I'm a buyer who doesn't really think twice about wallpaper. If it's nice, I'll keep it, and if not, I'll strip it off myself. But a LOT of people will shy away from it. I do think if what you have is very nice, you might be able to keep some if not all of it. You might consider removing some of it since there is so much... Maybe post some photos here or at the decorating board for opinions.

For the most part, people today consider wallpapers 'dated'. And, if yours went on twelve years ago when you remodeled I can almost assure you that will be the case. Also, wallpaper is a very personal decorating style that is unlikely to appeal to 'the masses'. Please understand that this is not meant to reflect poorly on you nor your house...people's tastes are just different.

Whether you choose to remove it, or not, is of course up to you. Be aware though that many potential buyers will do one of two things in considering your house for purchase. They will either:

1.) Pass entirely because stripping the paper is so much work; or
2.) Put in a reduced offer taking into consideration #1 above.

Potential buyers will not want to deal with stripping it any more than you do. If they have to strip it then they'll be looking for a 'deal' on your house.

Yes, there are people who can overlook cosmetics such as wallpaper. There are many more though who cannot. I don't know where you live but in most of the country it's a strong buyer's market. To eliminate 20-40% of your possible buyers because of the wallpaper would not be a smart decision, IMO. It's sorta one of those, "Penny Wise & Pound Foolish" things.

From what you describe, I would, at minimum, remove the paper from the hall, master bedroom, dining room, kitchen, & the master bathroom.

Also, please be aware that a remodel done twelve years ago is not going to be considered "upgraded" today. Unless you were way ahead of the curve with your design sense, anyway you cut it, a twelve year old kitchen is 'dated'. Today's homebuyers are looking for the granite & SS appliance look. Especially in higher-priced homes, anything other than that is going to be labelled with the dreaded "D" word. It's not always right nor certainly fair but it's how it is in today's marketplace.

There are people on this Forum familar with markets all over the country. If you post where you're located we can gear advice/opinions more specifically to your area. For example, I think wallpaper is more commonly found in some parts of the country than others.

I live in New England. Here, in order to get top dollar for your house the wallpaper would have to come down. And, since the market is generally expected to be worse spring '08 than it is even now I feel pretty safe in saying the more you can do now to bring your property to today's style preferences the better your chances to sell. The general advice I'm starting to give is that unless you have to sell in the near future...consider waiting. There's so much inventory out there that needs to be absorbed & many people who really need to sell. For those who would just enjoy moving to another property...it's my personal & professional opinion that's it's better to wait 2-4 years to allow some of this inventory to clear. Also, if you sell in 2-4 years you're much more likely to take advantage of the newly upswinging real estate market. Today, we've still got a long downward drift ahead of us.

Should you list in the spring, I, of course, wish you a quick & stress-free experience.

/tricia

Have to say it depends. I think you should start interviewing agents, there's an agent question post by me that can help you get questions together. One question is if there is anything that could be done to the house or something to that effect. We had an agent friend that discussed things with us before we put it on the market, our biggie was the paneled master which we remodeled.

I really think that asking for opinions on wallpaper and actually seeing pictures of your wallpaper are 2 different things. If you read one of my posts in the link below, I state that some builders are using wallpaper in new builds. It depends on the paper, how much and your area. The pricing of your house with wallpaper to reflect an allowance to remove it and paint, may also help it sell without having to remove it.

How much have you spent updating the house so far? How much more will the wallpaper removal & paint cost? Is there any way you can do these things yourself? I ask because in this market you may not be doing yourself any favors, and leaving the rest of it to keep the price lower may help sell it quicker. It all depends on your area. Tricia is posting while I'm typing, she's correct in saying some people will pass it up, even if it is priced lower unless it's a great deal to begin with for the area. Hard to say in this market especially not knowing your area or what the paper looks like.

I was confident our house would sell quick. I'm on a fairly main road (25 mph speed limit) so my house gets exposure. I have the nicest looking house on the whole street / development. The price is even decent. I can't get people to even walk my house. Turns out someone stopped the other day asking how much we were down to, saying they were watching our house but also watching a few foreclosures. This wasn't something I even thought of, and after seeing what houses are on the list, so far none compare to mine but people seem to be shopping price, even if they have to sink a lot of money into it.

Here is a link that might be useful: What am I doing right/what am I doing wrong?

As far as wallpaper, my dining room, kitchen, hall, bathrooms, and master bedroom and one of the other bedrooms are all wallpapered.

I like wallpaper, but even for me, that's a lot of wallpaper. If it is wonderful wallpaper, maybe it would work, but as roselvr wrote, asking for opinions on wallpaper and actually seeing pictures it are quite different. Would you consider posting photos to a website and giving us a link?

If it was designed selected, then hopefully it was professionally applied, which means it should come down fairly easily.

