The Legend of Vance

2011-06-21T11:21:00.000-07:00

Today a unique thing happened. I had a real estate agent actually follow me into a crawlspace to see for himself what is happening. I have never had or heard of that happening before and I’ve gotta hand it to that guy! And so begins “The Legend of Vance”.

Some background: The bain of my existence as an inspector is when a home has been renovated and looks great inside and out, but the contractor didn’t touch the crawlspace. So, this is what happens, the client falls in love with it, the agents are overjoyed (they made a sale, yeah!) and I come along and say “Uh ohh…” Everyone gets deflated and I look like the bad guy. Even worse, when it’s a small house and the contractor doesn’t want to put any more money into it because it’s already biting into his profit margin. Everything comes to a stand still.

Newer agents get mad and say that “that home inspector killed my deal!” Experienced agents know that these things can happen, they keep things cordial and try to find out what can be done to satisfy the concerns. Meanwhile the contractor is spewing a stream of irrelevant excuses saying everything except the truth > “I don’t want to put any more money into this thing!”

I actually sympathize with the contractor (having been there myself!). However, everyone who has ever flipped a house before knows that you need to be very honest with yourself about how much you need to put into this house to bring it up to market value because anything you leave out is going to come out of your pocket! They know the truth of this statement in a painful way. Having experienced this truth myself is what makes me a good inspector because that pain has taught me to look for everything that needs to be done and I bring that to the benefit of my clients.

It gets worse: the time to make structural repairs in the crawlspace was when the house was gutted. Now it’s much harder and more expensive to do it right. ‘If’ it gets fixed, it’s likely to be a band-aid effort. The contractors spewing of excuses increases as I say “Sorry, that is not good enough.”

In the end, sometimes we get through it and sometimes we don’t. If the deal fails, good agents find their client another house and lesser agents blame it on the home inspector. One thing is for sure and I guarantee you this; that seller/contractor is now looking for a buyer who is not going to have a home inspection! Beware..

Number 1 Home Inspector

The Legend of Vance