Winnipeg Realtor and Real Estate Blog

When it comes time to sell, buyers are not just looking at square footage and location – they are also buying the air in your home. Persistent smoke odor is one of the fastest ways to turn buyers off and push your sale price down. If you or someone in your household smokes indoors, it can have a real, measurable impact on your home’s resale value.

How Smoking Impacts Sale Price

A survey of real estate brokers and agents in Ontario found that smoking inside a home can significantly reduce what buyers are willing to pay. In that survey, professionals reported that smoking could lower a property’s value by as much as 29%. While the survey was commissioned by a pharmaceutical company that promotes smoking-cessation medication, its findings line up with what many agents see in the market every day: smoke smell hurts price and demand.

What Buyers Really Think About Smoke

Real estate professionals overwhelmingly agree that smoking indoors makes a home harder to sell compared to a smoke‑free property. Many agents report that more than half of their buyers are less likely to purchase a home where smoking occurs, and a notable portion say their buyers will not even consider such homes at all. Some buyers will ask if a property is smoke‑free before they are willing to schedule a showing, which means smoky homes can be filtered out before they ever get a chance to impress.

How Much Value Can You Lose?

Among the agents and brokers who believe smoking reduces value, roughly one‑third estimate a price drop of about 10–19%, while another third believe the reduction can reach 20–29% in heavier‑smoked homes. On a higher‑priced property, that can translate into tens of thousands of dollars left on the table. With an estimated 15% of Canadian homes having at least one regular indoor smoker, this is not a fringe issue – it is a common, preventable drag on resale value.

Removing Smoke Odor: Where to Start

The best strategy is simple: avoid smoking indoors in the first place. If that is no longer an option, the goal becomes deep cleaning and sealing in order to neutralize lingering odor.

Key steps sellers can take include:

• Wash walls and ceilings with a strong cleaning solution (for example, ammonia and water) to remove smoke residue from hard surfaces.

• Repaint stained or yellowed walls and ceilings using a high‑quality primer and topcoat to seal in any remaining odor.

• Have carpets and rugs professionally steam‑cleaned to address smoke particles trapped deep in the fibers.

• Replace heavily affected soft materials (old carpets, drapes, fabric blinds) if cleaning does not fully solve the issue.

• Use air purifiers with activated carbon filters to help absorb any remaining airborne smoke molecules.

Taken together, these steps can markedly reduce smoke odor, shorten time on market, and help recover lost value.

Protecting Your Equity Going Forward

Smoking indoors does more than stain walls and ceilings; it creates a stubborn odor that buyers immediately notice and often reject. Some will not even cross the threshold of a home that smells of smoke, and many will expect a discount to compensate for the cost and effort of remediation. If you are planning to sell in the future and there is a smoker in the household, shifting smoking outdoors now is one of the simplest ways to protect your largest investment and keep as many buyers as possible interested in your home.