When Good Enough Is Not

I hear it a lot from people who are thinking of selling their home.

"Why do I need to change that/replace that/fix that? It's been good enough for me. It should be good enough for someone else, too, right?"

Actually, no. Good enough for you does not equate to good enough for potential buyers.

I understand. You really don't want to spend money on a house that you are leaving. I get that. But when you refuse to do updates and repairs, it invariably leads to the same thing.

a.) Your house will sit on the market for twice as long, becoming more stale than a loaf of twelve-day old bread.

b.) Your house will not sell for the price that you are hoping for because the potential buyer will deduct the cost  of every repair and update from their offer.

When my realtor, Mike, reviewed our house, he mentioned "You should probably update that chandelier in the dining room."

He was right.

It was an old, cheap, faux brass chandelier that the builder had installed when they built the house thirteen years ago. The truth is, it wasn't even pretty when it was new. I'd put some shades on it when we moved in, and I kind of forgot about it. We meant to replace it, but we had so many other projects that took precedence.

I could have said "You know what? That ugly chandelier has been good enough for us."

But I didn't.

Here's the old chandelier:

And here's the newly updated chandelier:

This was not a costly update. It was an eighty dollar chandelier that we plucked off the shelf from our local Home Depot. A little investment can make a big improvement, don't you think?