The 2014 Super Service Award

I can't say we weren't expecting it, because we were. We work very hard to make sure our clients get good value for the money they spend with us. But it's always gratifying to know that those efforts were noticed.

We are once again very pleased to receive the Angie's List Super Service Award. This is only awarded to the top 5% of businesses in any category.

It's an elite group and we are justifiably proud.

What a Clever Negotiator!

I see it's been over two months since I've posted anything here. Things have been pretty quiet - busy but nothing out of the ordinary. Then just before Thanksgiving I got a call from a realtor who was booking the inspection for her client.

As it turns out the "client" was her husband. She made it very clear to me that she was NOT a party to the contract. (Something that is of no consequence to me - so I'm not sure why she thought it was important.) She also made it clear that her husband was an investor. (Also of no consequence to me unless she's about to ask for a quantity discount.) We set the appointment several days out since they were planning to be away over the Thanksgiving holiday. Even though she gave me the combo code, I still called Centralized Showing to schedule the appointment. We follow protocol here! If we don't have approval from Centralized Showing or the listing agent, we don't go. Too much legal liability, otherwise.

Oddly, I got the approval from the listing agent but then the buyer's agent called to cancel. The reason for the cancellation was that she had negotiated for the seller to pay for the inspection and that the sellers wanted to choose the inspector since they were paying for it.

Alrighty then! I cheerfully told her that I'd cancel the appointment and ended the call. But I remember when I bought this house 30 odd years ago and the seller paid for the termite inspection. The report said there were no termites here. Never had been! Wasn't that good news? Of course, within a month of my moving in, the termites were swarming outside the garage. The good folks who came to treat it (glad that chlordane was still legal 30 years ago) showed me the places where it had been spot-treated before. Which was amazing because according to the seller's inspector, no termite had ever set foot (or wing or whatever they have) on this property.

Seems to me that if you're going to have the seller pick the inspector, who may be his or her brother-in-law, you might just as well accept the seller's disclosure at face value. Why even bother with an inspection?

She may have been looking for a graceful way to cancel without appearing to be a cheapskate. (We do not claim to be the cheapest - only the best!) But she may have cleverly negotiated her husband (nothing to do with her!) into a position of not really knowing anything about the property he's investing in. Either way, good luck with that.

Expecting a Bonus?

Everyone likes a discounted price. Nearly every day I'm asked for discounts. "Do you offer a senior citizen discount? How about a discount for veterans?" People from certain ethnic backgrounds ask for discounts claiming their friends got a better price than the price they were quoted. (That's another issue altogether.) But the one that amazes me the most is the request for a discount that comes from a previous client.

They start off by telling me what a great job Mark did for them on the last house. They tell me how impressed they were with his report. And then, "Can you give me a discount since I've used you before?" Even if it was four or five years ago they still want a discount. Okay. Fine. I can give them $20 or $30 off as a goodwill gesture.

But what I'd really like to do is pose a question to these folks. What would you do if your boss said to you, "You know, you did such a great job on that last project! We're going to cut your pay on the next one."  

Most people would be expecting a bonus for a job well done. Instead it's "You did a really great job last time - I would like to pay you less this time."

Just think about it. 

Getting Your Money's Worth

An inspection is a snapshot in time. It reports the condition of the house on the day of the inspection. ON THE DAY OF THE INSPECTION! Not a week or a month later.

Here's the scenario. Mr. and Mrs. Home Buyer call to schedule an inspection. They were too busy to turn up to meet with the inspector and we only fielded one or two questions from Mr. Buyer. We assumed he read the report. There is now reason to suspect otherwise.

Now that he's moved in to the house (over a month after the inspection was completed) he has some issues. He can't believe that Mark didn't find these things. He doesn't feel that he got his money's worth. (Given that his agent was able to negotiate a lower price based on the inspection report, I'm not sure he's justified in feeling that way but let's move on.) The first thing on his list was the pool light. A quick look at the report showed that the pool light was listed as "not working". Maybe that should have been in all caps. He might have noticed it then. His next complaint involved the pool pump. Apparently the pump did not work when he moved in. Another quick check of the report showed that the pump was reported as "failing". It was overheating on the day of the inspection and Mark indicated that it would fail. Soon. Pictures were included yet Mr. Buyer was surprised that it was missed. When it was pointed out to him that it was not missed and was in the report he just moved on to his next point.