If the workmen in your home are commenting that it is too much wallpaper, maybe that's a sign.

After stripping wallpaper from walls that were not properly prepped in my dining room, kitchen, breakfast nook,hallway and 3 bathrooms I hope to never buy another home with wallpaper in it again. It is a lot of work and actually may deter a lot of people. Do the work for them. After 12 years I can almost guarantee that the wallpaper is dated.

My brother-in-law's house languished on the market for almost a year. He and his wife loved the wallpaper they had put up when they bought the house 15 years before. I told him to get rid of it and he resisted. Within 2 weeks of stripping the wallpaper and painting the rooms, he received an offer.

Wallpaper is personal and there are people that love wallpaper, but will they like what you've put up or do they want their own personal choices. I'd vote to have it removed.

"Too remove the wallpaper and paint it would be too much money now."

Buyers will agree with you, and lower their offers.

"Our home is on an acre lot on a corner and has really nice landscaping so great curb appeal."

Lots of people don't like corner lots. You can't change that fact about your house, but it will be another thing that eliminates some buyers.

You might consider having a consultation with a designer or stager to determine if your wallpaper would be considered dated now. That 12 year old remodel may still feel new to you, but your potential buyers are comparing it to a 2 year old remodel down the street.

You don't mention where you are, but I wonder if you are jumping the gun having the house powerwashed before winter. Won't it just look dirty again before you put it on the market in the spring?

Just like anything else, it is about opinions..If the wallpaper is very busy,or dated,yes,perhaps it would make a prospective buyer offer less, but i don't believe for 1 minute you will lose a buyer because of it.I sold my home and 3/4 of the rooms were papered. Why papered? Because the walls behind the paper were so poorly painted it would have taken more work to get them in good condition to paint, then to paper..That said, the wallpaper in most rooms were monotone,no stripes,no patterns, just a faux paint look...

You are doing so much to prep your house for a quick sale and top dollar, it would be a shame for you to stop short of taking down the wallpaper. Without seeing pictures, the advice you have been given to remove it and paint a nice, neutral color is excellent. If you were to post pictures and your area, you may get varying opinions.

Friends of ours bought a very nice 1920's Dutch Colonial that had wallpaper in virtually every room, 7 different kinds in total. The owner was SO proud of it, and it was expensive stuff.

Definitely not to our friends' taste, one of whom is a painter and had lots of his paintings waiting to be hung. Though they didn't insult the owner by telling him, it definitely had a negative impact on the price they offered.

After they bought it, down came every scrap of wallpaper.

Sight unseen, I suspect it should be removed. If the paper was put up properly, it will be easy to remove. But, some wallpaper is a bear to remove. Buyers will probably assume it will be hard to remove. Why not strip and repaint a room yourself to find out how easy or hard it is. If you do one room a month, you will be ready in spring. Or throw a stripping party and ask friends and family to pitch in for pizza and beverages.

a stripping party??? Not sure how many friends will show uo for that ;)

If you word the invitation right, a lot of men might show up for that stripping party.

I sold my mom's house in 2 days and it had wallpaper in the kitchen and both baths. The buyers did strip it. However, it had a lot of pluses including being the only 1 story in the area with a 3 car garage for sale. If your house is truly special the wallpaper can be over looked but it also depends on the paper.

If you could post pictures of the papers it would help.

After stripping wallpaper in a house I owned (and ending up with three broken ribs as a result...long story) and in DH's old house, I swore I'd never again buy a house with wallpaper. Well, our current house has wallpaper! The dining room has two different complementary wallpapers separated by chair railing, and it's very nice paper. I'd call it "designer" paper. It's very tastefully done. Our guest bedroom is painted light pink on three walls and then has a corresponding wall of wallpaper. It appears to be cheaper paper, but still tasteful. Our 1/2 bath is also wallpapered in a nautical theme. I really like it least of all, but because it looks fine and I so dislike stripping wallpaper, I will probably leave it alone.

The wallpaper I stripped in the house I owned was two layers. The top one was covered in stains and was very dated. This was a '50s house decorated in '70s style. That didn't deter me from buying the house because I figured it was cosmetics, and you can fix cosmetics fairly inexpensively. Plus, everything else about the house was "right."

I would not worry about having too much wallpaper. Like you said, it's a cosmetic issue, not a repair issue. Some people will like it, some won't, and others won't care. But if your wallpaper is faded, dirty/stained, or dated, I would consider painting over it if you can (not sure that's recommended, however) or stripping it and painting it.

Please do not paint over the wallpaper -- the only thing worse then taking down a lot of wallpaper off of walls that weren't prepped properly is taking off wallpaper that has been painted over!!

Cordovamom: Please do not paint over the wallpaper -- the only thing worse then taking down a lot of wallpaper off of walls that weren't prepped properly is taking off wallpaper that has been painted over!!

