Ask your realtor. My thought would be allowance. Chances are the new owner will want to make their own selection.

Do not give an allowance up front. That is for the negotiation time. Don't get double dinged. Once when you give an allowance up front, secondly when the buyers take off what they think the allowance should be.

Exactly. An "allowance" screams "I know my carpet is totally grody but its the only grody thing here honest!"

Buyers know you have tried to price your house to pay yourself back for replacing bad carpet. Maybe it works but I haven't seen it work.

Agree with mary_md7 above. If it's in very bad shape, replace it with a good pad and inexpensive carpeting. It will, in my market anyway, get a very good ROI and help your home to sell much faster too. Don't go high end on the carpet because that will defeat the purpose.

Unless you are in an area where everything under $500K is a tear down (in my area it is anything under $750K is a tear down), then change the carpet and list the property.

Appearance and 'smell' is everything! A gawky carpet can often have an odour to it. You don't notice but everyone else will. A new carpet can remove the odours with it.

And carpet is the CHEAPEST flooring product. It is cheap to purchase and fast to remove and replace. It can often be done in one day (depends on the size of the home).

It's a shame and a waste that there are places where anything under half a million is a "tear down". Yes, there are buildings that need to be torn down, but - why would anyone of that mentality even bother looking inside such a place if they knew they were going to tear it down - just buy it and wreck it already.

I live in the land of $1M tear downs. Makes it really hard for young couples to afford anything.

My neighbor a couple of years ago put her house up for sale and decided to replace the carpet in a couple of bedrooms even though it was in good shape. Spent about $6K. That was the first thing the new owner ripped out. Unless your carpet is in such bad shape that it would turn off buyers, leave it and go with an allowance if needed.

This is probably a stupid question - but what's underneath the carpet? A house I bought in 2014 had 2 rooms with nasty, pet-stained awful carpet. Pulled it up and there were pristine oak floors underneath - somehow the carpet was stained to death, but the floors were stain-free. Only flaw was small holes from the tack strips. Have you looked underneath? I normally don't think people should put money into things that 50% of the people will pull out when they move in, carpet is the only exception in my book, just because of the ick factor.

^Yep...ick factor is a real turn off to many buyers.

If you’re going to invest to get the maximum return I would suggest laminate wood flooring. There’s so many options of colors, from white wash to grey tones, to light neutrals, etc