His next point was that there were any number of electrical outlets that don't work. Although he indicated that some of them had worked when he first moved in but stopped working when they had new carpet installed. Apparently the home inspector is a better target than a carpet installer. How on earth is Mark responsible for that?!?

His next issue was bare wires and missing insulation in the attic. Mark reviewed the video tape and these conditions did not exist on the day of the inspection. The most likely explanation is that the previous owners caused a bit of damage while disconnecting their home theatre system, but we're not into blame shifting so we offered to show Mr. Buyer the video tape.

His response? Basically that we could show it to the judge because he was fully prepared to pay the $60 to file a suit against us and that it would be cheaper for us just to give him his money back than to waste time preparing evidence for a court hearing. (Gee, you think he's done this before?) Then he started hinting that he'd be looking for us to reimburse him for every dime he'd spent since he moved into the house.

But sadly, he's right. It took several days just to review the report and the video tape to have a discussion with Mr. Buyer. We have other things to do besides prepare for a day in court, even though I'm relatively certain we'd win. So he's probably going to get his money back - even though I know we didn't miss those things he says we missed. It's just going to be too time consuming to prove it and it generates ill-will.

But it's changed the way we do business. Clients who do not turn up to meet with the inspector will need to schedule a phone "presentation" so we can be assured that they know what is in the report. And future complaints will need to be in writing. We will no longer have these "discussions" on the phone.

Hot, Hot, Hot!

One of the advantages of being married to a home inspector is that when something goes wrong around the house, he can almost certainly determine the cause of the problem and he'll know how to fix it. (Even if he's not able to fix it himself, he'll know who to call.)

So Saturday as I was cleaning up the bathroom, I noticed that the tap on Mark's sink was really hot. I'd never noticed that before. I needed to have Mark take a look.

He was busy reviewing reports but came upstairs to investigate right away.

"Hmmm. You weren't running the hot water?"

"No, I wasn't running the water. See? Feel the one on my sink. It's cold."

He looked at both sinks. He looked under his sink. Nothing appeared to be wrong and he wanted to avoid trampling the insulation in the attic which would be required to look at it from the other side of the wall. We were just going to keep an eye on it.

I went back to cleaning the sink. The tap was still hot. It was "burn your hand if you hold on too long" hot. I went back into the office.

"I think you need to get out the infrared camera and look at it. It's really, really hot."

Dutiful husband that he is, he got out the infrared camera and took it upstairs.

He scanned the area. "Look, the hot water pipe is hot, the cold water pipe is not. Just what I'd expect. Are you sure you weren't running the hot water?"

I was positive. Maybe. But given the fact that the tap cooled off and felt the same as the other one, in a relatively short period of time - I'm going to have to assume that it was "user error". I can only surmise that I was having so much fun cleaning that sink that I didn't even notice I was running the hot water. Thank goodness I didn't call a plumber!

Thank You, Thank You Very Much!

Some people have a very strange way of expressing gratitude.

A year or so ago, a broker who used to encourage her agents to recommend us called to say that she had an issue with one of her rental properties in a neighboring town and asked if Mark could take a look at it. Mark did - at no charge I might add. She wrote a testimonial stating how Mark had saved her thousands by finding the problem. But before the year was out, she stopped recommending us. I wanted to meet with her to find out why, but was told by her assistant that she didn't have time to meet with vendors. Thank you!

Another broker-agent always called us to schedule inspections on behalf of her clients. Last fall she called because she had a leak in her master bedroom and the roofing contractor she'd called couldn't seem to find it. Could Mark take a look at it? Mark went and found the source of the leak. Again, he didn't charge her. We haven't had a referral from her since. Thank you!

