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Home Owner - Mike Downard Return to Articles

Client Services 01/17/2019

We bought our house in April 2016, the Denver Metro housing market was hot, and we were flustered by the way transactions were going. "

While we did not know about RezDox at the time, we were first time home buyers and we wanted to understand our risk. We finally found a seller willing to take our offer, and we started the inspection process. The real challenges started with hearing what the inspector had to say. It really takes the wind out of a buyer's sails to hear all of the worst parts about the house you fell in love with only days ago.

The process of evaluation of the home has a lot of manual steps and physical paper. How would we know how old the fence was when we bought it? Does an inspector give us all of the data we need to negotiate, and evaluate the price within the market tangibly? Ultimately, no. The inspector is doing his or her best to point out large risk items, this water heater is old, the fence has sway, the roof is in bad condition, the electrical is potentially a fire risk. We were able to know that the old aluminum electric in the house had been addressed through physical paperwork. That information helped us negotiate a full roof replacement, with the seller making an insurance claim, but we also missed expenses further down the line:

1. The fence posts were rotting, it had been decades since they were replaced or maintained.

2. The water heater was improperly installed with the HVAC system, who do we call? Carbon Monoxide filled our house and we had to rely on phone calls to figure out who to call.

3. Gas leaks were in the pipes due to improper installation.

4. Information overload in paper documents, appliance warranty information in a pile of unmanageable documents.

In retrospect, RezDox would have helped both the buyer and seller have common ground on the condition of the home. The sellers had pride in ownership and were doing a great job of cleaning, maintaining, and updating the home, but it took weeks to understand that information. They had no idea about water stains in the home, the condition or age of the roof, etc as they only owned the home for a couple of years before being relocated in military service. Having a centralized, forever history and marketing tool of the home would have helped us not panic when the water heater went out, we would have a point of contact immediately available. Having history of the home's major improvements would have helped the seller know more about the water stains and roof, and be able to tell a story or not have to address safety concerns in the eleventh hour.

Now, looking at vacation or second home opportunities, experience tells us what to do, but it is still painful to understand the details around whether or not a fixture is staying with the home or not. RezDox enables the seller to manage this data and print a list to the buyer of what they should expect in the deal, what they should expect in their financial risk, and a history of improvements that justify an above traditional market valuation. Appraisers can use the tool to understand the outliers in any market, and justify valuations.

-Mike Downard, Home Owner

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