THE DEVIL’S IN THE DETAILS

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 screwed 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 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 scene. The buyer bought a very expensive home. He suggested the garage needed better insulation to satisfy his year round hobby. Builder said sure no problem. So he added insulation. But not enough so buyer came back and wanted it done properly. Builder said “I did”. Buyer said “No you didn’t”. And so it went. They were in a stalemate, neither willing to budge. At heart here was a $1,500.00 job to remedy the situation. And both of these people had scads of money and could very easily have stepped up. I suggested a 3-way split and a host of other options. NO ONE was willing to back down. It became the dreaded “Matter of Principle”.God, I hate that. Only people that 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 and 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 repped 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 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 that loss. As should have happened. When you get a home inspection done, any good home inspector will record serial numbers for all appliances that are included. Reason being when closing happens you want to know you got what you paid for. I heard years ago about one deal that 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. Seems the buyer figured these were the “Washer” and “Dryer” included in the deal. And, really, who could argue with that, as ridiculous as it sounds. All of these scenarios underscore the importance of getting EVERYTHING in writing and be 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