Most people think all a realtor does is open doors, fill in the blanks on the paperwork and cash checks. Sad thing is that there are a lot of realtors who think this too.

Not me.

The ultimate goal is the get the best terms for my clients and make the process as smooth and drama-free as possible.

I recently had a situation where my drama radar was going off so I made some moves to prevent it.

I got a repair list on one of my listings. The issue was the wording on the repair request for an air conditioner. The other realtor stated what the inspector found and pretty much just said fix it. The inspector stated that the air conditioner was only producing a temperature difference of 9 degrees. Now, I knew what the intent of the buyer’s request was. They wanted a normal working air conditioner. But at what point would they find a repair acceptable? If my buyer fixed it and it was only 10 degrees, would that be okay? Who knows? I never liked playing Marco Polo when I was a kid. I don’t like finding Waldo. I also don’t like the “I see something you don’t see and the color of it is” game. I am definitely not going to play those games with a repair list.

My Dad is retired now from being an attorney, but he is still a brilliant man. Back in 2005 when I was writing my first ever repair list, I consulted him on the wording. I think I did what most realtors do, which is to state the problem and just say fix it. He told me two things which I have never forgotten and try to share as often as I can with other realtors so our industry improves:

1. Write a repair to be done to achieve a goal rather than for a task to be performed. Why? You can sometimes do a task which doesn’t achieve the goal. When that happens, you have no recourse because you asked for a task to be performed and it was done as you requested.
2. Write EVERYTHING so clearly that a third party could read the contract, addenda or repair list and know exactly who was to do what and what the agreed upon outcome should be. That third party could be a judge or mediator.

So, when I read this one repair item, I knew there was no specific outcome requested. There was no verbiage saying that “If the seller does this with the air conditioner, the buyer will accept it.” The effort to get this right at this point may have saved some last minute drama right before the closing. When my seller has packed up and moved out, and the buyer has packed up and made moving plans is NOT the time to discover that we had a difference of opinion on what was expected.

Ultimately we agreed upon wording that said the air conditioner had to cool within industry standards, which is a minimum temperature difference of 15 degrees.