Seller Meltdowns: When Home Inspections Run Long

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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!

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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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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everybody, it's Jim and of course Laura is with
me.
Hello everyone.
All right.
So today we had it's anadventure, for it's an adventure
always buying a house,inspecting houses as well, but
today-.
And selling yes, and selling isstressful.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Yes, Because you've got all the memories You've got.
You know your kids grew up orwhatever the case may be.
You have all those memoriesfrom that house and you're just
leaving it.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Yeah, and maybe you're not wanting to leave the
house because maybe there's adivorce situation.
I've been New job.
I have seen people wherethey're selling the house.
They're getting divorced andwhile I'm doing the inspection,
the husband and soon to beex-wife are arguing in the
living room.
And I just do my business.

(00:56):
I mean, I don't get involved.
Anyway, we had something happentoday and we don't know what
the situation was for the seller.
No day and we don't know whatthe situation was for the seller
.
No, but one of the things wethink you're, if you're a real
estate agent or if you're a homeseller, what you really want to
make certain is that the sellerknows that, that the part of

(01:17):
the reason for the homeinspection is to make is to help
.
Really, we don't make them, butit's to provide information and
enough information so that thebuyer, potential buyer feels
comfortable with the house.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
So that they don't have second guesses or doubts,
and they want to go through withthe contract and that may mean
they have a bunch of questionsfor the inspector.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Yes, and then what happened today?
What were the inspectors doingin the house?

Speaker 3 (01:48):
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(02:09):
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Speaker 1 (02:14):
And apparently the client had lots of questions, a
lot of questions.
Okay, so that made theinspection take 15 minutes over
the time slot.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Maybe 15.
Not quite.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, it was so not much Not much.
And I've always when I see theseller.
If you come back early, you'renot going to bother me any,
because often they'll ask me ifthey absolutely need to be gone.
I say, well, yeah, it's alwaysbetter for the buyer if the
seller's not here, because wecan talk and they can ask
questions.
It's just more relaxed for themand they get it they understand

(02:50):
they should but so ourinspector 10-15 minutes extra
and the last part of it.
They were talking outside thehouse, on the sidewalk yeah, so
the inspector and the home buyerwere standing outside.
Did the inspector say how longWas that?
10 minutes, 15 minutes long.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Something like that.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Something like that About the equal time that they
were over was like about 10, 15minutes.
So he talks, he says goodbye,the seller was in a car watching
them.
Watching them, yes, so thebuyer takes off immediately
after that Inspector gets intohis car and the seller pulls up

(03:37):
yelling and be raised and havetaken so long.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
Apparently, a gate got left open, which once once
again because clients wereasking a lot of questions.
He was hurrying, trying to getout to get the house back to the
seller and he apologizedbecause you know Well that
happens.
Right, I mean we're human.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
And I've done it.
Before I get in the car and I'mlooking and I kind of look at
the house, did I shut everythingoff?
Double check we do the exitvideo.
And that's partly why we dothat we know the house is all
shut up but sometimes the gatewhat I've had before where the
gate was left open by the homebuyer, they didn't shut it Right
so you got to double check oneverybody.
But anyway, seller pulled up.

(04:18):
I guess was pretty, wasberating Just screaming was
antagonistic.
Yeah, just not having a good day.
And then inspector goes hey,I'm sorry about the gate.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
That is my bad, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
But the person who is buying your house has lots of
questions, and I don't know ifthey explained to us as well,
but the client wants to feelcomfortable buying your house,
has lots of questions and and Idon't know if they explained as
well, but the client wants tofeel comfortable buying your
house.
And so what was what the sellerdid then?

Speaker 2 (04:47):
he kind of took a step back and apologized and
just said I'm sorry, this hasbeen a crappy day.
I've had a lot of stuff goingon and he apologized like
immediately once he realizedthat it wasn't.
You know, we weren't nitpickingthe house or tearing it apart.
We were trying to inform theclients and give them answers to

(05:09):
their questions so that theyfeel comfortable with the house,
if you know.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
Yeah, it was right after the seller was told, like
listen, we're a little bit overbecause a person who wants to
buy your house, a person wholikes your house, has questions.
And basically I put it back tothe seller like, listen, if you
don't want to sell your house,go complain to the buyer that
you're being rude or jerkybecause they went 10, 15 minutes

(05:36):
over.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Asking questions about the house that they were
planning on spending hundreds ofthousands of dollars purchasing
.
But you know, if you don't wantto sell it, that's all good.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
So I think when the inspector said, hey, you know,
the reason was because yourperson wants to buy your house
and all these questions andwe're helping them out to feel
comfortable with the house andunderstand it, the seller kind
of like I guess the seller tooka step back and then he
apologized.
So then you realize like thisis because people who like my
house want to buy it and theywant information on it.

