Pandora’s Box: Real Estate Inspection Negotiations and Repairs

I am fully aware that there are readers of this blog that believe selling real estate is no big deal. And in the hotter market earlier this decade and on the right transaction, you were right.

But I’ve always said this: “I don’t get paid for selling a place so much as I get paid for getting it closed.”

Right now I’m in the middle of a transaction that has been one thing after the other on the repairs. What started out as a simple repair has uncovered safety issues, code violations and antiquated equipment for which the parts could only be found in one place.

Of course, locating the parts was no easy task and the shipping of them to make the closing deadline is as expensive as the parts themselves. In the grand scheme of your life, the few extra hundred dollars the repairs are costing are small in comparison. But when you first learn you are going to have to spend those dollars emotions can boil to the top.

Real estate agents can bring experience and trained negotiating skills. They can know when to negotiate and when not to. (Yes, there is a time not to.) Real estate agents bring knowledge of markets and market trends.

And one of the most important things and agent can do is bring his experience as a filter. A liaison if you will. Turning a “$%^& NO” into a “here’s what I think we can do about this.” An agent can be the calm in the storm. The clear thinker.

Think about that.