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What a crazy week!  Start it with surgery (the non urgent kind that keeps getting put off by surgeons until they find the worst spot in your schedule and decide to do it then), add to that your office moving after being located in the same location for the past 10 years, and for fun throw in the current market conditions and you have the recipie for a very fun week indeed.

Things went as well as could be expected, but like everything in life there’s always those little surprises.  You know what I mean - those suprises that you can’t plan for because if you did they would be replaced by different little surprises. What interests me is how people react to these little surprises.

Surprsingly often these days someone, somewhere has an investment property they bought privately and want to sell now. Low and behold when I arrive there are some pretty glaring issues (to me) that will affect the saleability of the property, but for whatever reason they seem to be completely unaware of them.

So when I point out these issues the first thing that happens is shock: "how could we miss that?" Then, the "shoot the messenger" syndrome kicks in. This generally means the appointment is over, even though it doesn’t end immediately but the tell tale signs are there that I haven’t told them what they wanted to hear. Many of these people will find someone who tells them just what they want to hear; seldom does this person actually understand the issues surrounding the property. Why is it that the one who usually agrees with a seller like this usually has the worst plan of action to sell the property?

In one extreme case the seller built a garage and addition onto the property without permits, and both the fence and the garage were seriously encroaching on city property. The seller would not take the necessary steps to rectify the deficincies. My buyer, on my advice walked since the seller would provide no compensation other than title insurance. The seller’s agent being stuck with disclosure requirements could not sell the property so the seller did the best thing they could: they sold privately and offered the buyer title insurance. Long story short the seller moved to a jurisdiction in the states which apparently doesn’t recognize decisions from Alberta courts. The buyer who bought it privately obviously found out the hard way that little surprises can some times be very costly ones, especially since title insurance does not cover known defects.