Standing Out in Ohio Podcast
Brought to you from Ohio based home inspection company of Habitation Investigation. Information helpful to agents and buyers. Conversations with professionals and entrepreneurs regarding their stories and what makes their companies and themselves stand out and gain competitive advantages. Listen to stories from Ohio real estate agents and related businesses to help you know how to improve and who to consider using for yourself or friends. Created by the owners of a highly rated home inspection company in Ohio and the Winners of Best Home Inspection Company in the Midwest https://homeinspectionsinohio.com/
Standing Out in Ohio Podcast
Seller Meltdowns: When Home Inspections Run Long
Ever wonder what happens when the delicate dance between home buyers, sellers, and inspectors goes sideways? We dive into a revealing situation that unfolded during a recent inspection that perfectly illustrates the emotional complexities of real estate transactions.
When a seller erupted in anger because our inspection ran just 15 minutes over schedule, it highlighted something crucial about the home selling process that often goes unacknowledged: the deep emotional connection sellers have with their homes. We explore how years of memories, life milestones, and personal circumstances create a fundamentally different perspective than buyers have – who've typically spent less than an hour in the property before making an offer.
The confrontation took a surprising turn when our inspector simply explained why the extra time was needed: the buyers had questions because they were genuinely interested in purchasing the home. This single moment of clarity completely transformed the seller's attitude, shifting from antagonism to understanding in seconds. It's a powerful reminder that most buyer questions don't indicate criticism but confirm interest.
We also address the growing challenge of difficult sellers, international buyers unfamiliar with American housing systems, and why patience during inspections actually helps close sales rather than hinders them. As one particularly poignant moment in our discussion reveals: "We're not here to rip your house apart – we're here to keep you from getting sued."
Subscribe to our podcast for more behind-the-scenes insights into the fascinating world of home inspections and real estate transactions. Have you experienced similar tensions during your home buying or selling journey? We'd love to hear your stories in the reviews!
To learn more about Habitation Investigation, the Three-time Winner of the Best Home Inspection Company in the Midwest Plus the Winner of Consumer Choice Award for Columbus Ohio visit Home Inspection Columbus Ohio - Habitation Investigation (homeinspectionsinohio.com)
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Hey everybody, it's Jim and of course Laura is with me. Hello everyone. All right. So today we had it's an adventure, for it's an adventure always buying a house, inspecting houses as well, but today-. And selling yes, and selling is stressful.
Speaker 2:Yes, Because you've got all the memories You've got. You know your kids grew up or whatever the case may be. You have all those memories from that house and you're just leaving it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and maybe you're not wanting to leave the house because maybe there's a divorce situation. I've been New job. I have seen people where they're selling the house. They're getting divorced and while I'm doing the inspection, the husband and soon to be ex-wife are arguing in the living room. And I just do my business. I mean, I don't get involved. Anyway, we had something happen today and we don't know what the situation was for the seller.
Speaker 1:No day and we don't know what the situation was for the seller. No, but one of the things we think you're, if you're a real estate agent or if you're a home seller, what you really want to make certain is that the seller knows that, that the part of the reason for the home inspection is to make is to help. Really, we don't make them, but it's to provide information and enough information so that the buyer, potential buyer feels comfortable with the house.
Speaker 2:So that they don't have second guesses or doubts, and they want to go through with the contract and that may mean they have a bunch of questions for the inspector.
Speaker 1:Yes, and then what happened today? What were the inspectors doing in the house?
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Speaker 1:And apparently the client had lots of questions, a lot of questions. Okay, so that made the inspection take 15 minutes over the time slot.
Speaker 2:Maybe 15. Not quite.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was so not much Not much. And I've always when I see the seller. If you come back early, you're not going to bother me any, because often they'll ask me if they absolutely need to be gone. I say, well, yeah, it's always better for the buyer if the seller's not here, because we can talk and they can ask questions. It's just more relaxed for them and they get it they understand they should but so our inspector 10-15 minutes extra and the last part of it.
Speaker 1:They were talking outside the house, on the sidewalk yeah, so the inspector and the home buyer were standing outside. Did the inspector say how long Was that? 10 minutes, 15 minutes long.
Speaker 2:Something like that.
