Your house color, does it really impact how high or how low the final real estate sale price is?
Does the wrong color for your home for sale hurt the days on market figure? All of us have different favorite colors right? But the same shade ofthe color pigment is not applied to everything we purchase in life. First impressions, a neat clean house of any color speeds up the sale process. 
You may look great in black. It’s slimming right? Or your skin color gets you lots of compliments when you wear pink or yellow or purple.
Red cars used to cost more for insurance. The color picked indicate how heavy your right foot was driving it.
Blue colored websites perform better than orange and black color schemes. Trick or treat.
But what about your house color?
Do certain colors on the exterior really help or hurt the home owner trying to get the highest price possible for a house? Does picking the right color speed up the home selling process?
What is everyone else doing in the local and national real estate market? Polling the paint stores and vinyl siding companies could tell the tale today. On what’s hot and what’s not. So much of what we buy or don’t purchase is influenced by marketing. The kind you are aware of and the bigger section that a person does not even realize is influencing their buying decision making.
So does the color of your home really matter in the eenie meenie miney moe selection process on the open market?
Applying the wrong shade of paint or square of vinyl siding on a home. Does an unpopular color make a property stay on the market for a longer time in the search for a buyer?
The impact of say the color of just your front door. It not that easy to study real estate sale comps in a small rural market. To know without a doubt and put your finger on how a house with a red front door would have sold quicker and for more money. How many other homes with the same color schemeavailable today could affect which one buyers flock to as well.
Like a wardrobe picked and with all the right accessories, the trim, color of the shutters, roofing, etc all help or hurt the curb appeal no matter which real estate market you are swimming in.
Do they match and work together or clash and get a negative reaction?
Small rural Maine conservative markets might tend to go yhe black and white look. More white houses, the shutters if there are any basic black. If there is a barn, it could be red. But lots of white to match the snow is what happens. Light colors not so hot in the summer.
Greige is a new house color that is picking up speed. Getting traction.
It makes for a blend of gray and beige that works better than either color in the blend alone could achieve. Neutral colors can be boring. Cooler colors can help the presentation take away. Dark and dreary is not as much fun as light, bright and cheery right?
I know from forty years of snapping images of houses, that dark colored properties just don’t stand out as well.
They tend to blend in with the darker background of the trees around it.
Their is a need for more sensitivity to consider where the sun is comes into play taking pictures.
Going back for a different angle of the sun has to happen for the best lighting orientation. Log homes painted lighter colors than the honey brown of cedar or pine tend to display better online.
White makes a house look clean or in contract with blinding white new snow appear very dingy. White house colors make a place appear larger. White cars though in Maine winter driving are dangerous. No antennae to stick the orange styrofoam ball on to show up over snow banks.
This blog post is heavier on exterior house colors and the effect of what happens if you pick the wrong ones.
We could hunt and peck for days on the best inside colors to pick and every room in a house has a different approach for a zillion reasons. Stay tuned for the interior color scheme to pick for staging a home for sale in a future blog post series to come.
To try and capture the best crisp, clear, wide exterior images from all the house angles.
Trends, what’s hot for colors on the houses people browse on Pinterest, other social media sites.
Or what colors the homes wear in movies, the tv series folks watch on the boob tube. That is all picked up and absorb to apply the new styles that suddenly appear in a community for new house colors. Dark grays, heavier shades of army green seem to be showing up in my small corner of Maine. But what you would apply for a modern spilt level might not be as pleasing to the eye on a old Queen Anne victorian or New England farmstead home.
The predominant colors on houses in Maine can depend on your location. In northern Maine’s St John River valley houses with pizza hut red roofs, butterscotch, sky blue show up. The house colors are more varied, vivid and the property owners are not afraid of pushing the limits. Along a quiet seacoast village the white homes, black or dark green, dark blue shutters seem to rule the day.
Wells or York Beach could have brighter more intense waterfront colors. To help those plying the sandy shoreline to find their way home to a rental home. Especially because vacationers tend to drink a little too much barley pop and adult grape juice. If you have ever been on a sea cruise to the islands around the Equator, you know how the natives are not afraid of color. Coral pinks, bright greens, intense blues, yellows, reds and oranges show up on the side hill housing stock.
