There’s a lot to do when preparing a home for sale, and many sellers forget the top attraction for some visitors: A medicine cabinet full of prescription drugs.
After staging, decluttering and stowing away jewelry or valuables, home sellers often overlook the need to tuck prescription drugs away from medicine cabinets and drawers. A recent realtor.com article warns of the dangers and calls out specific medications of notable interest, like Oxycontin, attention deficit disorder medications like Concerta and Adderall, depression and anxiety medications like Zoloft and Xanax, and sleep aids like Ambien. Some over-the-counter cough suppressants or heartburn medications may also be at risk.
“If you’re getting ready to show your home, walk around the house thinking like a stranger,” realtor.com suggests in the article. “What’s easy to pick up? What might be easy to sell? This is a great guideline for medications, but also for hiding any valuables in your home. Think about wine, perfume bottles, expensive lotions even your designer tie collection.”
Some real estate professionals give their sellers Deterra bags to discard old pills or another drug-deactivation system. When mixed with warm water, the Deterra bags absorb ingredients in the pills and make the drugs inactive.
“We’re giving them to agents to give to homeowners when they’re buying or selling homes,” says Heidi Kasama, former president of Nevada Realtors®.
Source: “The One Thing Home Sellers Forget to Hide Before an Open House,” realtor.com® (Nov. 5, 2019)
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