Speaker 1:Something like that About the equal time that they were over was like about 10, 15 minutes. So he talks, he says goodbye, the seller was in a car watching them. Watching them, yes, so the buyer takes off immediately after that Inspector gets into his car and the seller pulls up yelling and be raised and have taken so long.
Speaker 2:Apparently, a gate got left open, which once once again because clients were asking a lot of questions. He was hurrying, trying to get out to get the house back to the seller and he apologized because you know Well that happens. Right, I mean we're human.
Speaker 1:And I've done it. Before I get in the car and I'm looking and I kind of look at the house, did I shut everything off? Double check we do the exit video. And that's partly why we do that we know the house is all shut up but sometimes the gate what I've had before where the gate was left open by the home buyer, they didn't shut it Right so you got to double check on everybody. But anyway, seller pulled up. I guess was pretty, was berating Just screaming was antagonistic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just not having a good day. And then inspector goes hey, I'm sorry about the gate.
Speaker 2:That is my bad, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:But the person who is buying your house has lots of questions, and I don't know if they explained to us as well, but the client wants to feel comfortable buying your house, has lots of questions and and I don't know if they explained as well, but the client wants to feel comfortable buying your house. And so what was what the seller did then?
Speaker 2:he kind of took a step back and apologized and just said I'm sorry, this has been a crappy day. I've had a lot of stuff going on and he apologized like immediately once he realized that it wasn't. You know, we weren't nitpicking the house or tearing it apart. We were trying to inform the clients and give them answers to their questions so that they feel comfortable with the house, if you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was right after the seller was told, like listen, we're a little bit over because a person who wants to buy your house, a person who likes your house, has questions. And basically I put it back to the seller like, listen, if you don't want to sell your house, go complain to the buyer that you're being rude or jerky because they went 10, 15 minutes over.
Speaker 2:Asking questions about the house that they were planning on spending hundreds of thousands of dollars purchasing. But you know, if you don't want to sell it, that's all good.
Speaker 1:So I think when the inspector said, hey, you know, the reason was because your person wants to buy your house and all these questions and we're helping them out to feel comfortable with the house and understand it, the seller kind of like I guess the seller took a step back and then he apologized. So then you realize like this is because people who like my house want to buy it and they want information on it.
Speaker 1:I mean often when somebody's looking at houses to buy. They're in there maybe a half hour, maybe an hour, I don't know how long people. For a while it was like 10 minutes 10, 15 minutes Yep. So most people have more like a half hour an hour to take a look at the place. But a homeowner, a seller, they've been in the house for years, they have no questions about the house.
Speaker 2:No, they know what.
Speaker 1:The home buyer, who has been in the house one other time for like 30 minutes. They have questions. They have lots of questions. They probably don't even remember exactly the house, how it's set up, because once you go in the two or three houses they all start blurring together. Especially when you look at five more houses, you don't know which house is which.
Speaker 2:Well, how many times have we heard that from clients that you know like I'm not sure which house this is? We've looked at so many. This is the address of the house I'm buying, but I can't tell you anything else about it because I don't remember.
Speaker 1:We saw so many and that happens often, yeah we had that recently also. Somebody did not remember what house it was nope, the house I was at the other day with one of the inspectors. I said something uh well, there's no installation. There's one area of the attic, only one. With one of the inspectors I said something well, there's no insulation in one area of the attic, only one area of the attic that you can get to. It's like a closet door. Oh, it was like an old house, cape Cod type style, and she's like closet. I didn't have a closet up there, oh my God. So she went to go take a look.
Speaker 1:She's only been in the house one other time, which she's only been in the house one other time Right, and for some reason she wasn't really touring the house again, which I would have definitely walked around the house if I didn't see it much before then. But sellers need to.
Speaker 2:Relax.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, they need to relax. We try not to go over, but sometimes we do, so the client has all the information they need to make a decision. I'm sure everybody has had. Well, you go to a restaurant and you got a massive menu. It's harder to make a decision on a massive menu.
Speaker 2:Than one that's got five items.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's a lot harder to do that Same thing. Just imagine the stress of buying a house, Because you're talking tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars that they're going to spend.
Speaker 2:Largest purchase for most of them in their life.
