WE HAVE A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE!

Having been a licensed General Contractor in California since 1977 and a licensed Structural Pest (termite) Inspector since 1968 comes with mixed blessings, one of which is a mailbox full of ‘trade’ magazines all month long. These magazines are advertising ‘monsters’, but they do carry current trade info and some times interesting or intriguing articles from time to time. This last month I stumbled across just such an article in one of the magazines that brought up the pitfalls and incredible bad results of poor communication between people and/or companies. I think most of us are aware that if communication between people is not good, unexpected and/or unwanted things may occur as a result. The magazine article gave several real life examples one of which was the following:
“A distributor called a vendor to order two truckloads of pipe. Business suddenly took a downturn, and just before delivery the distributor called to tell the vendor, “Cut the order in half.” Sure enough, when the two trucks arrived, each piece of pipe was cut in half!”

Although the story of the pipe order is amusing in some respects, it also graphically illustrates how a simple breakdown in communication can lead to an expensive, wasteful situation that will be difficult to rectify. But this does lead right into the point that I want to make that has to do with a person wanting to buy or sell a home. There is a lot of details and requirements involved in the process of buying or selling a home, which are heaped on to the participant by the lending institution(s), realtors, tax regulations, County and State governments. With all of the aforementioned, we haven’t even scratched the surface of home and property, all of the systems present and their condition. I think you can see, that with all that is involved in the home sale/purchase process, good communication between all involved is an absolute necessity. But even more important, is an unsolicited willingness of those involved in the process to provide the seller or buyer with full and complete information that allows a total and comfortable understanding of the process and the home/property it self.

One of the ways that those involved with the sales/purchase process have attempted to address the communications situation is through issuing paperwork, which most likely was promoted and prepared by attorneys. As a buyer or seller sits, a realtor slides page after page, document after document in front of the client for signatures and/or initials, which all become binding contracts under the law. Each page is normally accompanied by a brief, minimal verbal description at best, which usually doesn’t even come close to describing the document or the ultimate importance and possible repercussions that signing or initialing it will carry. When a dispute and/or discrepancy arises after the close of escrow, you (the buyer or seller) are quickly ‘re-united’ with the page and/or document with your signature/initials on it, which covers just such a circumstance that is being complained about. That to me is the ultimate in ‘weak’! Why wasn’t the possibility of the situation occurring explained in the beginning, or, even better yet, thought about in the first place and action taken to alleviate it from ever occurring!

The other area of critical communication is, of course, with the Inspectors that you hire to provide you the information you need on the home/property and various systems present on the property. Communication is critical, but just as important is the fact that you must feel comfortable with them so you will be willing and wanting to ask what ever questions you feel you need answers to. This means that you will have to really have checked out your Inspectors before hiring them. If you didn’t hire them (you let the realtor hire them), what sort of rapport do you think you will have with the Inspectors? They don’t work for you; they work for the realtor! When asking your questions of a prospective Inspector prior to hiring them, you find out that you can have a ‘morning’ or an ‘afternoon’ appointment, you know immediately there isn’t going to be very much communication because the Inspector must rush through the inspection in order to drive to and make the next inspection. You know also that you and your deal are not his/her major concern, moving on to make more money is! So, the bottom line is, good, clear unrushed communication. Make sure you protect yourself by hiring only those that you are assured you will get that type of communication from. Having a ‘failure to communicate’ is a total disaster for you after escrow has closed!