Nail Holes When Moving

TNDancer

Hi guys! This is probably a really dumb questions, but I have never sold a house before.

When you take all the pictures, etc. off the walls do you remove the nails or leave them? If you remove them I assume you have to fill the holes and fix the wall?

Thanks for any advice!

lyndausvi

Renting we filled in the holes. 

When we sold we did not.   I don't remember my parents filling in nail holes either.   Now if there was a big ass hole being covered by a picture then I would fill that.   Not your standard hole for a picture.

novella1186

Take the nails out. It's a huge pain in the ass to move into a new place and have to spend the day going around searching for nails and then yanking them out. I honestly would rather just patch the bare holes than deal with the nails. 

It's not hard to fill the holes. Just go get a little jar of the hole-filler stuff from where ever. (The hardware store, Walmart, etc). Put a little dab over the hole. Let it dry. Sand it a tiny bit with fine-grain sandpaper. Done! (Trust me, if I can do it, anyone can) 

southernbelle0915

Ask your landlord.

luckya23

Ugh there were SO MANY nails and screws when I bought my place!!!

The hallway seriously had at least 30 alone, and appeared to be in the most haphazard "pattern"!

Filling them back in would be super nice!

littlemushroom

I think you should leave them. The nails are better than holes in the wall, especially if the new owners don't want to or don't plan to paint like we didn't. We were so happy to walk in and see there wasn't a bunch of holes to fill. Plus, most of them will be reused or hidden by other things we hang. That was just one less thing we had to worry about when we moved in.

TNDancer

Darn. I was hoping for a universal opinion on this. I guess I could ask the new buyers?

novella1186

TNDancer said:

Darn. I was hoping for a universal opinion on this. I guess I could ask the new buyers?

lol I don't think you're going to get a universal opinion. I think you should just do whatever YOU prefer to do, really. If they buyers already had the house inspected and had no problem with holes or whatever, then you're fine. 

Maggie0829

novella1186 said:

TNDancer said:

Darn. I was hoping for a universal opinion on this. I guess I could ask the new buyers?

lol I don't think you're going to get a universal opinion. I think you should just do whatever YOU prefer to do, really. If they buyers already had the house inspected and had no problem with holes or whatever, then you're fine. 

This.  Unless it was a requirement on them buying your house that you fill in all nail holes then I would just skip it.  I am nice, but I am not that nice that I will fill in holes and then touch of the paint on the wall.  Screw that.  It is their house now to deal with.

TNDancer

Maggie0829 said:

novella1186 said:

lol I don't think you're going to get a universal opinion. I think you should just do whatever YOU prefer to do, really. If they buyers already had the house inspected and had no problem with holes or whatever, then you're fine. 

This.  Unless it was a requirement on them buying your house that you fill in all nail holes then I would just skip it.  I am nice, but I am not that nice that I will fill in holes and then touch of the paint on the wall.  Screw that.  It is their house now to deal with.

______________

hahaha you guys are right. There are plenty of other chores to do right now.

lyndausvi

TNDancer said:

Darn. I was hoping for a universal opinion on this. I guess I could ask the new buyers?

You are not going to get one since every buyer has different needs a wants.

Some are going to come in a repaint everything.  Some are going to reuse the holes themselves.  Others are not going to paint and do not want filled holes that are a different color than the paint.   

I do not know many sellers who are going to want to file and hole and then repaint/touch up for the buyer.  That takes times and money.

Part of the deal of buying a previously owned home is things like small holes in the wall from pictures, walls not the color you like and another random stuff like that.

Leaving them a clean house is more important to me.   My parents leave their homes so spotless and it's always been appreciated.  Sadly they have bought homes that are left really gross.   Sure I'm still going to re-clean, but it's much easier when it's not a complete gross mess to start off.  

kvruns

I didn't fill any when I sold my house - the people before me didn't so I didn't see a reason to either. I think I removed the nails because it seemed weird having them just chilling in the wall

H is selling his rental condo right now and the tenant covered over the nail holes with that spackle stuff after taking everything off and then H got paint to paint the spots the same color as the walls. Well apparently it didn't quite match (even though he cut paint from the wall and took it to the paint place to be electronically matched). He would have been better off leaving the nail holes.

