The title to this blog is a little misleading; kind of. I'm not looking to explain how I'm the best at this or the expert at that. The purpose of this blog is to try and explain why who you DO hire doesn't need to be the expert about everything, but more importantly they need to know WHO the experts are when it comes to your specific needs.
I've been in the residential construction industry for about twenty years; home building, remodeling, renovations, insurance work, etc. I know many real estate agents and am very flattered when one of them calls me to ask me a "builder" question. This just happened yesterday and here are the details.
The agent that called me has a home listed and they have an offer on the home. As we all know, this is a down market and everyone's looking for a bargain. Okay, makes sense. The home that we are discussing has a finished basement but no bathroom in the basement. And there is no plumbing nearby so it would be a little messy and a little more expensive than usual to add a bathroom. The listing real estate agent called me to ask, approximately, what it should cost to put a bathroom in the basement. I asked a few questions and gave them a "ballpark estimate": it's a phrase I use because I haven't seen the job, don't know the finishes and there would be some details I needed before I could give a firm cost. That and I'm not up for the job, the real estate agent was just gathering information.
I gave the agent my numbers and said that it should be close, within 10%-15% or so. Out of curiosity I asked the agent what the buyers' agent had told her (they were looking for a reduction in sales price not for the work to be done). She chuckled a little bit and stated that the buyers' agent said it would cost................$15,000 to do the work. I laughed. I actually laughed pretty hard and stated that I'd be happy to do it for $14,900. You see, that cost was about TRIPLE of what it would actually cost to do the work. Now it's possible that the other agent was just trying to negotiate a better deal for her client, but based on what I know about the buyers' agent; she just didn't know and was blowing smoke everywhere.
Smart idea? Not really, and here's why. The buyers' agent is actually doing a HUGE disservice to her clients because she has set an expectation with her client that they should see a very large price reduction all because she didn't do her homework; she didn't have a good team in place. In addition, the sellers' agent is in a much stronger position to negotiate because she has the facts and will be looked to by BOTH parties as being the expert. The buyers' agent looks like a fool and in her buyers' eyes probably has lost their respect in her ability to negotiate on their behalf. Not good at all.
So why the title "Ask An Expert"? Well, in my humble opinion, the real estate agent who asked me for the real costs of doing the work put herself in such a better negotiating position on behalf of her clients than the agent who shot from the hip. Can the buyer go find another home in this market? Sure, well, kind of. You see, the home is in a community that's a little unique in that the homes are selling within just a few percentage points of asking price. The buyers' agent set such an unrealistic expectation that they will either not come up in price or the seller has such an upper hand that they will actually end up paying more than they "should" have due to the poor information.
When hiring a professional it's important to understand not just what they bring to the table, but also what their "team" brings to the table. I'm not specifically stating a group's direct team: but the team that they bring from their experience in the real world. Does the person you're hiring have the resources to be able to get you the answers you need? It's probably just as important to ask that question as it is what that person can do for you directly. In any situation, know not just what the person brings to the table themselves, but what resources they have at their fingertips.
As the great football coach Vince Lombardi once said, "none of us is as smart as all of us".
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