Worn hardwood for me.

Real hardwood, even worn hardwood, adds value to your home. Laminate doesn't, even though it might look slightly better for the time being. Keep the real hardwood, if it becomes an issue for buyers you can offer up a flooring credit for the new buyer to redo it themselves.

'Move in ready' assumes all of the finishes you choose will suit the buyer which may not be the case. I refinished beautiful wood floors that were damaged by dogs for a resale and the first thing the new owner did was tear them out lol! I would use some revitalizer, or just some good hardware cleaner on the hardwood and leave it at that.

Worn hardwood vs. laminate (especially laminate that is installed over top of the existing flooring). I also wouldn't use any polishes or other treatments that might interfere with refinishing in the future. Just clean and done.

You are going to have to declutter and depersonalize ASSP in order to sell. Might as well do that, and put all the stuff in storage. Leave minimal furniture for staging that would easily fit into a single POD.

Then refinish the floors.

It isn’t as costly or disrupting as you are making it out to be. Especially if you’ve already taken care of what you need to take care of to move to begin with.

Get an estimate for refinishing the floors, and an estimate for new laminate. Refinishing should be cheaper. Refinish the worn hardwood floors after you move to your new house. Then put it up for sale, not before you move out.

Hardwood. I think laminate looks cheap and I hate the clicking sound it makes when you walk on it.

We just sold a house with worn hardwood flooring (2 labs). We opted to have a hardwood flooring company give us an estimate for the cost of refinishing the floors so that we could use that number in negotiating our selling price. We figured if the new buyer wanted us to refinish the floor we would just take the amount from the estimate and subtract it from the purchase price--that way we didn't have to worry about refinishing ourselves. Luckily, the new buyers had a lab and didn't even ask about the floors.... I am not a big believer in remodeling to sell since the new family may have different tastes than you do, and I definitely wouldn't want to be in charge of spending someone else's money.

Horrible idea to put laminate over hardwood to make it move in ready.

Ask your realtor but I think advertising it with a flooring incentive would be the far better choice since it gives prospective homeowners absolute freedom to decide what they want to do with the floor.

Thank you, everyone. It looks like laminate is definitely not the way to go. I really appreciate all of the advice. We plan to have our realtor over for advice on a few other things, but I'm pretty sure he will agree with all of you. We've gone back and forth so many times, and we even bought 4 different boxes of laminate to lay out, but we didn't like any of it.

LEAVE the hardwood! Refinishing it is less than laminate, most of the time. And everyone prefers it. You could refinish it (if you are moving out first or if only a small part of your house) and it would be a real plus for resale.

I would literally cry if I looked at a house and found out someone had put laminate over hardwoods.

It would not be the end of the world it can be removed very easily but in this case the new owners will then have the option before move in to have the floors done in a color they like..You have taken care of the big ticket items for resale.

worn hardwood

It all depends on the condition of the ravaged hardwood. Enough to sand and refinish? If not, go laminate. I've done that and would so again. I'm sure the buyers didn't trust my assessment. Their problem.

Worn hardwood, but if there is any way you can refinish the floors, that would be preferable.