From a fresh coat of white paint to choosing comfortable, neutral furniture, decorating experts share their advice on how happiness starts at home.

Mix It Up

“The most interesting rooms mix cultures and periods,” says real estate broker Royce Pinkwater. “I like to juxtapose high and low. It makes it more casual and homey.” Collaborating with the designer Eric Cohler, she decorated the living room of her New York apartment with a 1930s coffee table by Jean Dunand, ’40s armchairs by Andre Arbus, ’50s Swedish slipper chairs, and a ’70s mirror by Neal Small.

Choose Colors That Flatter You

“I think I speak for all women — and probably men — when I say I want a room to show me off at my best,” says Pinkwater. She decided on lavender to complement her green eyes. Michael Taylor chair. Karl Springer dressing table.

Decorate With What You Love

When painter and stylist Craig Schumacher moved from a 10-room Dallas house into a four-room apartment, it didn’t hamper his style. His decorating look became layer upon layer: “I bought things I knew I’d never tire of, and I’ve found out that if you love something, you’ll find a place for it.” His living room is furnished with antiques and vintage pieces, including a faux fireplace added for its architectural interest.

Remember the Power of White Paint

“White reflects light, so it sends off a wonderful energy, a prism of color that you aren’t necessarily aware of,” says designer Susan Noble Jones. In this 1820s New Orleans cottage, the designer used the hue to transform the formerly dark dining room into a space that’s light and cheery. Walls are Frostine by Benjamin Moore. Ligne Roset Tania chairs ring a table made of reclaimed cherry wood.

Choose Furniture With Curves

Round shapes, such as the living room’s drum shade and coffee table, make a space feel inviting. “They soften a room and make a house more lovable and livable,” Jones says. Dessin Fournir skirted chairs. Fambuena Dress pendant. Minton-Spidell coffee table.

Keep Seating Neutral

Stay away from large pieces upholstered in a bold color or busy pattern — it will make a room feel heavier. “When the sofa is white, it feels lighter, more conducive to conversation,” says designer Pat Healing, who decorated this home for a young family in upstate New York. Bird’s Nest Cocktail Table by HB Home; Campion chandelier, Urban Electric.

Make a Colorful Statement in the Entry

First impressions count. “I think you need to make a strong statement in entry halls — to give an indicator of what you’ll see in the rest of the house,” Healing says. “I use color because to do that creates happiness.” Custom bench in S. Harris’s Calypso. China Seas’ San Marco wallpaper.

Include Some Whimsy

“Little surprises keep a house from becoming too serious,” says contributing editor Frances Schultz. “It’s fun to put items in unexpected places.” In her Long Island cottage, she perked up the foot of the stairs with an inherited collection of Staffordshire figures.

Go Bold in a Small Space

“The smaller the room, the more drama you need,” designer David Netto says. In this East Hampton beach cottage, a graphic botanical pattern perks up the guest room. “The Svenskt Tenn Hawaii fabric by Josef Frank is so bold, it creates a little world within the bed alcove.” Frette bedding

Create Beauty by Contrast

The juxtaposition of humble and fine materials creates intrigue and keeps a room feeling interesting and attractive. “The most vivid example of combining humble materials with precious ones is in the kitchen,” Netto says. He tucked Nero Marquina marble under a white Corian island, “concealing it for maximum impact and surprise.” Barstools are by George Nakashima. Pendant lights from Circa Lighting.

By Bill Briggs of SwitchYard Media

Hey, it’s your castle. You have the right to pack your palace with all the domestic toys you can afford.

Of course, if and when you decide to sell, these novelties may fail to return your original investment or make your place harder to unload.

For now, bask in your baubles. But here are 10 home projects that may someday induce a cringe from your real-estate agent and potential buyers.

