Homes in original condition would benefit, but you can’t finance these:
Home shoppers usually want to see a property at its best. This means that sellers truck in staged furniture, slap on fresh paint, and repair potential problems for buyers.
“When you walk into a beautifully designed and furnished unit, people can much more easily place themselves in this atmosphere,” says Jade Mills, a real estate agent at Coldwell Banker in Beverly Hills.
However, there’s an entirely different alternative that home sellers are trying. It’s called “white-boxing”. Home sellers—especially those in luxury markets with high-end properties that are in great locations—are ripping out everything in a home before showing the property.
As counterproductive as this may sound, white-boxing lets prospective home buyers start from scratch. It allows them to focus on potential and maybe even the views outside the residence, rather than what’s inside the home, which may not suit their tastes.
“White-boxing” is the exact opposite of staging a home to enhance its appeal. Instead of using furniture and accessories to sell the space, it presents a blank canvas, without the aesthetic choices in place, and allows the buyer to dream up layouts and floor design.
White-boxing is most relevant in luxury markets like New York City and Los Angeles, where breathtaking views and a desirable location are common selling points of a house, Mills says.
“As recently as a few years ago, it would be relatively rare for a seller to go to market with unfinished luxury space, but now, there’s increasing recognition that ‘designer-ready’ is exceedingly more attractive than ‘move-in ready’ to the ultrawealthy,” Josh Greer of Hilton & Hyland told CNBC.
https://www.realtor.com/advice/buy/white-boxing-real-estate/
Besides the financing issue, this seems like a great idea because it is a better allocation of resources in markets where houses are going to be remodeled by the buyers anyway.
Seems like someone should come up with a financial product for white boxed houses.
Agree – it could become a movement as we continue to see long-time owners sell their homes – ones that haven’t been touched for 20-40 years.
Avocado green is never coming back! 😆
Using my “there’s a party going on, and you aren’t invited” theory, the buyers of these property’s aren’t likely to be too concerned about bank financing, if they really want the space, they have viable choices besides begging a bank.
Logic doesn’t work well off the premise of, “if I haven’t experienced it, it just can’t be!” Common sense of the rich can often seem counter-intuitive to the rest of us.
I suspect the customers of this product would rather commercial banks not be wading into their party pool.
Yep, and if you click the cnbc link at bottom of article, it shows them trying to sell the shells for eight figures.
Um, as long as people are starting from scratch and as long as money is no object, just demolish it and call it a land-boxing.
“Um, as long as people are starting from scratch and as long as money is no object, just demolish it and call it a land-boxing.”
Generally, that’s what lotto winners do. Not rich people.