Preparing premises before selling

Why smell changes the price

A buyer reaches their first conclusion faster than they get round to looking at the rooms. Before they have assessed the layout, the windows or the finish, they have already smelled the air. And smell works differently from a visual impression: it cannot be "overlooked", and it does not produce a specific thought so much as a general sense of whether the property has been looked after.

In practice this shows up in two ways. Some buyers simply do not make an offer and leave without saying why. Others do make an offer, but a lower one, because they assume work will be needed. In both cases the loss is considerably larger than the cost of treatment.

The smells we most often meet in properties being prepared for sale:

• Damp and musty smell — in a flat that has stood empty a long time or has had a moisture problem. To a buyer it reads as "mould".
• Tobacco smell — soaked into ceilings, wallpaper and upholstery. There is more on this on the Cigarette smell removal page.
• Animal smell — often the owner no longer notices it, having grown used to it. A buyer notices immediately.
• The "old flat" smell — the sum of several processes: dust, old textiles, dried-out traps, infrequent ventilation.

The smell is often not where people look for it — and the owner usually cannot smell it at all any more.

It is important to understand that owners generally cannot smell their own premises. The human sense of smell adapts to a constant background within days. So the most useful test is to ask someone who has not been in the flat to come in and say honestly what they can smell.

Where the source usually turns out to be

Another practical observation from the work: the smell is often not where people look for it. They think about upholstery and curtains, but the actual source turns out to be the ventilation duct, a dried-out trap in a floor gully, an old kitchen cupboard under the sink or the space behind the fridge.

That is why we always start with finding the source rather than going straight to ozone treatment. Ozone without dealing with the source gives a result that lasts a few days, and the buyer who arrives a week later smells exactly the same thing.

There is a second reason treatment before a sale pays for itself, and it has nothing to do with smell. An empty flat that has just had a full treatment simply looks different at a viewing: the air is fresh and the surfaces are clean. That changes the tone of the conversation from "how much more will I have to put in" to "when can we sign".

When to do it

Here the order matters more than the work itself. Treatment should be done before the listing is prepared, not after the first unsuccessful viewings.

There is one case where treatment is better postponed: if renovation is planned before the sale. Then the treatment has to come after the work, not before it, because construction dust and the emissions from new materials would take you back to the start.

If you are selling an inherited property that nobody has lived in for a long time, the situation is slightly different: alongside the smell there will usually be dust, dried-out traps and possibly mould in places that have not been visible for years. In that case an inspection is more useful than ozone treatment ordered straight away, because you need to know what you are dealing with before treating it.

How we work

A practical note on ozone treatment: the premises need airing afterwards, and for a day after treatment there can still be a faint specific note in the air. So it is best planned at least a day before the photo shoot or the first viewing, rather than the same morning. That one day makes more difference to the result than it seems.

If the property is being sold with the furniture, bear in mind that upholstery, mattresses and curtains are often the main carriers of the smell. Sometimes the better option is not to treat them but to take them out — an empty flat looks more spacious at a viewing, and the source of the smell is gone.

If there is mould

We are asked this often: is it enough simply to paint over the patches before a sale. In practice that almost never works, and the reasons are entirely practical.

So the cheapest option is usually to treat the area properly rather than twice. There is more on the treatment itself on the Mould removal page.

It also matters that treatment is only worthwhile once the cause has been dealt with. If the moisture comes from a damaged roof, a cold external wall or ventilation that does not work, treatment removes the growth but it returns within months. What to do about it depends on the cause, and a moisture reading is what shows that.

The scope varies enormously here. If the mould is small and covers a few square metres, treatment is usually quick and cheap. If it is behind a fitted wardrobe along the full length of a wall, that is a different job at a different price — and better known before the listing goes live than during a viewing.

Prices

Flats from €55: two-room from €65, three-room from €75. Private houses from €95. Ozone treatment €1.20/m², minimum €60.

If mould treatment is also needed, we quote for it separately after an inspection. We set the exact price once we know the floor area and the situation. If you plan to let the property after the sale, or you are preparing several properties, see also Disinfection after tenants.