Across the border from Maine as you wander into the Maritime provinces, in places like Prince Edward Island, you see lots of white homes, hunter green shutters and trim.
Anne of Green Gables help broadcast that look and feel. They do say paint is the biggest game changer on any real estate listing. Fresh paint no matter what color covers a multitude of sins right?
House colors, do they really matter when a place is for sale?
You bet they do. They say white is the most popular.
That light grays, beige, tans and light yellow, blues top the list of what to pick for resale popularity.
Changing your house exterior color is not so easy and usually involves scrapping, residing, a bucket truck and climbing a ladder. The prep work, masking the old color, buying the best paint to last more than a few years all cost money.
Being careful on the color selection in a smaller rural population state like Maine means easy does it on the spin the paint wheel of fortune. Play it safe in what you pick or beware is selling it is in your future. That shade of purple or exotic color could come back to bite you in the wallet.
House color inside and out does impact the resale of properties.
The number of colors picked can make it too busy, very confusing for a home buyer. To take in and digest as they tour the property one by one. The contrast can be too great or loud, uncomfortable. Or too bland can happen to homes without shutters or exterior doors of the same exterior color.
Some home buyers realize colors can easily be changed inside a place. A front door that stands out like a sore thumb can be neutralized. Not all get over the color the current owner selected is my experience. It’s only paint to me and I look beyond that at the foundation, heating system, the roof or plumbing, window treatment. Lots of new home buyers get stuck on the “oohhhhh, I don’t like that color, what were they thinking” critical mode.
Over reaction, the wrong colors can make the home buyer almost ill, to feel dizzy. Or think to change the colors will cost a duplicate organ or very high price to correct.
We deal with the public. We are prepared for all kinds of reactions to the properties of any color that we are charged with in the real estate marketing for sale. A place in Florida on the beach might be salmon or tourquoise. But don’t shake, crack a paint can and start slapping on those color shades on a Maine home. They are not outdated 1980’s coat colors like the aqua and purple. You just never see them in Maine. They happen in hotter climates that can get away with hotter colors. 
Victorian homes, the ones called painted ladies can have up to five colors.
All working in harmony for the desired effect from out on the street.
The magic is which five colors are pleasant to the eye? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But what is the correct period combination? Which colors were the ones applied years ago when the house was first covered with paint or stain? It means studying the history of color schemes on the earelier housing style.
In a large 300 lot housing developments around a large city, the study of the listing sales could show that light green colored houses sell eight percent quicker than say dark yellow ones.
And besides a quicker house sale, the light green houses brought home an additional three thousand dollars. On the bottom line on the HUD 1 settlement real estate closing statement. But in small rural hit or miss real estate markets with less house sales, the color could matter less. The price is king in which one to buy. It is like a car sales lot. In large cities you have three hundred cars of all colors to pick from today. On a small dealership in rural Maine it is flip a coin. To decide between the red one, the blue sedan or oh yeah. The one station wagon over in the corner in the car lot. Orif you have the time, let’s order one, wait for the delivery.
Practical is more important than trendy in the real estate decision making too in small rural Maine housing markets.
No one is out to impress or cause envy. A solid roof that does not leak, that was just put on is more important than the color scheme of the last owner.
Color has an affect on house sales for sure… and the weird shade of a glow in the dark MOPAR like paint shade next door to what is for sale can impact the transfer. Lakeshore, waterfront properties can be more colorful, playful and anything goes up at camp in Maine.
There is a reason why everyone does not drive Henry Ford black colors cars down the highway today. Have it your way, selection to make a personal individual statement on your house color means anything goes. But what you pick affects the market appeal and your speed of a house sale. Weather beaten or peeling paint of any shade of house color turns the stomach of house buyers itching to purchase a place.
But how do you sell a harsh colored bright colored home that is gaudy to most home buyers?
Lower the house price. Look for a buyer with poor vision who is color blind. Or to them the bright eerie green seems like mild mannered cool mint due to cataracts. Bad DNA or years of not wearing sun glasses. People are different. The house color is a factor in what sells and how fast, for how much. But in small rural real estate markets in Maine, the house color is not as important as the bottom line figure of what the property can be purchased for today.
I’m Maine Realtor Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573 | info@mooersrealty.com |
MOOERS REALTY 69 North Street Houlton Maine 04730 USA