Backyard turned sports court

Cost: Hoops fanatics could dish out as much as $68,000 to convert their yard into a 105-foot-long, 52-foot-wide concrete basketball court with two hoops and painted lines, says Patriot Court Systems in Houston. This renovation includes a 5-inch-thick, post-tensioned slab. The project’s cost may be higher or lower depending on the slope of your yard, excavation, zoning fees and your access to concrete-churning and earth-moving equipment.

Recoup rate: Less than 10%, “if anything,” says Karyn Anjali Glubis, a real-estate agent in the Tampa, Fla., area.

How much longer your home will stay on the market: “Up to a year longer” to find a buyer who would enjoy the court, Glubis says.

Motorized stairway chair lift

Cost: Jeff Buckley, co-owner of H.E.S. Elevator Services in Englewood, Colo., says a homeowner would pay $10,500 for a lift that can carry a person up 20 stairs with a landing and turn at the middle of the rise. The cost includes equipment and labor.

Recoup rate: 10% to 20%, says Marissa Garone-Blatz, a real-estate agent and mortgage lender in Jupiter, Fla. She adds that sellers may be competing with housing complexes built specifically for special-needs buyers.

How much longer your home will stay on the market: As long as four months, Garone-Blatz says, because of removal costs. Buyers who use wheelchairs are apt to focus their search on one-story homes that comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Steam shower

Cost: In our ultrasweet, fantasy bathroom, we envision eight to 10 shower heads, several towel warmers, a waterproof television and the sumptuously soggy centerpiece: a sit-down steam shower. These upgrades would lighten your bank account by at least $20,000, says Chantay Bridges, senior real-estate specialist at Clear Choice Realty & Associates in Beverly Hills, Calif. The steam shower alone could run anywhere between $2,000 and $15,000.

Recoup rate: $5,000 or more, Bridges says.

How much longer your home will stay on the market: Several months, Bridges says.

Your sole heating source: A wood-burning stove

Cost: Installing a wood stove to heat a two- to three-bedroom home will set you back about $3,600, says Angie Hicks, co-founder of the service-review website Angie’s List. If you are considering mothballing a traditional furnace for this cheaper form of warmth, be sure to check your local building codes and air-pollution laws, because some areas ban wood burning at times.

Recoup rate: Zero, Hicks says. “Wood stoves are like swimming pools,” she says. “Some people love them, (and) some don’t want the fuss, work, cost of wood, mess and liability.”

How much longer your home will stay on the market: This woodsy feature could cause your house to “stall” on the market for a year or more, Hicks says. Some people love the crackle, glow and aroma of wood embers. But “even homeowners who like the feature will likely want a backup source of heat,” she says.

Extreme home office

Cost: The price for an upscale work space can rise rapidly, depending on its size and the materials you select. For a memorably opulent office, think in the neighborhood of $20,000, Hicks says. This would include custom lighting, built-in cabinets, special molding, paneling, granite counters and high-tech gadgets such as flat-screen TVs and an entertainment system.

Recoup rate: 57%, Hicks says.

How much longer your home will stay on the market: Depending on the market, this addition could cause a home to sit for six to 12 months longer compared with a similar home without a swanky office, Hicks says. If you make it impossible for the room to be converted back to a bedroom, this could hurt your resale value.

Car collector’s garage

Cost: If you can afford to collect a bevy of vintage cars, the price of your own showroom or oversized garage may not be an issue. But expect to pump out about $50,000 for this addition, Hicks says.

Recoup rate: 25% to 40%, Hicks says. If you live in a well-heeled neighborhood where a few homeowners already have car-collector garages, the return on your investment will edge higher because prospective buyers may choose your area specifically for this specialty feature.

How much longer your home will stay on the market: 12 more months to find a buyer who is seeking a mega-garage, Hicks says.

Highly personalized hobby room

Cost: Crafters may dedicate a certain nook to their favorite pursuit, be it beer-making, sewing or painting. But when this hobby requires converting a bedroom into a room that’s hard to change back, it can be costly. For example, converting an existing 8-by-10-foot room into a potter’s dream — complete with a pottery wheel and kiln — would run $4,000 to $6,000, says Mel El-Farouki, who operates Mel’s Pot Shop in Erie, Pa.