WinstonsGirl

When I de-cluttered, I filled all the holes and painted, since I took more personal photos down.  There were also 2 identical houses down the strewn from me also for sale, so I wanted mine to look more appealing to buyers.  (One other was nice, but they had kids so it was harder to keep neat and the other was a shit show - hadn't been cleaned in the 8 years since it was built, cos I say the dirt on baseboards and needed a re-paint from the horrible metallic orange).

I think I did fill in the holes when we left too, but there weren't many left.  I'm terrible for putting things up on the wall.  It's not necessary though, but a nice though 

novella1186

lyndausvi said:

TNDancer said:

Darn. I was hoping for a universal opinion on this. I guess I could ask the new buyers?

You are not going to get one since every buyer has different needs a wants.

Some are going to come in a repaint everything.  Some are going to reuse the holes themselves.  Others are not going to paint and do not want filled holes that are a different color than the paint.   

I do not know many sellers who are going to want to file and hole and then repaint/touch up for the buyer.  That takes times and money.

Part of the deal of buying a previously owned home is things like small holes in the wall from pictures, walls not the color you like and another random stuff like that.

Leaving them a clean house is more important to me.   My parents leave their homes so spotless and it's always been appreciated.  Sadly they have bought homes that are left really gross.   Sure I'm still going to re-clean, but it's much easier when it's not a complete gross mess to start off.  

That's one of my biggest fears. My mom is in real estate and she has told me horror stories of people trashing their houses right before they move out, or the new owners calling her to tell her things they've found. *shudder* 

Maggie0829

novella1186 said:

lyndausvi said:

TNDancer said:

Darn. I was hoping for a universal opinion on this. I guess I could ask the new buyers?

You are not going to get one since every buyer has different needs a wants.

Some are going to come in a repaint everything.  Some are going to reuse the holes themselves.  Others are not going to paint and do not want filled holes that are a different color than the paint.   

I do not know many sellers who are going to want to file and hole and then repaint/touch up for the buyer.  That takes times and money.

Part of the deal of buying a previously owned home is things like small holes in the wall from pictures, walls not the color you like and another random stuff like that.

Leaving them a clean house is more important to me.   My parents leave their homes so spotless and it's always been appreciated.  Sadly they have bought homes that are left really gross.   Sure I'm still going to re-clean, but it's much easier when it's not a complete gross mess to start off.  

That's one of my biggest fears. My mom is in real estate and she has told me horror stories of people trashing their houses right before they move out, or the new owners calling her to tell her things they've found. *shudder* 

I've heard this happens a lot with foreclosures.  The people are pissed so they want to basically destroy the house for the new owners to deal with.  Even so far as putting cement down the toilet drains and other fun things.

labro

I'd leave them unless your contract specifically says something about them. The people we bought our house from left ALL the nails and some screws in the walls (I can only assume for some really heavy things, I dunno). I definitely appreciated some of the nail holes, they were a natural obvious placement and I would've hung something there anyway so it just saved me the effort of doing it myself. Otherwise we came in and pretty much repainted everything anyway so the holes we didn't want we fixed. NBD. It's just not worth the effort to go through all that. The buyers can deal with it if it's a big deal to them.

jennyleigh16

We're trying to sell right now and we took all the nails out and patched and repainted since we had to take all the personal photos and such down. We didn't for the first couple weeks but once we realized the house wasn't showing very well we made a big push towards making the house look it's best. Still no offers but we have an interested potential buyer talking to his bank to be pre-approved this week!

huskypuppy14

The sellers left the nails/screws in the walls. I ended up using most of them, or at least reusing the hole. There is one screw right above me on our living room wall that is still there. We haven't bought a large picture for that wall yet. It doesn't bother me enough to remove the screw.