Speaker 1:Yes, so they're going to have questions. Give them space to ask and then, and personally as an inspector, if the home buyer comes home 30 minutes early, home seller yeah, I'm sorry, a seller as long as they're not in the way being jerked about anything, or talking about how they skirted county laws and didn't do um permits.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they really had that yeah, yeah, if you're selling, you come back early. You're not going to bother the inspector. Typically just go to your office, go watch tv, start cooking dinner, if you want, that's, that's fine. Don't, just don't. Don't interfere and don't be, definitely do not be rude. Well, I have seen buyers not buy the house because the seller was a jerk to them.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, because then at that point you're like, well, what's going on? And can I add on to that too, sure, so from an office perspective, it is getting exceedingly difficult to deal with some sellers. They are being insanely difficult with doing radon pickups or scheduling the inspection or whatever. Listen, we're trying to help you. We're not going to come in and be jerks about your house. We are here to matter of factly tell the person who is looking to purchase your house what is going on, so they can make an informed choice. We're not here to rip your house apart. We're not here to terrorize you. We're not here to make you miserable. We are here to keep you from getting sued.
Speaker 1:Basically, that's yeah, like that, that's a big one that would be nice to us when we call the schedule.
Speaker 2:For the love of god, work with us, please it's amazing how wow and that's why.
Speaker 1:So yes, they can be difficult. Difficult people don't get recommended, that's for sure. But yeah, it's. The goal of the home inspection is to confirm is how I look at it is to confirm to the buyer that this house is a good choice Because they like the house.
Speaker 2:They put in an offer. They've already fallen in love with it.
Speaker 1:Yep, they want the house. They're wanting a third-party confirmation that there's nothing they're unaware of to make this a bad decision for them. So that's what they're looking for. You don't need to make it worse.
Speaker 2:You don't need to freak out.
Speaker 1:So, yep, if you're a seller, be cool and relaxed. If you're an agent be cool and relaxed If we need to spend an extra half hour explaining something to the buyer so they feel comfortable you should let that happen. We try and hurry up and be done on that proper time, but it's not always going to happen.
Speaker 2:and just be flexible, we try to yeah, I mean well yeah, especially when we've got somebody completely nixing our schedule and making us redo stuff, which is insane to me yeah, we have a lot of yeah, reschedules, things like that, but it happens, it happens everybody's schedule fits, fits the time yeah, we have a lot of yeah, reschedules, things like that, but it happens, it happens everybody's schedule fits, fits the time slots we have.
Speaker 1:But things about you know this one don't freak out. The inspection takes longer. It doesn't mean we found a whole lot of stuff either no, it just means that they had questions.
Speaker 2:Sometimes they're not from the united states, which means that our systems here are different to them and they don't understand it. So, for example, I have a friend that lives in Romania right now and he told us that the way they build houses in Romania is completely different than building houses here. Like here. It takes us maybe four to six months, depending upon you know, like slab and all of that.
Speaker 1:Definitely six to seven. Seven.
Speaker 2:It depends a lot yeah so let's say, six months there. It takes years because what they do is well, they'll say, maybe they'll come in and they'll pour the concrete. Then they have to go in and put in holes in the concrete to run the pipes, and so they need to tear it apart, install the pipes and then refix the concrete. And then they do that with each step. They'll do a step and then they have to do that next step and adjust it in, instead of doing it like we do it. So there are a lot of countries where they genuinely have no clue about our systems. They've never seen a basement. They've never seen a basement, they've never seen a crawl space and they have questions. They're going to live in this house. They need to know how to fix it. They need to have their questions answered.
Speaker 1:So you know, be understanding yep, and then just give the buyers time to look at the house. We we have a schedule that we need to try and keep as well, so we do not want to take all day?
Speaker 2:No, nobody does.
Speaker 1:So I think that's about it for this one. Thanks everybody. Bye guys, bye-bye.
Speaker 4:You've been listening to the Standing Out in Ohio podcast. Be sure to subscribe on Spotify or Google Podcasts to get new, fresh episodes, or Google Podcasts to get new, fresh episodes. For more, please follow us on Instagram, twitter and Facebook, or visit the website of the best Ohio home inspection company at homeinspectionsinohiocom or jimtroffcom. That's J-I-M-T-R-O-T-H. And click on Podcast. Until next time, learn and go do stuff.
