Home Selling Help: Cigarette Smoke Can Eliminate Buyers

Have you noticed how online auction sellers frequently use the phrase “from a non-smoking home” in their marketing? It’s a key advertising phrase that attracts non-smokers.  With more cities and states passing stricter non-smoking laws, the topic of passive smoke on people and things is being brought up more often.  The effect of the economy on real estate is like the effect of cigarette smoke on a home.  Who knew it could affect so many different things and hang around this long?  In a market where competition is tough, values are painfully low for sellers and buyers are scarce, every little bit counts.

Most homes have a subtle odor that’s part of the lifestyle of the owners.  It may be from pets, cleaning products or last night’s dinner.  But if anyone in the home is a smoker, lingering tobacco smoke may be noticeable as well.  Most smokers will step outside before lighting up, but some smoke indoors, and should they ever need to sell their home, there is a pool of buyers sensitive to tobacco smoke that may exclude the home from consideration due to the smoke residue.

Smoke goes everywhere, and tobacco odors can be re-activated by heat or humidity, so cleaning the residue is a major undertaking. Enough that in a buyers’ market, many will choose to move onto the next home on the list when faced with the work it takes to remove cigarette smoke from an entire building. There’s more than man hours to consider.  There’s considerable expense as well.  Carpeting and window coverings will need to be completely replaced for someone who is sensitive to the smoke.  For less sensitive buyers, a professional cleaning may do the trick.

It’s not just the carpets and window coverings that need cleaned.  Tobacco residue builds up on the walls, and especially the ceiling.  These surfaces will almost always require complete repainting.  Before painting, the surfaces must be washed, rinsed and dried.  Then the stains must be sealed with a primer designed to cover stains and seal in odors.  Without it, nicotine stains can seep through several coats of fresh paint overnight.

Other surfaces that need to be scrubbed include: cabinets and drawers (inside and out), furnace ductwork and filters, windows and closets.  Light fixtures and ceiling fans will also need cleaning.  Smoke tends to be drawn towards lights, so the bulbs may need to be swapped out too.  Tile grout is a challenge.  The porous surface makes it difficult to get completely clean.  It may need to be replaced, especially if it’s in a bathroom where steam from a hot shower can aggravate the problem.

After cleaning, you can check to see if the odor is gone by closing up the house and leaving for a few days, leave the air conditioning off in the summer, or set the furnace to be toasty warm in the winter.  Check back a few days later and have someone that is sensitive to cigarettes walk through.  This is the ultimate test.  In a slow market when you are selling your home, take every step you can to keep your home in the running with the buyers that come through.  By eliminating cigarette odors, you can avoid having non-smoking buyers scratch your home off their list.

What do you think?  Are buyers with allergies passing up homes being sold by smokers?  Add your experiences below.