Don't Lose a Sale by a Nose

Meanwhile, in model homes, people wander about "as they do in a museum, their hands behind their backs," he said. "It's usually pretty sterile. They'll have pictures of food and plastic models in the kitchens, but even in the show models there's never been an attempt to get cooking smells in the environment."

That's a big mistake, he maintains. "The kitchen is the most important part of the model home and people will come back to the kitchen and dining area and talk about the home as a whole."

And what of flowers and other home scents? "You have to be very careful with what you select. Anything applied unnaturally should be avoided," Childress said. There should be a connection between what you're smelling and reality. The smell of rain on a sunny day will certainly bother a person at some level.

"But there's some leeway. Fresh flowers in the dining room and the [artificial] smell of flowers in another room, there's a connection. Like the bakery smell on the other side of the store -- you're not thinking, 'Wow, they've got a sophisticated venting system.' "

Yet even the divine aroma of baking leaves the occasional home buyer holding his nose. "After looking at more than 70 houses last year, the smell of bread or cookies when I walked into a house was a red flag more than anything," Andy Schwarz said in an e-mail. "Call me jaded, but I know a Realtor . . . when I smell one. What were they staging . . . and what were they hiding?"

Only now, a year after he bought a place in Arlington, does he no longer feel manipulated by chocolate chip cookies.

On second thought, he realized scent did play a strong role in his purchasing decision. "Come to think of it, what did it for me was a good-smelling yard," he said in a follow-up message.

Just take a good whiff of the mulch before you buy it. Some of it . . . oh, my.