Ok, what is the first thing you notice about my Miata?  It’s the red top on a blue car, right?

I thought this picture may help on future discussions I have with sellers regarding their paint colors.

FYI, the top won’t always be red.  Plan is to paint it a metallic silver.  These original hardtops are hard to get, so you buy the first one you find.  This one happened to have come off of a red car.

So, this is my car.  I’ve gotten use to the red.  So much so that I don’t even really notice it, which is why I haven’t painted it in the 8 months I’ve had it.  Same happens with sellers with bold colors…..it is their normal and they don’t really see their house in the same eyes as a buyer.

But buyers notice bold colors just as the first thing you noticed about my car were the colors.

Do you care that the car only has 67k miles since 1990?  That all the suspension is new?  That it is all original?  No, you’re just giggling about the Wonder Woman/Superman/Papa Smurf color scheme.

Let’s say I wanted to sell it.  I might say that I don’t know what color the buyer would want it to be, so it is best to let them decide.  That is what a lot of sellers say when you tell them they need to paint.  The problem with leaving a boldly painted house alone is that you either need a buyer who can see past it or has your exact same taste, both are maybe 5% of the whole pool of buyers.  The most popular car colors are white, black and 50 shades of silver.  For houses, gray, beige or greige are the crowd pleasers.

I guess if I were selling it, I could offer an allowance for painting it.  Maybe $2000.  Then I still need a buyer who wants to paint a car as their first act as the new owners.  My experience is that people never know what painting will cost.  They are usually way high on what they think it will be.  So if you offered a $2000 allowance on your house for painting, most buyers will want twice that.

What happens if I were to do nothing about the paint and try to sell it like it is?  If selling a car with a bold color scheme is like selling a house with a bold color scheme, what will happen is that it would sit on the market for a long time and then finally get a low offer because the buyer wants a bargain price if he is going to have to do the work.

It’s a good thing I have no intentions of ever selling my Miata.  I’ve owned it twice.  I sold it to a friend and bought it back.  Unless you feel the same way about your house, you are wise to get rid of the bold colors.