I agree 1000%!!!

The POs painted over a wallpaper in a small bathroom in my current house. The bathroom needs to be gutted as that wallpaper is not going anywhere! If I ever see painted over wallpaper in another house, even if the house was completely perfect in every other way, I would walk before putting in an offer. Seriously.

If the paper was properly painted over you can't tell. If it was poorly done, you can.

I will never, never, ever buy a house with wallpaper again, unless the owners agree to strip all the wallpaper and paint at their expense before I move in and I will put that in my offer. I don't want a credit either, I want it done before I move in.

I am speaking from having removed wallpaper in several houses (and not that much of it) that was terrible to remove. One house the wallpaper was installed over wallboard that had not been primed and when we removed the wallpaper (dark, dark blue cloth type with flowers in a bathroom), the wallboard came off too.

Oops, I have to eat my words. I just remembered, about two years ago I visited a home on a garden tour which was built in the 50's and the original owner/builder still lived there. She had wallpaper in her long hallway that was the most beautiful cream embossed (but not shiny) wallpaper with a simple pattern, I have ever seen, very understated. I suspect it was very high end paper. As I recall I asked her about it not being able to tell it was wallpaper - thought it was a wall texture effect. If I saw that wallpaper I might ask to have it left in. Her house was impeccably decorated - even if it was a bit dated - but the home was very livable. Still had avocado appliances in the kitchen that were in perfect shape - not sure how people can keep things in such good working order for so long. And of course she had beautiful gardens - something which would have appealed to me if I were purchasing her home.

I am however, able to overlook the color paint or decorating style in homes if they have good bones. I don't buy people's decorating I buy the structure of the house. But as I understand most buyers aren't like that - they can't "picture" what a house will look like painted or decorated differently.

I don't mean to be discouraging but agree with the wallpaper 'haters'. It's a pain to remove and if someone likes wallpaper, odds are they won't necessarily love yours.

Also, our house is on a corner and that has been a bad thing, much to our surprise.

We were also told by someone 'too much landscaping'.

Every house will eventually find a buyer but if you really want to appeal to the most people, I think you need to get used to the idea of spending some money to make it look neutral and less dated. OR alternatively you can just price it very low so it's a steal for someone.

I put in new carpet and granite in the kitchen and some other minor things. I won't get that money back. So, if you don't want to change out wallpaper, price it down about $8k.

JMHO

I live in a small town just outside of Schenectady, NY. Since we are in the capital district the home market is fairly stable here. Also, there is a lot of businesses that supposedly are moving into the area for nanotechnology.
Anyway, my town is mostly all suburban area. 6 houses sold this summer within a few blocks of my home for decent prices. They went pretty fast. Mostly the homes are all different here so it is hard to compare prices. However, my tax assessment is one of the higher ones in the neighborhood based on my square footage and remodel was done right before they reassessed.

My house is not the nicest in this neighborhood, nor the biggest. But we have a gorgeous park like lot. There are new homes across town selling in the $900 and up range. I know I am not going to compete with them. But our home should sell from $450k somewhere into the $500K range One up the street that was not updated on a dead end street (house smaller than mine- sold for $469K recently)

As I said before our neighborhood is very desirable and my home is one of the more updated ones. We have a master bath suite area that many people desire. I am not sure what the earlier poster meant when they said the "D" word. We have granite counter tops, mostly white appliances, but a built in Kitchenaid refridge and microwave/convection and standard oven combination along with some wild cherry cabinets. I have a built in china buffet in the kitchen.

The den is all painted and has built in entertainment center, spiral staircase to a cantilevered exercise loft from which you can access the master bedroom, and there are two built bookcases either side of the floating marble fireplace. We also have two built in window seats in the room.

I tried to take pictures but it was too dark tonight for some of them. Just remember that I took the remaining pictures in unnatural light so everything is darker than it looks in person.

Here is my wallpaper in my kitchen:

{{gwi:2053482}}

Here is wallpaper (kind of nondescript) in my mudroom hall
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Here is the wallpaper in the main hall (It is not as dark as it seems.. due to bad lighting when taken)
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Here is the dining room wallpaper. This room was not remodelled It is the oldest paper but if I remove it and paint the walls I feel I would need to spend money to update the trim as well as it would look very plain.
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Here is the wallpaper in DR with the cheap trim (sorry it is tilted so I could fit it all in):
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Here is the wallpaper in the main bathroom upstairs: There is a separate room for the toilet and shower/bathtub. This room was not part of our remodel. Also, the paper is different in the room just next to it that has double sinks and closet. Those pictures didn't turn out so I will try to post tomorrow.
{{gwi:2053487}}

Here is another look at it (with the chair rail and lower) sorry it is tilted again:
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Here is the wallpaper in the one bedroom (the smallest room of four.. I call it the nursery)
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Here is the wallpaper in the master bathroom. The cabinets were all custom made. The original space was the master bathroom and the bedroom. It is now a large master bathroom and a dressing room. I have all white bathroom accessories with gold plated fixtures. The floor tile is white with burgundy trim and goes around the corner whirlpool tub. There are black granite accents. We did our sinks back to back in a hexagon shape in the middle of the room with black counter tops with gold trim on side.

