Closet space is important. One of the things that people are very good at doing is accumulating stuff. Even if you prefer a minimalist approach to life, there are some things that you just can’t do without. Clothes. Shoes. Bed linens. Towels. Foul weather gear. Food staples and supplies. And you need places in your home to put all of these things; after all, you certainly don’t want them piled up in the middle of a room. Closets are the usual solution for keeping all of these necessary items (as well as a variety of optional items safe and organized. Everyone needs places to store their things, so everyone needs closets.
That’s why, when you know that you’ll be putting your home on the market eventually, it’s worth considering the state of your closets. Because they aren’t just important for you--they’ll be important to anyone who considers buying your home in the future. And customizing your closets – adding closet systems that provide you with designated, accessible places for all of the things you need to store – will not only help you organize and simplify your life but they’ll also add value to your home for future potential buyers.
What Potential Buyers See in Your Closets
If you’ve never shown a home that you were living in to potential buyers before, you may be surprised by how thoroughly an interested buyer will inspect the house. If they’re going to live there, after all, they need to see everything. What’s more, when an interested buyer walks through your home, they’re doing more than just looking at what’s there – they’re trying to picture what your home will look like with all of their things in the place of your things. And guess where a lot of those things are going to go? Right into your closets.
So what will buyers see when they look in those closets? If the closets are crammed full of your belongings or if they’re a jumbled mess, then they’re going to have a hard time visualizing their own things in there. Or worse, they’re going to visualize their own things in the same messy state, which can be a turnoff. Feelings of frustration over not having a neat and organized space for storage don’t put people in the buying mood.
If you’re already in the process of moving out yourself or if you have offsite storage, you could always empty out your closets. This would give the buyers who look at your home a blank space in which to imagine their own future closets. But that’s not always possible. And even when it is possible, empty closets don’t really add anything extra to your home’s value in the mind of the buyer. At best, they’re neutral. At worst, if you have a shallow, narrow, or oddly-shaped closet, the buyer might have trouble imagining just how they could possibly fit their own things into that space.
What Potential Buyers See in Customized Closets
Customizing your closets can have a lot of benefits for you. They can save you the frustration of digging through a chaotic closet for something that you can’t easily find, and they can save you time when you’re cleaning because it’s much easier to put everything away when you have designated places for your thing. They also save you time when you’re trying to find a specific item because you’ll be able to look inside your closet and immediately see exactly what you have. And it’s this feature that’s most likely to impress your potential home buyers.
You see, when a buyer takes a look inside your customized closet , they’ll also be able to immediately see what you have and how it’s safely and securely stored, yet still accessible. And then they’ll be able to imagine their own things in that closet – accessible, but safely and securely stored.
That visualization could be the thing that helps a buyer decide that your house is the one. Remember, everyone has stuff, and everyone has to store their stuff somewhere. If you’ve experienced frustration with your closets, it’s a sure bet that your potential buyers have experienced that same frustration. When prospective buyers see that the closets in your home contain features that will reduce that frustration, they’ll be much more enthusiastic about buying your house. Who wouldn’t want a home feature that solves a very common problem?
Custom Closets and Home Staging
While prospective buyers are sure to be impressed by your custom closets , that isn’t even the only sales benefit that comes with having a custom closet. A less direct – but still important – benefit of custom closets is that they can really help with staging your home.
Remember, selling a home that you’re also living in can be challenging. You need your home to continue performing all the usual functions of a home because you’re still living in it, but you also need it to be in shape to show to potential buyers. And that doesn’t just mean that it needs to be clean – although that’s important, of course. It means staging the home in a way that’s appealing to potential buyers, sometimes on very short notice.
When you have custom closets and storage spaces, cleaning up the house becomes easier and faster. And you have more time to focus on other things, like bringing in fresh flowers or rearranging the artwork on the walls – whatever it takes to stage the home in a way that makes buyers excited about it.
Custom closets are something that you choose because you want the benefits, but it’s safe to say that in many cases, custom closet systems may outlast your time in the home they’re installed in. The good news is that even when you’re getting ready to sell your home to someone else, those custom closet benefits can still pay off for you. If you aren’t selling anytime soon and are curious about some of the other benefits of custom closets, check out this article on Memphis Garage & Closets , titled 3 Reasons Custom Closets Are Worth It.