Everyone's votes of confidence certainly helped. I had our old realtor come by and look at our house yesterday and it was very disappointing. She has not come back with a figure yet, but I have a feeling it will be about $120 thou versus the 150 I was hoping for. About the only thing that she was very positive about was our acryllic one piece shower. Sigh. She asked if we could turn our rather large garage into a double (it has only one door but is large) and asked if we had ever put in a sprinkler system. AND than suggested that we really needed to finish every project so it would be "move in ready". She also mentioned that she would have kept the trim painted white instead of stripping it like I did. She did admit to me that she is personally the type of person that does not like the thought of doing work on a house and she needs to go back to the office and do some reasearch before she can come up with suggestions. My DH and I discussed about checking with one another realtor in town. I feel bad about it since she is one that sold us this house and has been a friend/aquaintance to us over the years. But if she can't see this house's positives, how can she sell it well for us? We live in one of those towns where 1/3 of the homes were built in 1920's, 1/3 middle century, 1/3 built in the last 15 years. Our home would be the only older home for sale in the "nicer" NW side fo town. A house for sale on our corner is being listed for 265, when I asked her about that price she came back that it has had a "very expensive" addition with high tech appliances. My guess is they ripped our everything old and put in new stuff. Most of the other older homes for sale in town are in a mixed neighborhood where next door can be a multi-family half-kept-up rental, ours is pure residential on a quiet street. A couple of the older nicer homes in these other neighborhoods are being listed at 150-200, but they also do not have new roofs, new wiring and new plumbing and new furnace and heat pump like ours does. I can't help but feel that that alone is worth a TON of money to an old house lover. Ah, the joys of a market economy, no such thing as a simple formula. Anyhow, just thought I'd vent..... If you want to drool a bit look at the one we are thinking of buying. It has an old boiler, half of it is knob and tube electrical wiring, some water damaged areas that will need repair, and a high rise next door on a busy 4 lane street. No one else wants it because of those things, we want it since it is zoned for offices and we can fit our home business in the attic or basement. It recently had a price drop from 200 to 169. Here is a link that might be useful: Drool House

White can be so office/institutional looking, esp. in a room with no natural light, IMO. I think the better use of white in such rooms is in textiles, like bedding or upholstery, with a good saturated color on the walls, esp. in you have no recessed lighting in the room. When I bought my house, I painted my LR, which has very little natural light, BM White Sand so a very light color, although not the crisp type of white Lori is talking about. It was better than what had been there before, BM Antique White with a drab olive green on the woodwork, which I changed to BM White Dove, but it wasn't quite right. I repainted it last fall to Lenox Tan, a much more saturated, warm color and WOW! What a difference! It is SO gorgeous and warm and it radiates..ie: is "alive", and it makes you just want to curl up in there at night by a fire and never leave. It made all the difference in the world. However, if you're looking for a more contemporary look, the crisp whites Lor is referring to might be the way to go.

To give you an idea of the power of staging, we were in a hot low inventory market. We were selling our duplex, same time the neighbors were selling as well. Two similar duplex condos of same age and condition -- their unit was considered the more desirable as it had slightly more sq footage with somewhat more desirable layout too. They had a painter come in and paint all the walls a standard "builder's white" and did no other staging. The builder's white was so awful... it made the place look like a rental unit, though it was not ... it had beautiful cabs and countertops, beautiful hardwood flooring, gorgeous trim, etc -- arguably nicer than our unit, but that dang builder's white paint color just ruined it, in the listing photos and in person. Meanwhile our condo had a riot of rich paint colors on all the walls, a cohesive plan but different colors in each room. And dreaded pink pickled cabinets. And pink marble baths. And white painted trim. We thought we'd have to re-paint all the walls since it was ... pretty unique.... but our realtor said no, and helped us stage the place instead. End result: We sold faster than our neighbors, and for substantially more $ per sq foot. And I truly credit this to the staging.

One more point: if you are willing to paint the interior - great. If not, staging helps. I had a listing that had a very old color scheme from the 1980's, not old paint, just the color. The seller couldn't repaint. But we brought in a staging co and the rooms looked so good that no one noticed the color was off/awful. Sold right away for a above market price. So if you don't have the funds to do both, paint and stage, consider just staging the property effectively. PS Go with neutral colors if you can. But keep in mind the colors that are already in place. It is jarring to walk in to a home and see gray walls that conflict with the flooring and cabinetry. Gray is not appropriate everywhere. https://www.elledecor.com/design-decorate/color/g23711163/neutral-paint-colors/ https://www.thespruce.com/stage-your-home-with-color-798006