Halloween, Decorating and Your House for Sale 2022

Autumn is my favorite season, and obviously Halloween is a big part of that. There are loads of things about Halloween decorating that can be lovely, but at the end of the day, the novelty of great big giant hairy spiders hanging over the telly can wear thin very quickly. Your Christmas tree is probably different later in the year, that has got a couple of weeks in it! However a spider and a web for example is hard to justify, having up for a long time. Today, I thought I would generally cover options regarding Halloween decorations, their effects (from professional and personal experience) and what they could mean for you when selling your house at this time.

Who Doesn’t Love Halloween? Well……

Having a truck load of scary Halloween decorations around the house is not for everyone. For some people entering a house (with their thoughts of buying) itmight actually be a little off putting. Then again for others thay actually might LOVE it!

Over in the United States, it’s a massive ‘thing’ because it goes straight from Halloween, gently then into Thanksgiving, then Christmas, and it all merges beautifully. Its a pretty packed season overall for them. In Ireland we haven’t (dare I say, thankfully?) gone to the full extent of the U.S with our Halloween attitude, but it is growing.

From experience, I see that the Halloween Style of Decor is split into two types. (We’ll look at how this can effect a selling process a little bit later in this article)

Styles of Halloween Decor: Theres the ‘Scary’ and the ‘Seasonal’

The ‘Scary Type’ are the witches and ghouls and bones and graveyard’s in the front garden with cobwebs everywhere. When there are young people in the house it can be lovely and fun. It can get a little bit ‘overdone’ after some time however!

I’ve watched over the years, as my the children got older, the decorations get scarier and scarier until they do actually start to look like a bit like a crime scene! There are some pretty ‘advanced’ decorations nowadays also from what I have seen around!

So, it’s a balance really. In our own home I’m conscious that when the children are coming to the door on Halloween night, we don’t want to frighten the life out them either. So that sums up the scary side.

On the ‘Seasonal Type’ (and this is the side that I love) you have your pumpkins and your gourds and your pop of seasonal colours. I see that Dunnes Stores are selling gourds at 40 cent each! Tree leaves, even chestnuts, anything that comes out of the garden, can look lovely. You can make a little display of it and actually bring that season into your house at a foraging level. Pick some berries and things to use around the house they can look fantastic. Also I see people have really started to embrace door wreaths. In my work and in general, I see lovely door wreaths out in seasonal colors. The colors really lend themselves so well to embracing this time of year. Even in a normally drab entranceway, it’s a fantastic way to bring warmth and life in to space. It can make it inviting. Its easy then to bring all the way through a home then. I recommend you try it!

Find Suggestions, Tips and Inspiration on Seasonal Decor for your Home Here

Here’s another little tip. Get a pot, or similar and put something colorful such as a Red Robin ornament, or really colorful Chrysanthemums in (and you look after them provided they don’t get a heavy frost) they will last you through this season.

It’s a lovely way to counteract the greyness of this time of year, breaking it up with pockets of gorgeous colours.The ‘grey’ can act as a fantastic backdrop in fact.

Go into any supermarket or any garden center, you’ll easily find winter colors that you can pop in a pot or vase.

For me, it’s the seasonal side of it, rather than the scary side of it that I love now. When the kids were small however, I was scary stuff all the way!

Top Tip for Arachnophobe’s

If you are not too fond of Arachnids at this time of the year, there’s plenty of fallen conkers around the place. Get them together and put them in a bowl around your house, particularly where there’s access points, you’ll find that our eight legged friends don’t like them!

So, When it Comes to Selling Property During the Halloween Festivities

When we think about the Halloween scene and whether you should be putting up decorations when you’re selling, I’d suggest to err on the side of caution. Not everybody likes spiders or ghouls, fake (or otherwise!) We have had cases with buyers wanting to view property, doing an ‘about turn’ due to the scary Halloween decor in place!

As well as that, if you’re thinking about selling your house right now, photographs need to be taken. If an agent turns up and is met by Frankenstein or the Harry Potter style spider scenes, it is not really representing the house in its truest form as it were.

People viewing that property online will have a hard time seeing passed the seasonal décor (even Christmas decorations – I know I shouldn’t really be talking about Christmas again yet! But I think you get the point!) This may even dissuade them from arranging a viewing in the first place. We all know how easily distracting the online world is (by design!) and so capturing a potential buyers eye is key. If not, they can easily investigate elsewhere and it can be a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’.

When you are getting pictures taken of your house, they have to last for weeks and maybe months depending on your property type. Seasonal style pictures will run out of steam very quickly.

So what do I suggest?

It’s to wait until photos are taken and then get your decorations up! A simple suggestion that could mean a big difference to you overall.

In the meantime, from myself and all of the team in Michael Lavelle Estate Agents Dundalk, we wish you a wonderful Halloween and Autumn Season

~ Joanne Lavelle

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