We looked at a couple of rental properties these past few days and came to the conclusion that clean is not what it used to be. Oh my Word!! Maybe it's been a while since you had to look for a new home for you and your family. Let me assure you -- it's not a fun or easy task. You first have to do an exhaustive search through various websites to find homes in your price range and that have the features you want. If there's no picture, I automatically rule it out. You can usually get a good feel for the place based on pictures. Then comes the actual visit. Trust me.. just because it as advertised as "move in ready" does not mean any sane person would actually want to move into these homes. Yuck!! Here is some unsolicited advice from me to those people trying to entice me to rent their homes:
1) Two words --- Pool Cover! We saw one home that advertised that it had a pool. What is should have said was that it had a pool that was condemned by the board of health. No one wants to see brown water, leaves, dirt and questionable objects floating in your pool. One look and it didn't matter what the rest of the house looked like. No way
2) If you don't have time to do a thorough cleaning job, at least wipe down your counters and stove top. The burner's on one stove were so filthy that the whole kitchen became uninviting.
3) Outside appearance does matter. One house (the one with the pool) had so much crap in the back yard (tree clippings everywhere!!) there would be virtually no room for a kid to play.. unless they got into the aforementioned condemned pool.
Maybe I'm being too harsh...but I have a house on the market and I did my very best to have that house spotless. Maybe the people up here don't have time to watch HGTV and to get their tips from experts on how to display your house. Oh well. The quest continues... one dirty house at a time.
Here are some of my favorite websites for cleaning tips:
http://www.flylady.net/
http://www.heloise.com/
1 comment:
Oh I so remember looking for homes and find them completely disgusting!!! The best was when Michael was just 2 and we were looking for a house and the one we walked in on was full of family all sitting around hoping we would make an offer on this house...NOT! It was the most awful house and it smelled. Well, Michael did just what we all were thinking, "This house stinks!" Real loud! Phil quickly picked him up and said something to him, but he just said right back, "Well it does!" Hope you can find something that doesn't require too much work and cleaning!!! I'm with you on people keeping it clean!!
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