The house next door was empty for a couple months before it was sold. It’s a pretty house, and though a bit overgrown, the yard had some beautiful roses in it. The young couple who bought it asked the Realtor to “clean up the yard” before they bought the house.

A ‘mow and blow’ crew was hired, and boy did they ‘clean it up.’ They left lawn, trees, mulch, and an evergreen hedge (trimmed into a perfect rectangle of course.) Everything else was yanked, shredded, and bagged. My neighbor across the street and I were sick: if we had been home, we would’ve claimed the roses before they were chopped into little pieces. It wasn’t as if they weren’t recognizable as roses: they were blooming and Hybrid Teas!

When the young couple arrived at their new home, they stood on the curb, utterly shocked.

The new trend in real estate is to try to make the house look “new.” New carpet, fine. New kitchen, expensive but sometimes worth it. All new landscaping? Hmm…too young trees, tiny shrubs and large expanses of mulch are OK for a new home…but only because it’s expensive to do better.

The best thing about an older home is it’s mature landscape. Yes, you should trim and mulch. But please do NOT ruin the landscaping by removing trees (!), limbing up trees (especially pines) so that they look like paintbrushes, yanking out mature perennials, and any other effort to make it look “new.”

If the front of the house needs anything new, make it a new coat of paint.

Also see the rest of my articles on Home Staging.

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