What Sellers Typically Take With Them

It pays to have a good real estate agent documenting all the conditions and disclosures in the sale of your home. This includes excluding specific items that you, as the seller, want to take with you when you move. If this is the first time you have sold your home, you may wonder which items are considered part of the deal – and therefore must be left behind – and which ones you take with you no questions asked.

First, since all items can be negotiable, the question is do you want to sell specific items? The key here is the specifics of the sale should be clearly spelled out on the listing sheet and the sales contract.

For example, your listing sheet may state that the rose bush in the garden and the granite fountain are not included with the sale of the home. The buyer can try and negotiate for these items, offering you more money or specifically including them as a condition of their original offer, but you do not have to agree.

As long as the buyers know ahead of time that specific items are not part of the deal, you can take them with you. But, what is typically considered personal property and what is a fixture of the house? 

Some items that typically come with the sale of a house are:

• Stoves
• Dishwashers
• Chandeliers
• Ceiling fans
• Plantings and landscaping around the home
• Custom window treatments (because they are custom made to the measurements of this particular house)

Anything that is permanently bolted to the structure or hooked up to a gas line tends to stay unless you specify otherwise.  But, say you want to take that special chandelier that took forever to find, or the custom window treatments. Anything that may be questionable should be written in the listing as items you plan on taking.

Things a seller will usually take include:

• Furniture
• Most garden statuary (unless they state it will stay)
• Area rugs and window blinds
• Portable AC units
• Patio furniture
• Refrigerators

Any negotiations that may occur when the buyer hopes for a specific item to be included with the home must be addressed before you close on the house.