puke green apartment still hasn't sold

Certainly agree as regards the color. Almost comical!

That said, the price per square foot certainly looks pretty reasonable.

It looks like only the bedroom is painted green. That couldn't take more than a day to fix. Oh, I forgot, people who live in Manhattan don't know how to use a roller. ;-) It is too bad the agent doesn't give the owner a clue.

Other than the green room, the place looks pretty good, from what I can see.

The bathroom is done up in green tile too.

Nasty!

Plus that furniture.

I don't think the green tile looks so bad and well, we have a green couch which we like a lot, and have some green plants. Maybe people who drink too much correlate green with puke but, for the rest of us, green is a nice color.

Curbed picked up on this when I last posted about: http://curbed.com/archives/2008/11/25/thats_rather_hideous_going_green_at_east_53rd_street.php

They seem to get the hideousness...

Reminds me of the RSD prewar that a well-known fashion designer was trying to sell last year... the decor alone was enough to put anyone off his lunch -- we're talking taxidermed peacock, large zebra-skin rug complete with legs and tail (mercifully no head), and an over-sized, dingy tomato-red modular couch that looked like it had been coughed up like some hideous hairball from Austin Powers' bach pad.

I'm convinced that the general what-the-fu*kedness of the ridiculous decor had a direct hand in causing the apartment to languish month after month, price-cut after price-cut, until the designer finally gave up and took it off the market.

Well, nobody here ever busted on my apartment because of the green pieces so I guess I am in the clear. It is possible to overdo it, of course. People are not buying the furniture, why do they care what color it is? I still think this problem could be fixed with a quick paint job in the bedroom.

Well, as per Squid's example, the problem is that a lot of people go to see an apartment or a house or whatever and project upon it their hopes and dreams. When they see garish decor, even if that decor won't be there when they take ownership of the place, it is hard for them to get past that and see themselves as the owner.

Irrational perhaps, but that's how it goes. All but the most flightly of interior decorators and real estate agents will tell you that you should decorate with an eye to re-sale values.

I understand the problem with decor and wanting people to project their own lives on the space and not concentrate in your life in the space. I strive to depersonalize the space every time we have an open house.

Ok, rules for staging an apartment:

* Eliminate all dead, dying, stuffed, or skinned animals. They're distracting.
* Remove all personal effects, such as photographs, knickknacks, trophies, etc. Those things are also distracting.
* Paint the place white, all of it. I like Benjamin Moore's Atrium White, but any white will do.
* Try to pare down the amount of furniture in the room so the place does not look to cluttered.

Other rules?

*empty the closets a bit. I am always astounded when I go to Open Houses on the UES and the stroller and the vaccuum cleaner are just sitting there in the middle of the second bedroom.

* remove large kitchen appliances -- but again, put them away. I just went to a place on the UWS where the hand mixer was in the stove. What does that say to me about the amount of space in the kitchen cabinets/functionality of the stove?

* Remove all smells -- change the cat litter, pine-sol the kitchen floor 24 hours in advance so the kitchen smells neither greasy nor "cleanser-y", air the linens.

*Wash the windows.

ali r.
{downtown broker}

good ones ali...

* Clean the mirrors in the bathroom.
* Hang up new, clean towels in the bathroom
* Put away all of the shampoos and shower products.
* Clear all horizontal surfaces of papers, personal items, etc. This includes desks, countertops, etc.
* Be careful not to leave anything of value out in the open. I am amazed when I go to open houses and see iPods amd watches strewn around the apartment.

Speaking of windows, I have demonstrated to many people how our new windows swivel in the middle so that both sides can be cleaned. I'm not sure everybody gets the importance of this feature. I guess they have never lived in apartments where it is almost impossible to clean the outside of the windows.

i disagree about clean towels in the bathroom--i'd prefer no towels in the bathroom. no toothbrushes, no laundry bag in the closet full of dirty laundry, no cat litter at all--take the cat somewhere else. i disagree about painting the apartment white--if the apartment has had a nice paint job in reasonably neutral colors i don't think it is necessary to get the place repainted. remove as much as possible--furniture, books, house plants.

can i ask why people assume it is the decor that's holding this place back? looking at the comps it doesn't seem like a great deal even with the reductions:

recorded sales:
03/13/2007 #7B $565,000

Happyrenter--I assume it's both the decor and the price that is holding it back. The decor is just excessively bad...

the decor is awful, sure, but even with the most gorgeous decor in the world the apartment is overpriced.

If green isnt your thing, perhaps purple and yellow strike your fancy?
http://www.streeteasy.com/nyc/sale/329232-condo-492-henry-street-carroll-gardens-brooklyn

The purple is not as bad as the yellow.

Purple = royalty

Yellow = diarrhea

I agree with the idea of moving out as much as possible but it does lead to the question of how much we can remove when we are still living in the apartment. I hide everything personal like toothbrushes, etc. I don't expect potential buyers to be rooting through closed laundry bags in the closet. Anyway, we use open house time as laundry time, it seems to work out well. The dirty clothes are being washed and are out of the apartment.

Some woman sent me an email asking if she could live in my apartment while it was on the market. I am sure her heart was in the right place but I also know that potential buyers wouldn't want to see her stuff either. I had to break it to the woman that we were still living in the place.

pas,
the question of how much you want to move out or are able to move out is different from the question of what you ought to move out to sell the place. you are going to have to come to some sort of compromise. but ideally emptying as much stuff out of the place as you can is a good idea.