Recoup rate: Any homeowner who installs a pottery room will see “very little” of that investment back, says Wendy Slaughter, president and owner of the Wendy SlaughterTeam at Re/Max Advantage Realty in Fulton, Md. “It could negatively impact the sales price,” she says.

How much longer your home will stay on the market: Several months, Slaughter says. But if you have a pottery room, marketing your home through pottery stores or offering free pottery lessons could entice prospective buyers.

Home theater

Cost: Hankering for some Hollywood at home? Be prepared to pay “upwards of $9,000″ for this type of glitzy space, Glubis says. That’s assuming your flick-watching room includes special speakers, lighting, seating adequate for a small group and a large viewing screen. You could pay more if you add velvet curtains, a large popcorn machine and top-notch acoustics.

Recoup rate: 50%, Glubis says, but only “if you were budget-conscious while installing it.”

How much longer your home will stay on the market: Typically, a fancy media room isn’t a deal-breaker, Glubis says, but it may set the price of an otherwise-average home over some buyers’ budgets.

Barn or stable

Cost: The price for an animal-only structure depends on the depth of your love for critters and how many you have. In South Florida, for example — where properties can have horses as well as donkeys, cows, peacocks and more — homeowners spend anywhere from $45 per square foot to several hundred dollars per square foot on barns and stables, Garone-Blatz says. Prices increase when homeowners choose “high-end décor materials compatible to that of their residence,” she says.

Recoup rate: Even in equestrian communities, homeowners who erect barns should expect 50% to 67% return on their investment, Garone-Blatz says.

How much longer your home will stay on the market: In nonfarming, nonequestrian locales, barns can stick out in a negative way. Time on the market might be prolonged until the seller finds a buyer who wants to house livestock.

Urinal

Cost: $150 for a basic version and $1,000 for a fancy urinal, Garone-Blatz says.

“We once had a listing (in which) the man of the house was very proud of his urinal in the master bathroom,” she says. “I have to say, quite a few other men thought it was an upgrade, but most of the women did not find it too appealing.” Labor for installation would run a few hundred dollars.

Recoup rate: Zero to 20%, Garone-Blatz says. It can have a negative effect if your home has no toilet near the master bedroom.

How much longer your home will stay on the market: In the aforementioned scenario, it delayed the property’s sale a month or two, Garone-Blatz says. “Many women thought it was just another fixture to have cleaned.” she says. “On the flip side, many men thought it was a great, convenient idea and something neat to show off to their buddies.”

Here’s a look at price trends and how they differ between distressed and nondistressed homes.

By Nick Timiraos of The Wall Street Journal

Home prices are falling again, but some analysts see a silver lining because the prices of homes that aren’t selling out of foreclosure have been holding steady.

CoreLogic reported that home prices in October declined by 1.3% from September and by 3.9% from a year before. A separate index released in early December by LPS Applied Analytics showed that home prices in September had dropped by 1.2% from August

“Many housing statistics are basically moving sideways,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist at CoreLogic.

Still, the CoreLogic index shows an important emerging trend in which home prices — excluding distressed sales — are stabilizing.

What’s the difference between distressed sales and nondistressed sales?
Unlike traditional owners, banks are often faster to cut prices in order to unload properties quickly — or what are called “distressed” sales. The upshot: The more homes being sold by lenders in any given month, the faster prices tend to fall.

This was clear throughout the initial years of the housing bust. Prices declined most sharply in 2008 as banks dumped foreclosed properties at fire-sale prices. Owner-occupants are less likely to list their homes for sale in winter, too, which means that each winter prices drop because distressed sales account for a growing share of sales.

