Trust. And the Right Crew

A longtime acquaintance of mine recently hired me to represent them in the sale of their home, and during the initial walkthrough we quickly identified a fairly long list of little details that would help the home present better on the market. 

The usual crew we use wasn’t available to handle the job on short notice, so I opted to call another vendor who had recently done a good job with some general repairs on a couple of other properties that our company manages. He had mentioned that he was eager to do more work for us and he claimed to have the necessary skill sets, so since his initial estimate was within the budget we gave him the job. 

Early on, we noticed some patterns of behavior in his reliability which gave some initial cause for concern, and these continued to mount over the course of the week as the job progressed. And while he had done about half the work well, other parts of the job were not being done to the level of quality hoped, and he was also starting to fall behind schedule. As the week progressed, there were mounting breakdowns in the interactions between him and the client, so the mutual decision was made for him to pull off and have my regular crew come in and finish the job.

Instead of pushing back, he expressed a sense of relief at being released from what had evolved into a toxic situation, and since portions of what needed to be done included redoing some of his work, we agreed to hold off until our regular crew was able to finish before coming to a final figure to settle up. The hardest part for the homeowner was being displaced for an additional week as their old home transformed into a full-scale job site for 10-12 hours per day as the crew rushed to finish the preparations, in the midst of when the client was also making arrangements to move to their new home.

While the client endured the ongoing disruption of their life while large portions of their home were rendered unusable, our team made a concerted effort to try and instill as much normalcy to their daily routine, while facilitating the multiple visits by contractors, moving helpers and staging consultants..

It took a lot of fortitude and trust on the client’s behalf, and definitely tested the limits of the relationship but with the help of our preferred crew and my usual cast of team members we were ultimately able to get the home into a very appealing state of presentability, and best of all everyone is able to breathe a sigh of relief now that the work is done.

As the final step I will meet with the original vendor to settle up based on what jobs he was able to do well, measured against the many things that had to be redone and completed. And to protect the relationship with the client, it is likely that I will contribute any costs that come in over the original budget. Because in the end, trust is worth more than money.