{{gwi:2053490}}

Here is a another picture with the tub tile showing (sorry the picture is tilted to get in the tile The floor is white ceramic tile with burgundy diamonds in it.

{{gwi:2053491}}

The pictures of my bedroom wallpaper didn't turn out. WAY too dark. But it looks like faux paint only it is not. The only reason we didn't do it was that faux painting was just coming out and I wasn't sure I was gonna like it.

I will try to post a picture of that room and the paper in the main bathroom where the sinks are.

Since the house will be going up for sale in the spring (March or April) and we can have snow here up through May, we had to power wash now. It cleaned up the mold that was forming on the north of the house and for the most part it will stay clean until the spring.

My parents had that black wallpaper in an upstairs bedroom 25 years ago. How do I know the paper was that long ago? It was in the house when my sister moved out .... 25 years ago (so the paper was actually older than that). I wish I could recall if my father put it up or if my sister did. My father never put up a wall paper that wasn't cloth-backed - he absolutely refused to even consider it. That meant taking it down was very easy with no wall destruction. If your papers are clothed backed, your task will not be herculean.

As far as it being a detriment to selling? Heck yeah! I'd walk. It really should be taken down and the walls painted.

In my last post I almost said that if any of your paper is floral or has geese it will probably look dated. I'm afraid it really does. Yes the rooms will look plain to you if painted because you are used to them this way. The effect won't be the same on potential buyers.

I have four days off this weekend and will be stripping some geese off a bathroom wall. Believe me, the rest of us don't have perfectly updated homes either. We understand your dilemma. It's a lot of work to impress critical buyers.

It all looks dated and way too much of it.

The kitchen isn't too bad....except for the top boarder. Perhaps you could cover the boarder with one that is lighter in color and less busy.

The mudroom hall is ok.

The main hall is aweful. This is the first space visible from the front door. It's orange. What a turn off.

The dining room is so busy, it is very distracting. But the trim is fine - it doesn't need any work.

The main upstairs bathroom is marginal; at least the top third isn't too bad.

The small bedroom is probably ok, not great, but it is not bold or busy.

The master bath wallpaper takes the cake. It is shockingly bold, busy and dark, Dark, DARK !! Absolutely a HUGE turn off. Must go.

Again, these papers are prolly great for you - but at least 80% of the folks who look at your house will view them negatively. Give a prospective buyer a "clean slate" to help them visualize them living there. Right now, the papers distract the viewer from what appears to be very nice spaces.

Years ago I passed up on a home that was almost all wallpaper...it was the type that was made of tin foil containing a print! How do you steam that stuff off?

I suggest you start researching agents, it's possible they will tell you to leave some of the paper and get rid of others. I don't know the market, but parts of NY are still pretty good. IMO for the price, I would need at least some of it removed, especially the darker more dated looking stuff:

The kitchen - depending on how it looked, I might leave it, or as brewbeer suggested, do something at least with the border.

The main hall - should be removed. This was probably what the contractors 1st saw, then after seeing you had a considerable amount of paper, made their comment. 1st impressions are everything, and while you may get people in to view the home, it could be that once they stepped in, they turned and left.

The dining room is so busy, it is very distracting. But the trim is fine - it doesn't need any work.

Have to agree. Are there any new builds going up that you can visit? I think if you did, you will see you have good walls to work with, it's all in the way it's painted. They will use 2 wall colors, then take the top color and add it inside the trim on the bottom. Looks really nice. If you don't like the trim, you can paint it.

The main upstairs bathroom is marginal; at least the top third isn't too bad

The paper in there is peeling, it can be seen in the 2nd picture lower right.

The nursery - Not nuts about the geese. I'm pretty sure my son's great aunt has paper like this, it's pretty old. I don't know if putting a different border will work.

The master bath - paper is dark, picture 1 what is the panel on the left with the little wood handle?

I have all white bathroom accessories with gold plated fixtures.

Depending on your market, you might need to replace the gold fixtures. In our new house, the builder is giving us builder grade lighting which is gold and will be changed out asap. Since I am not a gold fan; don't even wear gold jewelry, perhaps it bothers me more. I've never liked gold, all my life choosing silver or white gold. This is one of the easiest, inexpensive fixes a person can do to a house to update it. Even if you went to Lowes and bought the 2 pack lighting, it is better then gold.