Are prices of distressed homes falling at the same rate as nondistressed homes?
That’s been the case up until recently. While home prices overall were down 3.9% from one year ago, prices excluding distressed sales were down just 0.5%. In September, total prices were down 3.8% from one year ago, but nondistressed prices were down 2.1%.

This shows that while price declines are resuming, they are not yet falling from one year ago for nondistressed homes. In fact, during the first nine months of 2011, prices of nondistressed homes remained relatively stable, with year-over-year declines between 2% and 3%.

Analysts at Barclays Capital, in a report published in early December, called this “the most important trend in the housing industry right now.”

Why would any stabilization of nondistressed prices matter?
If it’s true that prices of nondistressed homes are stabilizing, even as distressed homes continue to fall in price, it would mean that a distressed home is “increasingly being seen as a poor substitute for a nondistressed home,” writes Stephen Kim, a Barclays housing analyst. He says it’s possible that the “bifurcation between distressed and nondistressed homes will only widen with the passage of time.”

Won’t the overhang of foreclosures put pressure on nondistressed prices anyway?
That’s all too possible. More than 2 million loans are in some stage of foreclosure, and it may be too early to argue that those won’t in some way affect the sale prices of nondistressed homes. For one, homes that sell out of foreclosure at significantly lower prices could be used by appraisers as “comparable” sales, which may make banks less willing to lend at an agreed sale price for a nondistressed home.

In certain markets where many homes are selling out of foreclosure, it’s hard to simply set aside distressed homes. “You can’t deny the fact that if half of homes that sold in San Diego in a given year were distressed, that is the trend,” said Kyle Lundstedt, managing director at LPS.

What could happen if this trend holds up, with distressed prices falling and nondistressed prices staying flat?
It could stabilize something else: homebuyer confidence. “There is nothing that strikes fear in a homeowner’s heart than to hear that his home value has declined,” Kim writes. “But if it was home-price trends that got us into this funk, it stands to reason that a recovery in sentiment will be similarly ushered in once price declines have abated — which is precisely what the CoreLogic price data shows us.”

Adding skylights, solar light tubes, windows, and other means of daylighting can brighten your winter and help alleviate symptoms of seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

If winter brings on bouts of the blahs, you’re in good company. As days shorten and temperatures drop, most people tend to slow down and feel less energy.

For some, however, the problem can be serious. Days of low light may greatly alter moods, and can even be hazardous to your health. The condition has a name: seasonal affective disorder, or SAD. In some cases, medial attention may be necessary.

Fortunately, your house can help combat the winter doldrums and even SAD. Here’s how.

What’s seasonal affective disorder?

Bears aren’t the only ones with the urge to hibernate.

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a big-time case of the winter blues — a very real type of depression. It affects as much as 20% of the U.S. population, spiking among people living in northern latitudes.

Surveys show that less than 5% of people in southernmost states, such as Arizona and Florida, experience symptoms, while in a northern city like Seattle, more than 30% of the population cites the ill effects of SAD. The symptoms include:

• low energy

• oversleeping

• poor concentration

• irritability

• avoidance of social situations

• craving for sweet or starchy foods, with consequent weight gains

How your house can help

Turning on a few extra lamps is a natural response, but what your body really craves is more daylight — simply switching on a few more lights won’t do the trick. Typical artificial light can’t hold a candle to the power of daylight.

For example, standard indoor lamps produce only 100 to 1,000 lux (a measurement of light intensity). Compare that to the 50,000 to 100,000 lux of a sunlit sky.

Even an overcast day can pack 10,000 to 25,000 lux. That’s why good interior lighting, although cheering, doesn’t get to the heart of our biological need.

Instead, you need to boost the daylight inside your home, known as daylighting. Try these methods:

1. Trim tree branches and shrubs that block sunlight. An added benefit: cutting back foliage so it’s at least 2 feet away from your house helps prevent water damage to your roofing and siding. Cost: $50 for pruning tools.

