It's all about the details

by Shawn Lackie

Many years ago, when I was in the TV business, we had a well worn phrase. “We’ll fix it in post.” Meaning, if a shot was messed up and a re-shoot was needed, we could make things right in Post Production. Let the editors repair the damage.

Fast forward to my time in the Real Estate biz. I’ve heard, more than a few times, “We’ll deal with that later,” or “Let’s not worry about that right now,” or “Sure, we will get to that.” The TV Post Production situation was usually cleared up. The other three real estate scenarios were fraught with danger. Especially, if you never ended up dealing with the situation.

Almost 20 years ago I was stuck in the middle of a no-win state of affairs. The buyer bought a very expensive home. He suggested the garage needed better insulation, to satisfy his year round hobby. The builder said, “Sure no problem.” So he added insulation, but not enough, so the buyer came back and wanted it done properly. The builder said, “I did.” The buyer said, “No you didn’t,” and so it went.

They were in a stalemate, neither willing to budge. At heart, there was a $1,500 job to remedy the situation. Both of these people had scads of money and could very easily have stepped up. I suggested a three-way split and a host of other options, yet, NO ONE was willing to back down. It became the dreaded “Matter of Principle.” I hate that. The only people who benefit from that are lawyers.

At any rate, since the whole deal hinged on this getting done, guess who had to pay? Yup, that would be me. It should have been detailed in writing, exactly what needed to be done, how and when. That way, when the finger pointing started, it could be explained. I learned a very important lesson, albeit a costly one.

Recently, I represented a buyer who bought a place in good faith. Taxes on the property were posted in the listing. When the buyer’s lawyer was doing her title search, she found the taxes were, in fact, double what was posted. So, I contacted the selling agent and pointed that out. She tried to slough it off as a “Clerical error”.

I said, “Hold on, one of the reasons we did an offer was because the tax situation looked so good. You can’t just look the other way.”

So she was in a huff, but so what? In the end, the seller paid the rest of the tax bill and had to eat the loss, as it should have happened.

When you get a home inspection done, any good home inspector will record serial numbers for all the appliances included. The reason being, when closing happens, you want to know you got what you paid for. I heard, years ago, about one deal which had no details spelled out, so the day the deal closed the buyer showed up and found a wash tub and hair dryer on the counter. It seems the buyer figured these were the “Washer” and “Dryer” included in the deal. As ridiculous as it sounds, who could argue with that.

All of these scenarios underscore the importance of getting everything in writing and being as precise as you can. It’s like everything else in life. Do the heavy lifting early on and you can put your feet up later and enjoy the fruits of your labour.

Feel free to check out this story and more on my blog site, at https://slackie14.wixsite.com/buy-sell-and-more