I just left a clients home tonight after my forth meeting. I knew she did not feel comfortable with the purchase transaction but she just wasn't saying or asking any questions.
Sometimes you have to ask the questions and offer the answers too! I asked if she understood the purchase process. I asked if she was comfortable with all the information. I asked if she understood the numbers, each time I received a smile or nod of confirmation. Finally I asked the big one.....do you really understand any of this or can I put it in different terms to help you. Because if I asked you to recap what I have said to make sure you understand could you do it? She look terrified and said, "I have no idea what all these numbers are about and feel really stupid so don't ask me to tell you what they mean".
Now I smiled and said, that makes me feel a whole lot better. She asked why I felt better, she didn't have a clue what was going on other than she wanted this house and I was helping her get it. I feel better because now we can start over and you can just be honest and ask the questions and I will answer them in a way you can understand each and every step of the purchase process. Then she smiled!
She then opened up and told me she had gone over the numbers at work and had no clue how I arrived at them or what they meant. The only thing she knew was the bottom line of what her monthly payment was going to be because the lender told her! All the rest of this was just numbers!
How many times have clients not asked key questions and acted like they knew what was going? All this so you would not think they were uninformed or as knowledgeable as they should be. For many the buying and selling process is a fog of information and they only hope they have is having an honest professional take them through the transaction to the close.
My client is not so far removed from others that I have served. She is single, divorced has a good job and does not buy and sell property. She still deserves to understand what she is buying and how the numbers are calculated. She is by no means a stereo type of who needs our services or lacks the expertise to understand the process. I have had some very well educated gentlemen put on a very good front only to find at close they hadn't understood a word of what the documents meant.
So the questions that are never asked are the ones you want to worry about! Sometimes you have to ask and answer the questions.
Have you had questions that should have been asked but never where until you probed a little harder?
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