2. Add a solar light tube. A 10- to 14-inch reflective solar tube is a relatively simple way to bring outdoor light into otherwise dim areas of your home, such as hallways. Cost: $500, installed on a one-story house.

3. Add a skylight to your home. A skylight provides 30% more light than a window. Cost: $2,500 and up, installed.

4. Add windows. If you have the wall space, consider letting in more daylight with a new window. Cost for a 3-by-5-foot window: $1,000 to $1,500, installed.

5. Add a bay or bow window. These windows bring in a lot of light and give a room a sense of spaciousness. Cost: $5,000 and up, installed.

6. Replace a solid exterior door with an all- or partial-glass door, or a door with glass sidelights. An upscale door replacement is $5,000 to $10,000.

7. Open curtains and blinds so they don’t block natural light. Make a habit of opening your window coverings first thing in the morning. Cost: $0

8. Rearrange furniture in your living room, office, or den so you’ll be closer to bright windows. Place large pieces of furniture against walls so they don’t block light. Cost: $0

9. Get outside. Whenever possible, take a long walk or tackle an outdoors chore. Cost: $0

Professional help

Sufferers whose symptoms get in the way of enjoying normal activities should consult a physician or therapist. Medication, behavioral therapy, and treatments using a special 10,000-lux light therapy lamp are often prescribed.

Every square foot of your home is valuable. Here are seven storage solutions that take advantage of underutilized nooks and crannies. And just for fun, we did some back-of-the-napkin calculations based on the average price per square foot of a U.S. home ($81)—so we could attach a theoretical value to the bonus space.

Stairway to Storage Heaven

Tuck pull-out drawers under sturdy stairs. They’re ideal for stashing extra linens and seasonal items. Each drawer provides about two square feet of storage. If you really could calculate this on a value per square foot realized, that’s roughly $162 worth of extra space per drawer!

It Came from Below!

Basement crawl spaces or open areas under apartment floors can be lined with shelves and outfitted with folding stairs to hoard anything. A finished 10-square-foot crawl space uncovers about $8,100 of space value and can even lower your energy bills.

Sleep-Away Storage

Not enough room for a Carrie Bradshaw closet? No problem. This mattress lifts to reveal a hidden compartment great for stashing bulky blankets. It could save you about $200, the price of a linen cabinet, and it provides about 20 square feet or about $1,587 of extra storage space.

Locker Room

Gain more kitchen space without a costly remodeling job. Reclaimed high school gym lockers sport a new use as built-in pantry compartments. These add 18 cubic feet or $243 in square feet of extra space.

Hidden Litter

Some things are best left hidden, and kitty’s business is one of them. An inexpensive, storage cabinet doubles as a rest stop for this tabby, who enters and exists via a small framed opening. Store the litter box and all its accoutrements in one spot and gain about $205 worth of storage space.

Overhead Room

Give your storage space a lift—overhead areas, such as narrow hallways, make an ideal place for floating shelves and cabinets. You could gain up to 2.5 square feet, valued at $203 of space, in no time!

Seasonal Stash

Keep wrapping paper out of sight but not out of mind by suspending it from your closet ceiling on a simple cradle of wire. It’s easy to reach but won’t get torn or creased. In a closet that’s 6 feet wide by 2 feet deep, this trick makes 12 more square feet of storage worth about $972.

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson

We’ve talked about surprising home features buyers LOVE, and about why buyers aren’t biting on today’s market, despite it being highly affordable. But we haven’t talked much about the characteristics of sellers, listings and homes that turn buyers all the way off. Well, not until now!

