Hold off on baked cookies when selling says WSU research
Feb 20, 2013, 9:06 AM | Updated: Mar 4, 2016, 5:53 am
Home shoppers have long paid attention to the smell of a home, but new research suggests that some common scents can actually be a drawback.
Eric Spangenberg, dean of the college of business at Washington State University, said that complex scents, like baked goods, can be a distraction to potential homebuyers because they’ll subconsciously dedicate time to try to figure out what the scent is.
But at a real estate open house, you want a potential buyer not to be distracted by processing a smell.
“They are there to process whether this is a place they want to live,” said Spangenberg.
Some of the worst scents for real estate open houses: Potpourri, chocolate-chip cookies, gourmet foods, and other baked goods.
Instead simple scents – like pine, lemon, and cedar – are easier to process and less distracting, Spangenberg said.