They suggested we contact our realtor (we don't have one yet) to see what they think about changing the wallpaper to paint only.

Anyway, my town is mostly all suburban area. 6 houses sold this summer within a few blocks of my home for decent prices.

If you don't know where to start to look for an agent, think back to the ones that sold the 6 houses. You can also go to Realtor.com put your zip in the search box. On the results page, there will be a box on the top left with room for 2 houses. The one that comes up is here (I see it's in Troy, not sure how close that is to you), next, uncheck everything but single family homes, view as list. Hopefully you will find an agent that has enhanced listings. Could be that you don't need that, but only need one of the agents that listed the 6.

Here is a link that might be useful: Agent Questions

OK, thanks for posting the pictures.

First, I retract my comments about the remodel. Now that we know where you're located, I've taken a look at your competition in the $450K-$500K range. That combined with your further descriptions for the kitchen it sounds like that part of the remodel should work fine even in today's market. You've got a lot of new build competition though which is really tough. The builders are able to offer incentives that a single homeowner is hard-pressed to duplicate. In market conditions as we have today, even small, local builders should be able to convince their lenders to help with incentives to move standing inventory.

Now, about the wallpaper. It's distinctive & geared towards your tastes. And, it probably looks great with your furnishings. However, it's going to be very difficult for most buyers to envision THEIR furnishings blending with the wallpaper. So, as soon as they open the front door...I can almost hear the groans. Right away, they are going to be viewing your house from a mind-set of, "Wow, this place needs a lot of work!" They will be calculating reductions from your list price as they walk from wallpapered room to wallpapered room.

Based on the work you've already done in preparing for sale, I'm going to make the assumption that your plan is not to just unload the house; but rather to maximize your sales price. That said, the wallpaper needs to be removed, any wall damage repaired, & the house needs to be painted in neutral colors (not whites). This is so that potential buyers can immediately envision themselves living in your house with THEIR furnishings.

If this were a house that I'd taken into REO, here's the order in which I'd tackle the redo:

1.) Entryway (only one chance to make a first impression);
2.) Master bathroom (extremely stylized to your preferences & dated to today's decorating preferences);
3.) Dining room (it's formal & most people today are far more casual with their furnishings reflecting that trend in clean, straight lined styles which are incompatable with the wallpaper);
4.) Kitchen (I believe the small, thin stripe could stay but the bold, floral border is going to draw people's eyes straight to it...remove the border if you can. If that's not possible then strip the entire room)
5.) The second bathroom (a family with boys will not like that bathroom...make it gender neutral)
6.) The 'Ducky' room (I don't know...it's cute...but, unless a buyer is looking for a nursery it's not going to work & most people want to design their own nurseries...it's kinda a big deal to most new parents)
7.) The mudroom is neutral enough that I'd probably leave it.

Yes, this is a LOT of work but that's the whole point. Buyers will see the work also & either walk away or reduce their offer. Buyers almost ALWAYS over estimate what work will cost.

Removing the wallpaper will be either expensive, time-consuming, or both for you as well as disruptive. Remember though a buyer is thinking the same thing. If you can do any of the work yourself that, obviously, would help your bottom line. Even if you decide to hire the stripping, repairs, & painting done I'm sure you'll recoup those costs in the final sale.

The other alternative is to just drop the price of the house enough it looks like a 'deal' to the fixer-upper crowd. To many buyers, a little elbow grease is preferable to a higher price tag. Studies show though that most people will pay a higher price for a turn-key property.

As sad as it sounds, the majority of people after touring your house are not going to notice the power washing but they are really going to remember the wallpaper!

/tricia

As I wrote above, I like wallpaper, but yours would not go with anything I own, so I would be looking at major work if I bought your house. And I would cringe at the thought of how much work it would be for me - and price my offer accordingly.

And besides, have you taken down any of the pictures hanging on the walls to look for fading? There likely is, and it is another reason to remove the paper.

I hate to be one of the chorus but that it is waaaay too much wallpaper. If I saw all that wallpaper in your listing photos I would not even come to see your house, no matter where the location. All that stripping and painting would be a ton of DIY work or cost a fortune. The only way I might even consider it is if your house was priced considerably lower than the rest of the area.

Your home seems well built and I can see there are custom touches throughout. However, the mudroom could stay... all the rest should definitely go.

I hate to say it, but speaking from a buyers stand point, I don't like any of the wallpaper The master bathroom is the worst. I don't like gold fixtures either - and consider them dated. None of the colors of wallpaper in any of the rooms are how I would decorate, so even if I liked wallpaper, the colors aren't what I would pick.

If I wanted to move to your neighborhood, I would look at your house last (assuming I saw the wallpaper in the photos for the listing). If I ever went to see your home, and it had the floorplan I liked and could live with the rest, and if the kitchen is as nice as you say it is and I liked it, then I would make an offer based on remodeling and I would put in the offer that "all the wallpaper (even the mudroom) be removed before closing at seller's expense and walls repainted a neutral color".