Here are 6 big-time homebuyer turn-offs that make buyers cringe at the thought of your home, and action steps you can take to prevent your home from being an offender:

1. Stalker-ish sellers. I know you think you’re being helpful, walking the buyer through your home and pointing out the wagon-wheel light fixture you made with your own two hands, the custom mural of a stingray you paid top dollar to have painted across your living room wall and the way the sounds of happy schoolchildren running across the front yard of your corner lot to get to the school in the next block lifts your spirits. However, the buyers might be trying really hard to ignore, minimize or figure out how to undo the very features of your home you hold dear. They also may want or need to have personal space and conversations with their mate or their agent while they’re viewing your home – you being there, especially walking right alongside them while they’re in your home, prevents them from being comfortable about doing this, or discussing all the things they would change if the home were theirs. In my experience, the more nitpicky a buyer gets about a house and the more detailed their list of things they would change, the more serious they are about considering making an offer on this place.

What’s a Seller to do? Back off. Let your home be shown vacant, or leave the house when people come to see it. If you need to be there, at least walk outside or go sit at the coffee shop down the way while prospective buyers view your home. If the buyers have questions, their people will contact your people.

2. Shabby, dirty, crowded and/or smelly houses. You already know this one. Yet, buyers constantly marvel. The buyers who come to see your home are making the decision whether to choose your home for the biggest purchase they’ve ever made during the worst economic conditions most of them have ever experienced. Your job is to get your home noticed – favorably – above the sea of other homes on the market, many of which are priced very, very low.

What’s a Seller to do? Other than listing your home at a competitive price, the only tool within your control for differentiating your home from all the foreclosures and short sales is to show it in tip-top shape. Pre-pack your place up, getting rid of as many of your personal effects as possible. Do not show it without it being completely cleaned up: no laundry or dishes piled up, countertops freshly washed, smelly dogs (I have a couple who smell on occasion – no judgment – but don’t show your house with pet odors) or litter boxes cleaned and/or out of the house.

3. Irrational seller expectations (i.e., overpricing). Buying a house on today’s market is hard work! On top of all the research and analysis about the market and situating their own lives to be sure they’ll be able to afford the place for 5, 7, 10 years – or longer, buyers have to work overtime to separate the real estate wheat from the chaff, get educated about short sales and foreclosures and often put in many, many offers before they get even a single one accepted. The last thing they want to add to their task lists is trying to argue a seller out of unreasonable expectations or pricing. And, in fact, there are so many other homes on the market, buyers don’t have to do this. When they see a home whose seller is clearly clueless about their home’s value and has priced it sky-high, most often they won’t bother even looking at it. If they love it, they’ll wait for it to sit on the market for awhile, hoping the market will “educate you” into desperation, priming the pump for a later, lowball offer.

What’s a Seller to do? Get real. Get out there and look at the other properties that are for sale in your area and price range. Get multiple agents’ take on what your home should be listed at, and don’t take it personally if their recommendation is low. If your home has much less curb appeal or space or is much less upgraded than the house across the way, don’t list it at the same price and expect it to sell. If you owe more than your home is realistically worth, you may need to reexamine whether you really want or need to sell, or consider a short sale, if you simply have to sell. Don’t be tempted into testing your market with an obviously too-high price, unless you’re prepared to have your home lag on the market and get lowball offers.

4. Feeling misled. Here’s the deal. You will never trick someone into buying your home. If the listing pics are photo-edited within an inch of their lives, or your home is described as an “approved” short sale when, in fact, the bank approved another offer, now withdrawn, but will require a new offer to go through any sort of approval process (even a truncated one), buyers will learn this information at some point. If your neighborhood is described as funky and vibrant, as code for the fact that your house is under the train tracks and you live in between a wrecking yard and a biker bar, prospects will figure this out. If the detailed information about your home, neighborhood or even transactional position (e.g., short sale status, seller financing, etc.) is misrepresented, the sheer misrepresentation will turn otherwise interested buyers off. If you authorize your agent to “verbally approve” the buyer’s offer, don’t go back the next day demanding an extra $5,000. In cases where the buyer feels misled, whether or not that was your intention, running through the buyer’s mind is this question: If they can’t trust you to be honest about this, how can they trust you to be honest about everything else?

