Ask The Experts: The Sweet Smell Of A Clean Home Sells

Selling Your Home? It’s Time To Come Clean About Odours By Colin Croteau ask the experts

Cannabis, tobacco, and urine odours can lower the value of your home — what is the solution?

Cannabis use has grown over the last five years, especially now that our federal government has fully legalized medicinal or recreational use of cannabis.

However, if you are looking to sell your home and there is a tobacco/cannabis odour in the environment, those odours could lower the value of your home by 25 to 29% as noted in Investopedia.com. That is a tremendous drop in value! As a matter of fact, the top three odours that a home should not have if you are looking to sell it are: pet odours; protein and other food odours (such as fish, curry, onions, and garlic), and tobacco/cannabis odours.

When sticky tobacco residues accumulate, the resulting pesky film on interior building surfaces, continually releases malodours. Heavy smoking over a long period of time causes stubborn and severe smoke odours.

Our sense of smell can determine a lot of things for us. Some potential home buyers can walk through a home and walk right out within minutes and never return, while others will still look. Odours linger and make an impact on the brain and how we perceive that particular home.

And it’s no wonder — tobacco, marijuana, and residual urine, not only leave behind a malodour, but also leave behind contaminants that affect the air quality of the home.

For example, tobacco contains around 600 ingredients, and when these ingredients are burned, 7,000 chemicals are created. Out of these 7,000, at least 69 are known to cause cancer and many are toxic (Lung.org). As for pet urine, the main components of it will affect indoor air quality by the release of gases such as ammonia and bioaerosols. “Bioaerosols include a wide variety of inflammatory and physiologically active components, including endotoxin, fungal

cell wall fragments, and dust particles that can reach lower airways” (Animal Hoarding and Public Health — Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium). Ammonia is also considered “immediately dangerous to life and health at 300 p.p.m.” according to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health in the U.S.A.

So, can you really expect the home to retain its full value when the lingering residues are both unpleasant to the nose, and could be toxic to your health?

Of course, we can’t please everyone all of the time, but if you can avoid these odours, that will certainly help. The most important smell you can leave buyers with is the smell of “clean.”

Keep your home sparkling clean, free of dirt and dust and you will be rewarded with an increase in the value of your home.

Colin Croteau is owner of Croteau Cleaning Services (CroteauCleaning.ca).