Kathleen Daniels created a very clever challenge - No Fooling Around April 2017 Let's Get Real Contest. I've enjoyed reading many of the post thus far and can relate to almost all of them. Clearly there is a general theme of pet peeves running around in our business and it's not that pretty.
My business partner and I talked about this challenge and I asked him - what do you think bugs me the most in our business? He offered a few ideas and while they can be annoying at times they weren't really the biggest pet peeve - pain in the you know what this past few years. But then he brought up the dreaded home inspection FRENZY request lists. BINGO!
Several years ago our Home Inspection Addendum to the contract was changed and it created a 'shi* storm' of huge proportions with many newer agents not having any clue as how to fill them out properly. A section was added to separate out warranted items from non- warranted items. On the surface it appeared like a good idea but OMG it turned into a nightmare pretty quickly. Our state legal hotline received 2 out of 3 calls on this inspection FRENZY issue and I heard more complaints about it in CE classes I taught. There was so much mis-information floating around with agents and it seemed to escalate over time. We spent quite a bit of time discussing how to handle the inspection FRENZY craziness - successfully.
It was not uncommon to get a list of 50 to 60 or more repair requests - and pretty ridiculous requests I might add. Now to some of you around the country that won't seem unusual, but in my market that is highly unusual and never happened in my previous 25 years in the biz. If a home is that bad then most buyers would just walk away - period - unless of course they're investors and then they buy it 'as -is'.
To add to the ridiculousness most of our properties had been in multiple bid situations and we had a back up offer in place and maybe 2 back up offers. Experienced agents understood this fact. Newer agents, not so much. Excellent back up offers put sellers in a strong negotiating position during the inspection period. This is not rocket science.
Seriously you know there is an excellent back up offer in place and your client most likely will end up loosing the deal - right?
I'm sure you remember we received at least X offers, right?
Our sellers were well educated way before we went to market to expect this inspection FRENZY craziness. We also discussed about how we could successfully keep the deal together (if at all possible) and say yes to some requests that made sense and no to the others.
Add to that our homes had a pre-inspection before we went to market and repairs/improvements were done. So we knew the condition of the home - well I might add. We have an excellent team in place and they know exactly what needs to be done and what doesn't and what 'will be or might be' called out in an inspection. It's not rocket science!
The whole inspection FRENZY mess was finally brought to a screeching halt in February this year with a new addendum that 100% deleted the sections that created the whole mess. So for now, my biggest pet peeve is over and business can go on per normal. All I can say is Thank Goodness! It was NUTS absolutely NUTS.
Seriously You Do Know There Is a BackUp Offer in Place - Right?
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