Is it time for Cig Smokers to Move to Black Market Product

@MontereyJack,

MontereyJack wrote:

I understand real estate agents find houses inhabited by smokers for a long time a hard sell. You wanna knock twenty or thirty thousand dollars, maybe more, off the resale value of your house, be my guest.

The fix is easy.....clean the place before you start showing it and during the time you are trying to sell only smoke outdoors. The cost is a couple of hundred to get the smoke smell out. Please stop being a chicken little Laughing

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Nice try, doesn't work, from what I hear. The smell permeates..

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@hawkeye10,

I think it's a lot more that a few hundred - replacing all the carpets for a start will be thousands. That said, if a smoker chooses to do that, who are we to say they can't or even to try to make it difficult?

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@engineer,

engineer wrote:

I think it's a lot more that a few hundred - replacing all the carpets for a start will be thousands. That said, if a smoker chooses to do that, who are we to say they can't or even to try to make it difficult?

It depends on how bad it is, perhaps painting will be required too, but new carpet and new paint is a normal cost of selling a house anyways. Also, the sellers could decide to not worry about it, to wait till a smoker comes along who wants the house. i think that the problem with houses that smell of smoke is much more that they take longer to sell than that they get a depressed price.

A few hundred and some elbow grease is all that is required to wash the place, clean the drapes and to do a baking soda treatment on the carpets, that should be enough for someone who has lightly smoked in their home.

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you dream.

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Quote:

Wash. Post: Ridding A New Home of Tobacco Smoke is Time-Consuming and Expensive [03/17-2]

Excerpts from: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes -- and in the Carpet and the Curtains . .

By Cheryl Kenny Washington Post [03/17/05]

It's the unwanted houseguest that just won't leave: the stale, lingering odor of tobacco smoke. Getting rid of it can be time-consuming and expensive. Just ask Kathy and David Houle.
Six years ago, the Houles bought a 1947 Colonial in Arlington that had been owned by chain smokers for 25 years. "We were very nervous that we weren't going to be able to get the smell out," said Kathy Houle.

Their worries were well founded: It took a year to get rid of the odor.

The couple stripped wallpaper and washed the plaster walls beneath it, then painted. They scoured trim, windows, light fixtures. They scrubbed the mahogany front door, then sealed the wood with tung oil.

They replaced carpeting, the kitchen's linoleum floor and the dining room's hardwood -- changes they probably would have made without a tobacco problem -- but the odor persisted.

They turned to professional cleaners, even having their metal window blinds cleaned and the nicotine-yellowed cords replaced. They hired a chimney sweep to clear cigarette odor from their fireplace. They even had their HVAC ductwork cleaned. "Getting the ducts cleaned was key," said Houle. "[The cleaners] told me it was some of the worst they'd seen, filled with black gunk. And they said it was from smoking."

The Houles eventually eliminated the odor, but it took countless hours of labor and thousands of dollars to do it.

Notice that COUNTLESS HOURS OF LABOR AND THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS, hawkeye.

The people that finally buy your house, after the first fifty potential buyers walk in the door, take one breath, and immediately turn around and walk out, are going to hate you forever and come looking for you with hot irons to rip your fingernails out.

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My mother was a real estate agent around NYC for a many years. She said two things were the Kiss of Death for full value sales: Smoking odors and kitty odors. Both linger no matter what one does short of demolition.The homeowners always argued that they had the place professionally steam cleaned, power washed etc., but outsiders could always smell the residue. To have both in one place could equal an unsalable home. In the 60's the smoking was not such a problem, but by 1980 a place that housed a smoker could sell for as much as 20% less than an indentical place that never housed a smoker. The other problem, in apartments, was having neighbors who smoked and the odor came into a non-smoking apartment. That decreased value even for the non-smoking place. It's why so many co-ops went smoke free in the 80's, it preserved value for the complex as a whole.

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@Ceili,

I'd always thought you needed a sort of a warm,damp climate to grow the stuff. The mid-Atlantic region of the US of course is perfect for it.

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this is kind of interesting, from the wiki article on the tobacco plant

A protein of the White–Brown Complex subfamily can be extracted from the leaves. It is an odourless, tasteless white powder and can be added to cereal grains, vegetables, soft drinks and other foods. It can be whipped like egg whites, liquefied or gelled and can take on the flavour and texture of a variety of foods. It is 99.5% protein, contains no salt, fat or cholesterol. It is currently being tested as a low calorie substitute for mayonnaise and whipped cream.

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To tobacco! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.

wait...

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side note...

NO. repainting after a smoker to help get rid of that odor is NOT the same cost.

You need at least 2 gallons of Kills on the walls IF they were a light smoker, and that is BEFORE you paint your color .
If by chance the paint on the walls was thick, you would be better off thinning it out BEFORE the kills.

You know what kills costs? The cheapest I could ever find was 28 a gallon.
2 gallons per wall, or 1/2 room... JUST in hopes of removing that smell. It could take more.

Next it works best if you put a gloss paint of some sort on top of that. It 'helps' seal in the odor and stop it from leeching out. Yeah.. good luck there. It has not been proven, but painters say it works, I have done it myself numerous times.. but.. again, its smoke. Good luck.

This alone could cost you 100.00 per room or greater.

If the house is NOT a smoking house you can paint an entire 1000 sqft house for about 100 in just paint. Supplies are cheap.. but wont run you much more.

Oh no. The repair cost of that is not even in the same BALLPARK as non smoking houses.

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@thack45,

thack45 wrote:

To tobacco! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.

wait...

I always thought it is sex that it......

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@shewolfnm,

Kilz is great stuff.....ya, if the problem is bad enough that you need it then the job will cost more.

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Is it time for Cig Smokers to Move to Black Market Product

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