that’s because ultimately that is what will sell a defective home. That fact is tough for many sellers to accept but it is the reality; a hard-to-sell house gets a lot more attention when the price drops.

Bad homes with negative stigmas and in horrid locations sell every day. It’s not impossible; think of it as an intriguing challenge.