But here's the one that really annoys me. Another broker-agent who used to give us referrals sent Mark an email to ask if he could do a pro bono inspection for one of her sellers. I was acquainted with the seller's situation, and Mark agreed to do the inspection at no charge. Because the house had a pier and beam foundation, a pool, and was nearly 80 years old, Mark would have charged a paying customer nearly $1K to inspect that house. She was getting it for free. To top it off, on the scheduled day, she wasn't home. She called back to reschedule a week or so later. She laughed off the fact that she wasn't home on the scheduled day and explained that she'd always been a little "ditzy". Absolutely no appreciation of the fact that not only did Mark not earn any money from her that day, but he didn't earn any from anyone else because she took up the time on his schedule. And then we had the privilege of not earning any money another day when we rescheduled her. We truly didn't mind doing it at no charge - although we're not likely to volunteer to do that again anytime soon. What we did mind was that she told me she was soooo grateful that her agent had found people to make the needed repairs who would wait and get paid out of escrow. Getting paid at escrow was never offered to us as an option. I don't know whether the broker reduced her commission or not. We never heard from her again and that was in January. It's been a busy year in real estate in this part of the world. Can't believe these people haven't had any clients. And I can't believe that neither the client getting the freebie nor the broker who requested it ever bothered to say "Thank you".

Thank you very much.

Reassurance

"We got your name from our realtor, but we hired someone else to do the inspection. We paid him a LOT of money, but he didn't do everything. I just need someone to check a few things. I need a termite inspection and he didn't go under the house."

He also didn't put a sewer cam down the sewer line, measure for voltage drops, or measure the foundation. But why tell her that now? Not inspecting the crawl space could be a big deal. Many inspectors just flat out won't do it. I explained to her we didn't do termite inspections but that I could organize it, or give her contact details for someone who could do it. I also explained that it wasn't likely that Mark would go under the house she's buying unless he was doing a full inspection.

"If no one will go under these older houses, how are people supposed to get them inspected?"

I explained that many inspectors and termite inspectors won't check under the house. Mark in fact does, but it's not his favorite thing to do and he only does it as part of a full home inspection. If he did inspect it, I would have to charge her the full fee. Since she'd already paid the other guy a LOT of money, she wasn't too keen to pay us an additional LOT of money.

"The inspector we had said he couldn't get under there, but I went over there last night and I went under there. So I know he could have."

Aha! I suspect she no longer trusts the other inspector because she thinks he hasn't been truthful with her about the crawl space. I explained that there are several reasons why a home inspector might not enter the crawl space. For example, Mark won't go in unless there's 18 inches of headroom. That's a safety requirement. He also won't go in if he believes it is wet. A loose wire meeting water can electrocute you from 30 feet away. It's not worth the risk. Another reason Mark won't go in is if access is obstructed by boxes, bicycles, or other property that belongs to the sellers. But Mark always tells the buyer if he didn't go in and why. And if they've paid in advance, the extra charge for the crawl space is refunded.

The remark about electrocution seemed to strike a chord. She told me that it had been moist. Wet enough for mud to stick to her jeans. What did I think?  Also there was a mound of some kind under the house. Did I think it might be termites?

We are now way outside my area of expertise. I have no advice to give. Which is what I told her. It was outside the scope of things I know about. I can answer questions about scheduling and the various techniques and technologies that Mark uses, but I have no idea about the condition of a house.  Period.

Then she asked me to confirm that we lived in the same town as the house she's purchasing. I thought she was going to ask me to discount the price since Mark wouldn't have to drive very far. Instead she asked how long we'd lived here. Mark has lived here about 10 years and I've lived here over 30 years. And then she asked, "What do you know about the house?"

Nothing, really. All I can say is that I don't think it's being flipped. I don't know the owners and I've never been in it. I know the house she's talking about because I saw the realtor's sign out front.

"I think all the sewer lines have been replaced because when I was under the house, I saw PVC instead of iron. The guy who remodeled it did it for his parents. Surely he would have done a really good job if he was going to have his parents living in it."

You would think so. But now I'm being asked to pass judgement on the moral character of someone I don't know. We are moving farther and farther away from my area of expertise.

All this woman wants is reassurance that the house she's buying is a good, solid house. But it's her inspector's job to provide her with that. We can only do it if you hire us instead of the other guy.