What’s a Seller to do? Buyers rely on sellers to be upfront and honest – so be both. If your home has features or aspects that are often perceived negatively, your home’s listing probably shouldn’t lead with them (like the ad I recently saw with the intro line: “this place is a mess!”), but neither should you go out of your way to slant or skew or spin the facts which will be obvious to anyone who visits your home. Make sure you know what the listing of your home reads like, before it’s published to the web, and that a prospective buyer will not feel misled by it.

5. New, ugly home improvements. Many a buyer has walked into a house that has clearly been remodeled and upgraded in anticipation of the sale, only to have their heart sink with the further realization that the brand-spanking-new kitchen features a countertop made, not of Carerra marble, but brand-new, pink tiles with a kitty cat in the middle of each one (I saw this once, people – no joke). Or the pristine, just-installed floors feature carpet in a creamy shade of blue – the buyer’s least favorite color. New home improvements that run totally counter to a buyer’s aesthetics are a big turn-off, because in today’s era of Conspicuous Frugality, buyers just can’t cotton to ripping out expensive, brand new, perfectly functioning things just on the basis of style – especially since they’ll feel like they paid for these things in the price of the home.

What’s a Seller to do? Check in with a local broker or agent before you make a big investment in a pre-sale remodel. They can give you a reality check about the likely return on your investment, and help you prioritize about which projects to do (or not). Instead of spending $40,000 on a new, less-than-attractive kitchen, they might encourage you to update appliances, have the cabinets painted and spend a few grand on your curb appeal. Many times, they will also help you do the work of selecting neutral finishes that will work for the largest possible range of buyer tastes.

6. CRAZY listing photos (or no photos at all). Here at Trulia, we’ve seen listing photos that have dumpsters parked in front of the house, piles of laundry all over the“hardwood” floors touted in the listing description, and once, even the family dog doing his or her business in the lovely green front yard. Listing pictures that have put your home in anything but its best, accurate light are a very quick way to ensure that you turn off a huge number of buyers from even coming to see your house! The only bigger buyer turn-off than these bizarre listing pics are listings that have no photos at all; most buyers on today’s market see a listing with no pictures and click right on past it, without giving the place a second glance.

What’s a Seller to do? Check your home’s listing on Trulia and make sure that the pics represent your home well. If not, ask your agent to grab some new shots and get them online (and say pretty please, pretty please!).

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson

Today’s home sellers have a hard row to hoe, as my Mom would say. Home values have dropped, the market is flooded with competition and even if a buyer does come along, a record high number of deals fall through. On top of that, they face the age-old conundrum of having two seemingly conflicting aims: they want to get their homes sold, fast, but also want – and need – to squeeze every single possible dollar out of it.

While it’s tempting to price your place on the high side and ‘test the market’ or ‘negotiate down,’ overpricing your home can actually deter buyers, cause your home to lag on the market and eventually even expose you to the risk of being perceived as desperate and receiving lowball offers.

Here are 5 ‘cures’ to the temptation to overprice your home, all of which can help you max out the chance that your home will sell.

1. Check the Comps! “Comps” is real estate lingo for comparable sales – the nearby, similar homes that have recently sold. You might think that your taste level, aesthetic style and home maintenance practices are vastly superior to those of your neighbors – and you might be right. But this will be the single largest purchase your home’s eventual buyer will ever make, and trust me – they will be doing the research. The small contingent of urgent and qualified buyers who are active on today’s market do not want to overpay for a home, and most will view your home as overpriced and not worth the hassle (or the haggle) if it is out of whack with the recent sales prices of similar homes.

Similarly, appraisers will use these numbers when figuring out your home’s value. Even if you do get an offer at a higher-than-justified price, if the buyer’s appraiser finds that your home is overvalued compared to other nearby recent sales, it can cause major delays in your buyer’s mortgage process – or derail it altogether.

