Home Buying Kit For Dummies by Eric Tyson & Ray Brown

Author:Eric Tyson & Ray Brown [Tyson, Eric & Brown, Ray]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781119674825
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2020-04-07T00:00:00+00:00

Odds are you won’t win the game unless you have a winning team. But remember that your players are advisors — not decision makers. You’re the boss and decision maker. The buck stops with you. After all, it’s your money on the line.

Avoiding gratuitous advice

We’ll say it again: Buying a home is a team sport. Successful transactions result from the coordinated efforts of many people — agents, brokers, lenders, property inspectors, escrow officers, tax advisors, and lawyers. Each player brings a different set of skills to the game and should make an important contribution to your team.

As long as your experts stick to what they know best, everything goes smoothly. Whenever one of your experts invades another expert’s turf, however, war breaks out with a bang.

Unsolicited opinions related to property values are an example of one devastating type of gratuitous advice. Such opinions are usually volunteered by tax advisors or lawyers during a review of your transaction. Lawyers and tax advisors don’t know property values. Making a lowball offer based on their bad advice, no matter how well intentioned, can blow the deal on your dream home.

Incredibly, some buyers foolishly solicit gratuitous advice in a misguided attempt to save a few bucks. “Why,” buyers ask themselves, “hire a CPA for tax advice if we can get free tax advice from our agent? Why pay for legal advice from a lawyer if our escrow officer can give us free opinions about the best way for us to take title to our home?”

Why? Because if you’re lucky, free advice from the wrong expert is worth exactly what you pay for it. Zip. Zero. Nada. Nothing.

If you’re unlucky, free advice can be very expensive. The IRS, for example, shows no mercy if you make a mistake based on faulty advice. Ironically, this type of mistake usually ends up costing you far more than a lawyer or tax advisor would have charged you for correct advice.

Given the adverse consequences of bad advice, good experts don’t offer guidance that they aren’t qualified to give. If asked, they categorically refuse to give such advice. Instead, they redirect their clients to the proper experts. Good experts are wise enough to know what they don’t know and humble enough to admit it. On a more selfish level, they don’t want to get sued by their clients for giving lousy advice.

Beware of experts who offer you gratuitous advice outside their fields of expertise.

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