(06:09):
I mean often when somebody'slooking at houses to buy.
They're in there maybe a halfhour, maybe an hour, I don't
know how long people.
For a while it was like 10minutes 10, 15 minutes Yep.
So most people have more like ahalf hour an hour to take a
look at the place.
But a homeowner, a seller,they've been in the house for

(06:30):
years, they have no questionsabout the house.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
No, they know what.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
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 evenremember exactly the house, how
it's set up, because once you goin the two or three houses they
all start blurring together.
Especially when you look atfive more houses, you don't know
which house is which.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
Well, how many times have we heard that from clients
that you know like I'm not surewhich house this is?
We've looked at so many.
This is the address of thehouse I'm buying, but I can't
tell you anything else about itbecause I don't remember.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
We saw so many and that happens often, yeah we had
that recently also.
Somebody did not remember whathouse it was nope, the house I
was at the other day with one ofthe inspectors.
I said something uh well,there's no installation.
There's one area of the attic,only one.
With one of the inspectors Isaid something well, there's no
insulation in one area of theattic, only one area of the
attic that you can get to.

(07:23):
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.
She's only been in the house oneother time, which she's only
been in the house one other timeRight, and for some reason she
wasn't really touring the houseagain, which I would have
definitely walked around thehouse if I didn't see it much

(07:44):
before then.
But sellers need to.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
Relax.

Speaker 1 (07:48):
Yeah, exactly, they need to relax.
We try not to go over, butsometimes we do, so the client
has all the information theyneed to make a decision.
I'm sure everybody has had.
Well, you go to a restaurantand you got a massive menu.
It's harder to make a decisionon a massive menu.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
Than one that's got five items.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
Yes, it's a lot harder to do that Same thing.
Just imagine the stress ofbuying a house, Because you're
talking tens of thousands,hundreds of thousands of dollars
that they're going to spend.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
Largest purchase for most of them in their life.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
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 home30 minutes early, home seller
yeah, I'm sorry, a seller aslong as they're not in the way
being jerked about anything, ortalking about how they skirted
county laws and didn't do umpermits.

(08:49):
Yeah, they really had that yeah,yeah, if you're selling, you
come back early.
You're not going to bother theinspector.
Typically just go to youroffice, 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 notbuy the house because the seller

(09:10):
was a jerk to them.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
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 gettingexceedingly difficult to deal
with some sellers.
They are being insanelydifficult with doing radon
pickups or scheduling theinspection or whatever.

(09:32):
Listen, we're trying to helpyou.
We're not going to come in andbe jerks about your house.
We are here to matter of factlytell the person who is looking
to purchase your house what isgoing on, so they can make an
informed choice.
We're not here to rip yourhouse apart.
We're not here to terrorize you.

(09:53):
We're not here to make youmiserable.
We are here to keep you fromgetting sued.

Speaker 1 (09:59):
Basically, that's yeah, like that, that's a big
one that would be nice to uswhen we call the schedule.

Speaker 2 (10:05):
For the love of god, work with us, please it's
amazing how wow and that's why.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
So yes, they can be difficult.
Difficult people don't getrecommended, that's for sure.
But yeah, it's.
The goal of the home inspectionis to confirm is how I look at
it is to confirm to the buyerthat this house is a good choice
Because they like the house.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
They put in an offer.
They've already fallen in lovewith it.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
Yep, they want the house.
They're wanting a third-partyconfirmation that there's
nothing they're unaware of tomake this a bad decision for
them.
So that's what they're lookingfor.
You don't need to make it worse.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
You don't need to freak out.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
So, yep, if you're a seller, be cool and relaxed.
If you're an agent be cool andrelaxed If we need to spend an
extra half hour explainingsomething to the buyer so they
feel comfortable you should letthat happen.
We try and hurry up and be doneon that proper time, but it's
not always going to happen.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
and just be flexible, we try to yeah, I mean well
yeah, especially when we've gotsomebody completely nixing our
schedule and making us redostuff, which is insane to me
yeah, we have a lot of yeah,reschedules, things like that,
but it happens, it happenseverybody's schedule fits, fits
the time yeah, we have a lot ofyeah, reschedules, things like
that, but it happens, it happenseverybody's schedule fits, fits

(11:33):
the time slots we have.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
But things about you know this one don't freak out.
The inspection takes longer.
It doesn't mean we found awhole lot of stuff either no, it
just means that they hadquestions.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
Sometimes they're not from the united states, which
means that our systems here aredifferent to them and they don't
understand it.
So, for example, I have afriend that lives in Romania
right now and he told us thatthe way they build houses in
Romania is completely differentthan building houses here.
Like here.

(12:04):
It takes us maybe four to sixmonths, depending upon you know,
like slab and all of that.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
Definitely six to seven.
Seven.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
It depends a lot yeah so let's say, six months there.
It takes years because whatthey do is well, they'll say,
maybe they'll come in andthey'll pour the concrete.
Then they have to go in and putin holes in the concrete to run
the pipes, and so they need totear it apart, install the pipes
and then refix the concrete.

(12:32):
And then they do that with eachstep.
They'll do a step and then theyhave to do that next step and
adjust it in, instead of doingit like we do it.
So there are a lot of countrieswhere 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.

(12:54):
They're going to live in thishouse.
They need to know how to fix it.
They need to have theirquestions answered.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
So you know, be understanding yep, and then just
give the buyers time to look atthe house.
We we have a schedule that weneed to try and keep as well, so
we do not want to take all day?

Speaker 2 (13:14):
No, nobody does.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
So I think that's about it for this one.
Thanks everybody.
Bye guys, bye-bye.

Speaker 4 (13:21):
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(13:42):
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