You Deserve Answers Before You Buy

A well water test comes back positive for E. coli, and instead of getting guidance, the buyer gets silence. That’s the moment we know something is broken, not with the buyer’s questions, but with the way some deals get handled. We talk through what E. coli in a private well can mean for your health, why you should never brush it off, and what kind of support you should expect from the professionals you’re paying to protect you in a home purchase.
We also dig into the practical side of well ownership that many “city water” buyers don’t see coming. We explain why one test is rarely the whole story, how quarterly testing during the first year helps you build a baseline, and how nearby land use like farms, fertilizers, and seasonal rain can affect water quality. The goal is not to panic, it’s to get clear data, take the right corrective steps, and confirm the fix with follow up testing.
Then we get blunt about ethics. If someone tries to downplay a bad report or, worse, change it, that’s not just shady, it can put people at risk. We share what we look for in a thorough home inspection company, what makes an agent trustworthy, and why you should walk away when your safety questions get ignored. If you found this helpful, subscribe, share it with a home buyer, and leave us a review so more people know what to ask before they sign.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hello, hello, hello, Jim and Laura.

SPEAKER_02 0:03

Hello, this is Laura.

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Alright, so Laura, you had a story about this other day. So the topic is subject and well basics. What city folk don't understand or expect.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

It's a lot of stuff. Like it's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

We ever hear city folk? I think a country mouse.

SPEAKER_02 0:19

And city mouse, I guess I do too.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

And how I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 0:24

Like the mentalities were completely different.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Yeah, well, was the city mouse freaked out about in the country? But then the country mouse was really freaked out by the city, all the noise and everything.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

All the noise and the cat that kept running around and trying to eat her cousin. And she was just like, I'm kind of done with this. I'm done with the mice.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Which, which, and I and the cats. You're gonna remember that I talked about this for years. I wanted to do a version of that. City agent and country.

SPEAKER_02 0:51

I know we've talked it. We I I want to do that. I'm gonna work on that one.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

So I think I think it'd be good. Yes, yes, and nobody knows everything.

SPEAKER_02 1:02

No, no, you can't.

Buyer Panics Over E. Coli

SPEAKER_01 1:03

So so Lord, give us a story.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

You had um So I got a call from Amy, and she's Amy Amy Amy in our office. If you know us, you know Amy because she's she's my savior.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

She's fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

So um Amy said, Hey, this guy has a question about a well water test, and his home inspector and his agent aren't talking to him. And I'm like, Okay, did we do the inspection? And she's like, No.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

That's shitty service.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

So that's that that's very shitty service. So I call the guy because I'm I I grew up on well water. I I've been around the block a time or two with that.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

You're the country mouse.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

I'm the country mouse. So I gave him a call and he was concerned because when he got his water test back, it tested positive for both forms of E. coli. So he's freaking out. And he's like, How do I get rid of this? blah, blah, blah. Like they never told him anything about shocking the well. Like they they flat out just refused to talk to him. He's like, he couldn't even get his home inspector to call him back. The agents had stopped calling him back all because he was asking questions about the well water. And you know, let's be realistic. You're drinking the water, you need to know that it's healthy and that it's good for you, and that it's not gonna make you or your kids sick. If it has E. coli in it, you're gonna get sick.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Like that that's oh, you you can get deathly sick.

How Quarterly Testing Builds A Baseline

SPEAKER_02 2:34

You can get deathly sick. So for people to not call this guy back was freaking ridiculous. So he and I talked for about a half an hour. I gave him all the scoop on, you know, like testing and then testing every quarter so that he had an idea of like a baseline.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

No, no, is that is that testing the water for for every quarter for the first year? Yeah.

Everyone Failed The Buyer

SPEAKER_02 2:54

And then so what I told him was I'm like, you know, I I can't talk to anything because I didn't see the property. But the philosophy behind testing every quarter is let's say you've got a farm near you and they're spraying fertilizers or they're doing pesticides or they're doing something, you need to know how that's going to impact your water. So by testing every quarter, you have an idea of what the levels are and you get yourself a baseline. Plus, if you've already had E. coli in it, you don't know how that happened. Like it could have just been, you know, like a lot of rain and your well is low and it got into your well. I don't know. Once again, I'm not there to see it. I can't tell you, but you need to look at these things and kind of figure out what's going on. Does your well head need raise? Does it, you know, blah, blah, blah? So we we had a nice little discussion and I sent him on his merry way. But long story short, like everybody failed this man.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

And that's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

And he paid them, like he paid them for a service, and they still blew him off. Now, I have no clue who the home inspection company was. I didn't ask, didn't think that was any of my business. No clue who his agent was or who the listing agent was.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

But I would like people that's sad. I would like to know who that inspection company is because if it's a single uh inspector, you know, single man operation, we're never hiring the guy.

SPEAKER_02 4:21

Yeah, oh, that's true.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Because we we have standards.

SPEAKER_02 4:27

But I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

You could, you could.

SPEAKER_02 4:29

Yeah. But I I mean, you know, it's it's ridiculous. If you're paying for a service, you need to get that service and you need to get that support. If you have questions, by God, if I don't know the answer, I'll find it out for you and or I'll direct you to someone who who does know it.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

Now, this this reminds me that so the agents, both agents would not talk to them to go on the water quality.

