One of those week's

[Robert Jones]

Had my fourth inspection this week have to reschedule due to lack of utilities. The typical response is, "the listing agent said they would be on". A bit frustrating. Climbing down off my box now.[:-censore

[mgbinspect]

Yes, that's a monthly occurrence for me. The record number of returns to a property waiting for utilities to all be on is three visits. Fun, yes?...

[randynavarro]

Sorry, bro. Kind of makes you think about instituting some sort of fair policy to be compensated for the cancellations.

[hausdok]

Hi Rob,

Yeah, I've experienced three of those over the past three weeks. I was talking to some other inspectors at that IR training last week and they're experiencing it too. It seems to be the folks at the banks simply dragging their feet and not taking the whole thing too seriously. A couple of my clients told me that they were told that they had to pay to dewinterize and rewinterize. I told them that they should tell the bank to go pound salt.

I think the think to do is for all inspectors in the region to simply, as a unit, refuse to do any bank owned properties for several weeks and tell the banks, through whoever regulates them in Olympia that the reason for the work stoppage is banks' negligence. Maybe if some deals went south and they ended up collectively losing a bunch more money, their upper echelon offices would kick a little bit of butt and see to it that this nonsense stopped.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

[Jim Katen]

Ask for payment in advance when inspecting a bank-owned house.

- Jim Katen, Oregon

[mgbinspect]

Hi Rob,

Yeah, I've experienced three of those over the past three weeks. I was talking to some other inspectors at that IR training last week and they're experiencing it too. It seems to be the folks at the banks simply dragging their feet and not taking the whole thing too seriously. A couple of my clients told me that they were told that they had to pay to dewinterize and rewinterize. I told them that they should tell the bank to go pound salt.

I think the think to do is for all inspectors in the region to simply, as a unit, refuse to do any bank owned properties for several weeks and tell the banks, through whoever regulates them in Olympia that the reason for the work stoppage is banks' negligence. Maybe if some deals went south and they ended up collectively losing a bunch more money, their upper echelon offices would kick a little bit of butt and see to it that this nonsense stopped.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

Probably 25% - 33% of what's moving here right now is foreclosures of all sizes. The one I posted today with the synthetic stucco problem is 5000 SF. One would think it's easy to buy these foreclosures, but it's a royal pain in the ass. The Realtors that tend to list them are darn near as apathetic as the banks and are, more often than not, the reason something didn't get done. They just don't give a rats butt - too busy watching TV or something, I guess.

Regarding water - if there's a lock on the meter here, you can bet your bottom dollar that there's a big unpaid bill. Many of the banks won't turn the water on. If the buyer wants the water on for a proper inspection, they must pay the outstanding bill, pay to have the home de-winterized and then pay to have it re-winterized. Water authorities, for some reason, have never budged regarding an outstanding bill. They don't care who's it was. Somebody's going to pay it.

Electric - they're a bit more decent, turning the power on for three days, but the buyer has to pay for any juice during those days.

The bank's handling of these properties is illogical. Some of them are covered with black mold all through basements. It's nuts.

[Brandon Whitmore]

Had my fourth inspection this week have to reschedule due to lack of utilities. The typical response is, "the listing agent said they would be on". A bit frustrating. Climbing down off my box now.

When people call me for a foreclosure job (I ask every time now), I ask whether or not the house is de- winterized yet. If they say no, but utilities will be on by a certain date, I pretty much make them add 2 more days and confirm multiple times that everything is good to go.

Utilities have been on every time I've shown up to a job within the last 6 months, and I've had few jobs re- schedule.

I wasn't so proactive early last year, and my schedule was a constant mess.