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Home buyers can dress for success

By JUDY STARK
Published March 11, 2006

Real estate agent Mark Nash, author of 1,001 Tips for Buying and Selling a Home (Thomson, 2005), has come up with a list of fashion tips for house hunters.

Fashion tips? Who cares what you look like? "If you appear well-groomed and understated and wear home-price-range-appropriate clothes, you could pay less than the tattooed, big-hair, over-jeweled and torn-blue-jean buyer you're in competition with," Nash says.

"Buying a home is a business transaction," he says. "Think business wear when shopping for a home."

The worst he ever saw: a woman in frayed teeny-tiny cutoffs with slashed seams, a tube top that left nothing to the imagination, lots of tattoos and teetery spiked slides.

A buyer who sends mixed signals leaves a sales agent wondering what to do: Was this person serious? Or just passing through? "If you're just bopping through and you don't look very business-minded, the agent isn't going to know how to qualify you," said Nash, who sells real estate in Chicago and spends a couple of weeks' vacation every January in Naples.

Your fashion-victim "no-no" list:

No muddy shoes.

No fur coats.

No bling, i.e., ostentatious jewelry. "You might end up paying more for a home because the sellers think you can afford it."

No spike heels. No bare feet.

No tube tops, no low-cut or revealing clothing for women. ("Very rarely do buyers get a discount for sex.")

No elastic underwear waistbands on view for men; no tank tops; no exercise wear that makes you look as if you stopped by on your morning jog.

No baseball caps. "They send the wrong negotiating message when purchasing the largest asset you'll own."

No portable coffee cups.

No cell phone conversations while you're inspecting the house. And never, never negotiate a contract on one property while you're visiting another.

No smoking. No kidding.

[Last modified March 11, 2006, 09:10:24]