Before a seller places their property on the market they need to have all property inspections performed before they self market or list for sale thru a Realtor.
The reasons that performing these inspections before you seek a buyer are so important include:
- Establishment of price
- Learning the exact nature of the property
- Misrepresentations
- Avoiding price renegotiations
- Error and omissions insurance coverage
- Maintain arms length negotiations
Reason #3 concerns misrepresentations or more accurately how to avoid making misrepresentations.
When a truly interested buyer looks at the property they will most likely have questions about the property. Since the Realtors cannot be relied upon to provide the answers, a seller needs to be able to turn to someone or something else for the appropriate answers. The buyer’s real estate agent will not be familiar with the property so they cannot be expected to know and if the seller is unlucky enough to have a listing agent, these agents and their own forms make it perfectly clear that all their information comes from the seller anyway.
So what a seller needs to do in order to have correct answers available is to have a professional property inspector perform the necessary inspections before the property is put up for sale.
There are four ways in which a seller can handle property specific questions:
- From the information on the inspection reports
- Information that the sellers definitely knows the answer to (NO GUESSING)
- It is perfectly acceptable to respond that the seller simply does not know the answer
- Provide the buyer with the opportunity to obtain the answers elsewhere.
Remember that incorrect answers can later be interpreted as decieptful or misleading answers.
At some point in the sales process it will become inevitable these reports are performed.
It is entirely in the SELLER’S BEST INTEREST to maintain this control and have these inspections performed at their own expense. It will always save the seller time, aggravation and money.
Sellers need to be cautious in order to avoid any claims of misrepresentation. Although this can be done innocently enough it is easy to avoid by simply having a property inspection performed before they market their property.
