The Color of Your Home Can Be a Key Determinant of Eventual Sales Price

Are you looking to move?

A lot of people are right now. After many years of staying put, largely because home prices tanked so badly during the Great Recession, more people are once again interested in putting on their walking shoes and finding another place to live now that values have recovered enough to allow mobility.

To do that, though, you have to sell the house you���re in, presently, and to do that, you have to pay attention to what makes a house more palatable to potential buyers.

Like the right color.

It turns out that colors can make a big difference when it comes to how much you can land for your present digs.

As reported by USA Today, the popular online housing marketplace Zillow decided to look at over 32,000 photos of sold houses to see what sort of impact the color of those residences had on the prices at which they ultimately transacted.

The big loser? Interior walls painted a shade of terracotta. It seems that while last year houses with walls painted that color sold for about $800 less than the sales price predicted by Zillow, houses that sell this year with walls of that color are going for over $2,000 less, on average.

���Painting walls in fresh, natural-looking colors, particularly in shades of blue and pale gray, not only make a home feel larger but also are neutral enough to help future buyers envision themselves living in the space,��� said Zillow chief economist Svenja Gudell.

Don���t forget about the exterior, either. According to Zillow���s research, navy blue or slate gray front doors can mean that you see over $1,500 more at the closing table. Also popular right now, as an exterior color, is ���greige,��� a clever mix of light gray and beige.

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large