Work with your agent to find and evaluate the recent sales in the area, and to ensure that your home’s list price makes sense vis-a-vis the comps.

2. Get inside the minds of the local home buyers. The vast majority of buyers – over 90 percent – start their house huntinhg online. And what most of them do is type in a price range, a range of bedrooms and bathrooms and a geographic area, then spend dozens of obsessive hours perusing hundreds of listings.

Given the flooded market and buyers’ busy lives, many will screen your home off their interest list in a New York minute if it seems overpriced from its online listing. If that one-inch picture and the number of beds, baths and square feet either (a) doesn’t make it into their search results because the price is so much higher than what most local buyers want to spend on a home with those criteria, or (b) seems underwhelming, for the price, compared to the other online listings of similar homes, prospective buyers will never even make it into your home, and all your stunning staging and crave-able curb appeal will never have the opportunity to work their magic.

Local agents have an inside track on what local buyers care about and what they will and will not spend. Talk to your agent about it, but don’t forget to actually listen to and consider what your agent has to say! If you don’t trust what an agent is telling you about where you should list your home, talk to several agents – if the consensus is a recommended list price range lower than what you had in mind, that’s a sign you should reconsider.

Also, search for similar homes to yours on Trulia, to see how it would stack up against similar listings online at the price range you have in mind. That’s where local prospective buyers will see it (and screen it in or out) first.

3. Visit competing Open Houses. Buyers do not shop for homes in a vacuum. They’re out there looking at dozens of homes – or more – to make sure they’re (a) getting the best deal possible, and (b) not missing ‘the one.’ So, while viewing a thumbnail image of your competition and seeing the list prices of other homes online is informative, it is even more useful to walk through the actual properties with which your home is competing, in living color.

Before you put your home on the market, take a few hours and visit nearby Open Houses. This exercise is the most vivid way to get a reality check about what you’re up against and what your home’s strengths and weaknesses are compared with the other homes buyers will see, which will go a long way in getting you to the right asking price. Even if you are unpleasantly surprised at how nice the neighboring homes are at low prices, taking this information in before you list your home is much less painful than waiting months for the market to give you this education (in the form of no or uber-low offers).

4. Get an inspection – in advance. Home buyers have long used the home inspection as a negotiating tool to get the seller to come down on the sale price mid-stream. Get ahead of the game by getting your own inspection(s) – talk with your agent about which ones are appropriate – and getting the skinny on your home’s condition before you list it. Keep in mind that you will likely need to provide any written professional inspections you obtain before listing your home to the buyer under your state’s real estate disclosure laws.

You might be able to repair some things at relatively low cost and include the recent improvements in your marketing. Alternatively, you can set and negotiate pricing based on any condition issues or needed repairs you want to pass down to the buyer. This empowers you to get to a final price that aligns with market conditions and the condition of your home without taking massive mid-escrow hits on pricing. It also empowers you to offer a discount for needed fixes up front, when the price break has the most power to help attract bargain-seeking buyers.

5. When in doubt, go low. An overpriced home, in most cases, will cause a lot more problems in your real estate journey than an underpriced one. Think about it: an overpriced home just sits on the market with little or no buyer interest until the seller cuts the price. And many interested buyers just sit, waiting for that price cut, seeing it as a cue to make an even lower offer.

Now, consider the opposite end of the pricing spectrum: you start with a lower price than you want, but one that is supported by the comps in your market – or even goes a tad bit lower than recent homes have sold for. Lots of buyers are attracted to your house, in part because it looks like a great value for the price. You end up with multiple offers, which gives you the upper hand in negotiating a higher price.

The moral: if you aren’t sure about what price to place on your home, go a little bit lower than the recent comps sold for. Insiders know from experience that you’ll sell your home faster this way – and at a better price than if you overprice it out of the gate.

These steps can help you get out of your own way, get a bird’s eye view on the market and see your home as buyers will see it. And that’s a reality check that can make the difference between selling your home and not.