A short YouTube video by Andrew Lam (Re/Max Gold, Lam team) offering practical advice for sellers in Northern California dealing with brown/dead lawns during drought. He presents two main options: (1) convert turf to more water-efficient landscaping using a Solano County rebate (quoted as $1 per sq ft up to $1,000) and (2) hire turf spray-painting (non-toxic paint) to cosmetically green the yard (quoted $150–$200 and lasting 12–16 weeks). He also mentions local watering restrictions (two days a week; different schedules for North vs South Vacaville), gives rough cost comparisons (two yards of bark ≈ $250), and offers to connect sellers with landscapers or services.
Questions this video answers
$1 per square foot, up to $1,000.
About $250.
About $150–$200 for the entire front yard.
About 12–16 weeks.
Only two days a week (with different schedules for North Vacaville vs South Vacaville).
Chapters
Hey, it's Andrew Lam with Re Max Gold and today we're talking about what to do if your lawn is dead and you're trying to sell your home. Hey, this is Andrew Lam with the Lam team at Re Max Gold and we wanted to welcome you again to our video blog. As usual, we want to draw your attention to two spots on the blog here. Number one, if you are looking to buy a home in Northern California, you can click the Search all homes link. It's basically a backstage pass to the mls. You can see everything available again and generally before any other real estate agents do, it comes to your inbox every morning. The homes that match your criteria. And if you're looking to sell a home or you're interested in your home's value currently, you can click the free home value link and see what your value would be. Now back to the topic at hand, what to do if your lawn is dead and you are trying to sell your home because the last thing you want is a brown yard when you're trying to get your home sold. So we get this question a lot now, especially with our drought here in California. And there's really two options. Number one, if you're really surprised or taken aback by the fact that we can only water our yards two days a week now, North Vacaville has a specific schedule. South Vacaville has a different schedule. Across Solano county, things keep coming up like this. So a lot of people are struggling to keep their yards green. So there's two things you can do. Number one, if your yard is, if your lawn is still alive, you can actually qualify. But for a rebate from the Solano County Water agency to make your yard more water efficient. So that means installing, taking out some of that turf, putting in some bark, putting in some kind of drought resistant soil or ground so that you're not having to water it all the time and keep it green. So the rebate is actually a dollar per square foot up to $1,000. Now to, to kind of compare and let you know how much that's worth. You should be able to replace a lot of turf with some yard bark, maybe some of the darker bark. Two yards will usually do it for most people, for most yards, and that will usually only run you about 250 bucks. So that's one option. Another thing you can do is what we're seeing a lot of now, which is spray painting your yard. There are actually paints now that are non flammable, non toxic, and they very much look like real grass. And it's only about $150 to $200 for the entire front yard. But what that does is it lasts for 12 to 16 weeks. So the money you would have spent on watering the yard for maybe four to six weeks can actually get stretched much further by simply just painting the lawn. And then, you know, for three to four months, you're good to go. We're finding that a lot of home buyers in Northern California understand that we're in a drought and they're not looking for perfectly manicured yards right now. But it definitely helps your curb appeal to have some semblance of a nice yard. So we definitely don't want the yard to be completely dead. We don't want it to be completely brown. We want it to look like you're at least trying to take care of it. And those two options, either replacing it with drought resistant or more water efficient landscaping, or going the route of just spray painting, are really good options. We're seeing them both work out really well for our clients. And we'll have some photos here for you as well. If you have any questions at all. If you need a connection to a landscaper or someone who will spray paint your yard simply to get a sample, see what that looks like, we have those connections for you. And if you have any other questions about real estate in general, we'd love to be that. Go to resource for you. Reach out by email or by phone and we'd be happy to chat. Thanks and have a great day.