It's too hard to deal with wallpaper after moving into a home. I have taken down a small amount (small amount based upon your very large amount) of wallpaper in two homes and it was a ton of work and very messy - I won't ever do it again - even one room with a border is a lot of work.

Buyers usually have other things they want to do to a home even if it is brand new, so they don't want to take down wallpaper on top of that - they want to be able to take the time to personalize the home to their style and taking down the wallpaper would delay that process for them. I think that is in the back of the mind of every potential buyer that makes a decision to purchase a particular home.

"Let's see where can I put the sofa, or wonder if I had some shelves put in there, or would my china hutch fit on that wall" - that is the exiciting stuff to them - then thinking of all that wallpaper is the drudgery and turns them off - you want them to be excited about your home - not feel it will be a pain in the neck - excitement equals dollars, pain equals less and less dollars to you and less and less potential offers. Instead of the potential buyer walking out of your home saying "I really like the kitchen and did you see all that beautiful landscaping", they are saying, "Oh my *...* that wallpaper was terrible" - they are thinking negative thoughts and those thoughts are not leaving any room in their minds for positive thoughts - thoughts that will make them pay more for your home - and help when you start negotiating the final deal with them.

Your house will be forever known to prospective buyers as "the one with the wallpaper." That is what they will remember about it, and what they will be thinking as they pull up to the curb to enter.
It should go.
Sorry to sound harsh.
Jo

OK, now that I've seen the photos, I have to take back my previous comments. Definitely DO worry about this much wallpaper! Talk about overload. Plus, most of this paper is really dated. I think if we were in a better housing market, you could maybe get by with leaving all that paper alone. But because most areas of the country are in a slow market right now, I'd strip all that paper and paint the walls in order to move your house quicker and hopefully get a higher price. I used a wallpaper steamer once that worked wonders. You can rent them from rental stores.

Speaking of being "the house with the wallpaper," I looked at a house once that had VERY worn carpet and a little sign at the entrance that said "please remove shoes." Guess how I remembered this house? As the house with the "carpet so worn that you couldn't wear shoes."

I know you like the wallpaper, but it will not suit many buyer's taste or furnishings. I agree with tricia's priority list.

I'd buy a wallpaper steamer and strip it room by room.

I'm sorry, but your house would have to be priced REALLY low before I would even schedule a walkthrough. I'd see all that wallpaper in the listing photos and just click on through to the next house. Too much wallpaper, too much work.

zoe,

You've gotten some frank, open, & honest opinions here. I'm sure they've been tough to read. I just want to reiterate that it's not meant to reflect on you or your sense of style. It's about marketing.

Your goal is to create a property that will appeal to as many people as possible. That means neutralizing the personal signatures. It helps a lot if you can start working now on emotional detachment. It's no longer your home; but rather a commodity that needs to be marketed. No different than selling a car, really. If I'd just moved to Denver & wanted to sell my Odessy...I'd first remove the Patriots sticker from my rear window because in Bronco land that sticker would be seen immediately & cause an initial negative gut reaction in potential purchasers. That's what we're telling you the wallpaper will cause.

Removing your wallpaper & painting in neutral colors will also help you to detach. It will become less your home & more of just a house. In reading through your original post you noted that you feel the wallpaper, "makes the house". Zoe, that's not true. That's only through your eyes.

I don't know anything about your family. But, I could guess by looking at the pictures that you don't have 3 young boys, 2 large dogs, & a husband who invites his buddies over for pizza/beer to watch the game. Your house needs to be marketed to all types of famiies...even the possibility of a single person of either gender who might want a larger home. To do otherwise limits your potential for a quick sale at an optimum price point.

Anyway, please read the comments here as constructive & not personal. We have a wide spectrum of regular posters to this Forum. They include active sellers/buyers, real estate agents, attorneys, real estate investors, bankers, lenders, & probably some I'm missing. That's a lot of real estate experience. We wouldn't be telling you to remove the wallpaper if we didn't genuinely believe leaving it will hurt your chances of a sale.

/tricia

Anything you can do in this current market to make your house appeal to the broadest possible % of buyers out there only increases your chance for a sale. If you're going to list in the spring, also know that other sellers will be doing the same thing so you may have more competition.

When we were looking for our new house in Louisville, we went through a lot of houses covered in wallpaper. And, quite frankly, I often remembered them by the amount or type of wallpaper I'd have to remove. The house we eventually bought does have some wallpaper but it's primarily in the bathrooms and we have to update those anyway. But that's us, and we are clearly in the minority of buyers who are looking for move in condition and not having to do anything (I know this because we also have a house in Tucson on the market - although so far so good with the 3rd set of buyers).