SPEAKER_02 4:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

And they know it's bad.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

Well, yeah, they had the report.

The Lab Report Can’t Be Changed

SPEAKER_01 4:56

And it's and okay. This reminds me of we had an agent one time call us because the well water had E. coli on it, right? Yes. Also E. coli.

SPEAKER_02 5:08

He didn't call us first, Jim. He called the lab.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

He called the water testing lab and asked them to remove E. coli information.

SPEAKER_02 5:19

First of all, they were like, we cannot talk to you without permission from the home inspection company.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

And that was from the lab. And that was from the company. The lab refused to talk to the real estate agent.

SPEAKER_02 5:29

He went ballistic and was, I've never had a lab tell me that in 30 years of doing business and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and so on and so forth. And I'm like, you know what? That lab is a that that lab report is a part of the transaction. It cannot be changed because it is what it is. If you take that off and your clients don't realize that, you could be killing them. And what you are doing is completely unethical. And I did tell him that actually, because I've known him for a few years. And I'm like, no, you can't just change this crap.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

No, you said crap, and it was E. coli in the water.

unknown 6:16

I didn't even realize that.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

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Unethical Pressure To Close Deals

SPEAKER_01 6:44

So, but the service has to be good. If you don't know if you know something, you don't know. That's fine. You research, you figure that out. But for the real estate agents who have a fiduciary responsibility to help take care of them to blow him off. And I don't know. See now it's both agents where the agents talk to each other and go, hey, don't just we don't want this deal blown. You need this deal to go through, which we have heard agents say, Hey, I need this deal to go through because I can't pay my mortgage or my rent or whatever payment was coming up. There's some unethical stuff going on there.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

But that's that's not the point. You want a company who will do right by you, who is here for you.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

And if obviously that none of those people wore that something, yeah, something was definitely either unethical or maybe one person was on vacation. I'm hoping not in REC.

SPEAKER_02 7:42

That's not what he said. He said they refused to talk to him.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

See, and that's the case. Personally, I would have not bought the house. I wouldn't know. What else do they know they're not willing to tell me about?

SPEAKER_02 7:56

Well, and if you're not if you're my agent and I'm paying you a commission to represent me and do right by me, and you're not even returning my call about a simple water test, I'm done. I'm not only am I not buying this house, I'm not buying anything from you because at this point I don't trust you. And I'm using the home inspection company that took a half an hour out of their day to explain well water to me when she didn't have to.

How To Pick An Ethical Agent

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Yeah, yeah. The buyer wasn't even our client and we're helping them out. So which remind what tells me, because this is this little segue that you just got me into if you are a home buyer and you don't know what home inspection or I'm sorry, what real estate agent to use, call me. Call us. Call habitation investigation. We know which agents are ethical, and we know some that we had are very questionable ethics at times, and then there's a bunch of that we just don't know. But we can steer you, like I say you hey, I'm looking at these two or three agents. Is there any of this any of these that you would prefer to use or to remove? And we could help you narrow that down to uh just uh one or two that we can that we don't have that kind of history of being uh unethical.

SPEAKER_02 9:17

Let's let's be realistic about this. Here we have let's say 17,000 inspections we do a year on average, okay?

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Wait, 1700.

SPEAKER_02 9:28

I'm sorry, 1700. I said 17,000. So we have about 1700 a year. So that's 1,700 clients that we've worked with on a yearly basis, and we hear about their listing agent, about the buyer's agent, and all the crap that they do and all the crap that they pull. And we've been doing this for 24 years almost. So please call your local home inspection company. I don't care what state you're in. Make sure you've got one that's got good reviews because you don't want one that's in an agent's pocket. You want one that has a good reputation for being thorough, for being honest, for having integrity, because that's who they're going to give you as part of their, you know, agents that they work with that are good and reputable.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Well, I can tell you who's not on our list for as far as agents go. It's the agents that never call us to do inspection for their buyers, but as soon as their family member is buying a house, we get the call. We get the call to do the inspection for their kid. Yeah. Well their family member. But no, no, they they don't want us inspection for their buyer. That's because some agents because some agents don't like super thorough reports.

What A Good Inspection Helps With

SPEAKER_02 10:38

That's because some agents don't know how to talk to their clients and explain what's going on, and this is common.

Call Us For Agent Recommendations

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Yeah. Well, we have a class, it's online, it's a YouTube video online, of course, and it's to help home buyers know what to expect from the home inspection. That way, when you see a home inspection report, maybe for the first time ever seeing one, you don't freak out over common small issues. And that seems to be a thing that some real estate agents they I don't know, they have a hard time wrapping their head around that. Yeah, there's yeah, there's a number of like safety issues, but the safety issues are like missing cover plates. Those are like 30 cents apiece, and you put them on, that's it. They freak out, they don't understand how to handle uh little issues. And you you need a home inspection that can help you, and you need a real estate agent that wants you to know good information and a lot of information who's who's not going to not stab you in the back, but uh ignore you and your concern. So call habitation investigation for our recommendations for real estate agents. Give us give us a couple agents you're thinking about, and we will help you narrow it down. Or maybe maybe we have nothing on in any of those agents, and we'll go and we'll tell you. And we'll tell you, don't know any of them. All right, I think that's it.

SPEAKER_02 12:01

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

All right, thank you, everybody. Bye bye.