In preparing our Tucson house for the market, I painted every square inch of the interior with neutrals and we spent
a good $40k to really get the house up to snuff. This included scraping, repairing, re-texturing and painting the ceilings which had the lovely popcorn of the late 1960s. Totally messy job that had us living in plastic for a couple of weeks - but totally worth it because the popcorn immediately dated house.

I wish you lots of luck and please know that we all want the same thing for you and that is to sell your house!

If the house, plumbing, electrical, furnace roof siding windows etc. is in good condition, I like the house and location, wallpaper is not going to turn me off.

Oh, darlin'....

Yes to changing the wallpaper. I sold my home in north Central Florida in November '05, at the very tail end of the bull market, but not after facing the reality that even in the hot market, buyers just DO NOT LIKE wallpaper. We removed every single solitary bit of wallpaper that was original with the construction of the house. This included: THREE bathrooms, the dining room, and the kitchen. The wallpaper was approximately 15 years old. It was not even nearly as bold as your patterns except in one bathroom, either. As soon as we did that (and the realtor advised us not to, by the way), we shot new photos, updated the listing, and traffic increased markedly. It was a terrible ordeal even though the paper was easy to remove in the kitchen and one of the bathrooms. My children, who were forced to help, still talk about it as "the dark times."

You strike me as a person who wants the mechanical part of the house to be in perfect condition. You want all the little delayed maintenance stuff in perfect order, right? And you are putting in some money now to get that taken care of. That's a smart idea, but the thing about that is that all buyers are just going to expect that stuff to be taken care of. It's not going to really pay off until the home inspection, when your home passes with flying colors. It's the right thing to do, the decent thing to do, but its effect on the emotional home buying/selling rollercoaster will probably not be that important, at least in terms of marketing. However, not doing that stuff can kill the sale once it's in motion, so it's not that it's unimportant.

Everyone else has expressed in strong terms that leaving the wallpaper is a terrible idea, so I will just second their opinions. Since you plan to put it on the market this spring, you have plenty of time to get this taken care of. You won't regret it. "Plain" is not a bad thing when you're taking about walls in a house for sale. If you think your walls are boring once the wallpaper is down and a good, neutral color is up, you can always punch it up a bit with some wall art. We did that in our house--even went out and bought new art at TJ Maxx (GREAT source for home staging if you have one near you) because what we had was great for us, but bad for home marketing.

We ultimately ended up with an offer shortly after the removal of the wallpaper that was close to our asking price. This offer fell through due to the buyers' home sale falling through. Then we changed realtors, punched up the staging a notch or two, and moved out of the house and to our new home in another state. Believe it or not, the house, which at that point had been on the market 6+ months, ended up in a bidding war and we sold it in "as is" condition for over the asking price. There is no way it would have been shown as much had we not taken care of the wallpaper, though. Even though it wasn't as bold as your paper, potential buyers were making comments about it...and NOT making offers.

Good luck! You're smart to start so far ahead of your planned listing date.

zoe52, come back! I know you probably either hate us all now, or are sitting in front of your computer crying. The comments here do tend to be very straightforward.

Do you know how the paper was applied? Had the walls been painted previously? How old is it?

I try to look past personal taste such as wallpaper, carpeting, window treatments, and flooring. What I *do* look for is good bones and if a remodel has been done, is kept with the integrity of the rest of the home. What I *would* ask for is an allowance if I loved the floorplan/landscaping, and other things. At that point, it would be up to the seller to make a decision to do the work, or get an estimate to show me the amount, and offer me that much of an allowance.

Incidentally, I removed two rooms of floral wallpaper before putting my home on the market. I felt the floral paper would have been a turn-off, and little if any interest would be shown in even the rest of the home because of this one, major 'flaw'.

If you know any teenagers who would like to earn a little extra money, while drinking soda, and eating snacks, offer them a job. Six kids in groups of two could work miracles if they're armed with a paper tiger, putty scraper, and spray bottle of fabric softener/hot water. Your job as superviser is to make sure they use the tools correctly, and keep them supplied with soda. A few places might need going over, but the biggest part of the work could be done. Good luck!

I have to agree with the majority here, wayyyyy to much wallpaper and it makes the rooms look busy and old. It is too distracting. Buyers will show up to look at your house but all they will remember is the wallpaper. Time to start removing it all before Spring rolls around. NancyLouise

Zoe, I wish you'd come back and post and let us know your thoughts on the feedback. No one meant anything to hurt your feelings, but to try to give you honest answers so that when it is time to sell, your house will be one of the 1st to sell because you've done everything to make it move in ready. As you read, people deduct in their head for removing things like wallpaper, although if you price the house accordingly, they might not need to do that. You can have your agent say in the listing that the price has been adjusted to allow for wall paper removal.

You posted because you were concerned after the contractors said you had too much wallpaper. I give you credit, when we were ready to put our house up, I hadn't planned to do as much as I did and wish I thought of prepping sooner. Our preps (painting) took longer then I thought it would (due to my back) so we lost time listing it.

It's hard to take in what your whole room looks like because we are seeing mostly paper. It very well could be that if you posted room shots, it would look different.

You're getting input from some that are sellers, agents and buyers. You may have a leg up on your competition because you already know what a potential buyer might see to make them either view your home or pass over it. I can't tell you the amount of homes I passed on due to paneling & faux brick. These didn't even get saved in my "possible walk" folder.

My house is not the nicest in this neighborhood, nor the biggest. But we have a gorgeous park like lot. There are new homes across town selling in the $900 and up range. I know I am not going to compete with them. But our home should sell from $450k somewhere into the $500K range One up the street that was not updated on a dead end street (house smaller than mine- sold for $469K recently)

As I said before our neighborhood is very desirable and my home is one of the more updated ones. We have a master bath suite area that many people desire. I am not sure what the earlier poster meant when they said the "D" word. We have granite counter tops, mostly white appliances, but a built in Kitchenaid refridge and microwave/convection and standard oven combination along with some wild cherry cabinets. I have a built in china buffet in the kitchen.

The den is all painted and has built in entertainment center, spiral staircase to a cantilevered exercise loft from which you can access the master bedroom, and there are two built bookcases either side of the floating marble fireplace. We also have two built in window seats in the room.

Your house sounds very nice. You have features that other people don't like the master bath, the built in in the den. Even if you choose not to take wallpaper down, it sounds like one of the better houses in the neighborhood. It's very hard to find a house like that here and why we decided to build verses buying pre-owned.

Thank you for your comments both good and bad. I have been so busy that I haven't had a chance to post. I have my own business I had to attend to and I was working on my garage after it was recently re-taped/ re-mudded and painted. We had it painted a couple years ago in the summer and the paint had chipped out the minute it got below freezing. Unfortunately the painter who did it has moved so we had this workman fix it. It now looks great. I have also been busy washing windows because we may not be able to do so again in March or April when it is still cold here

I am going to remove some of the wallpaper, but not all. I am at the very least steaming off the hall wallpaper. My DH was not happy about it because he just loves that wallpaper, but I figured that it could turn off somebody as they walked in. We will be having the workmen paint the hall and trim over when it is done using more neutral tones.

Rosevlr is right in saying that I only took pictures of the wallpaper. You are not getting the full picture of the room so the wallpaper does look very overwhelming in some of the pictures I took. (After reviewing them myself) If you could see the whole room it wouldn't be as bad as some of the pictures make it look. We actually have more painted rooms in this home than wallpapered ones, but from the pictures I sent here you might not believe it.

The work man I hired has over 30 years experience of doing lots of remodels and people hire him often to paint before selling. When I finally asked him what he would do he said to leave some of the rooms alone. He stated my house is in really good condition and we should get close to the prices that we are looking to get. (Of course that is just his opinon) We just need to repaint and fix some things for cosmetic reasons. We figure we will spend 10k to do whatever the house needs to paint, re-tile (kitchen needs it due to the bad sub-floor that will be fixed), repair, and freshen up. That is all that we can afford to spend. If we can get some of that wallpaper down and changed than it will be included. If not, the buyer will have to do so at their cost or a reduction on the cost of the home. I may offer that as an extra incentive if I feel it is needed to make the sale.

In the master bathroom that "handle" is a phone and it is right over the toilet that doesn't show in the picture. Also that picture is really bad bc you can't tell there are two walls there (a toilet compartment with a lower wall)

Zoe52, I think you made a good choice of the entry as the first paper to remove. In the picture it looks VERY bright.

Today I rented a steamer at HD and removed the geese paper from a bathroom. It was on bare drywall so must have been there since the house was built in 1984. It did NOT want to come off.

You are making a good choice to remove the hall wallpaper. I would suggest you consider removing the masterbath wallpaper, too. It is very dark.

You might be surprised how easily some of the papers come off. The orginal wallpaper I had in the kitchen pulled off very easily and left nothing behind.

I would have never thought that was a phone but see it now! What a great place to have a phone as it always rings when you're in there.

You'll have to post room shots when you have time. I'm trying to imagine your master bath, sounds like it's pretty big.

I think that once you get that paper off of the entry and paint it, you will get used to it. Tell your hubby it's a step towards detaching from the house. It hurt to have to dig the amount of roses that I did (about 150) then to lose one rose that I can't buy any more. Out of the 150, I probably lost 10, so I did pretty good. It's been really hard not seeing the roses blooming in the garden any more but it's a step I had to take to detach from this house.

Good luck with the wallpaper removal, may it go smoothly!