Ian R: Welcome back everyone to Inspector Toolbelt Talk to what has become my favorite segment – “Drinking with Jay”. To reintroduce Jay Wynn my friend, my competitor, my drinking, buddy, Jay Wynn. How are you?

Jay Wynn: Doing Good, Ian. How are you tonight?

Ian R: Good, thank you. So, Jay is a home inspector up here in upstate New York along with me. We’ve known each other way back since our construction days and working for the same contractor for a short period of time and a whole bunch of other escapades. This segment came from our best ideas always came when we were drinking a glass of scotch, and just griping about the world. So, we figured we’d do it on air and see where it ends up. So this is our second installment. So, Jay, what are you drinking?

Jay Wynn: Oh, so I actually have Woodford Reserve double oak tonight and this is actually a very special bottle. It was given to me by a friend that I was helping get his license and get in the field. So he was taking the class and you know, his John Dadah, and he was taking the class is going through the class. He’s like, you know, I’m just not learning anything in here. So, he called me up and said, I’d love to get in the field. I’d love to get some real-world experience, can I go with you? I’ve taken a number of guys out because it’s something that I believe in, you know, you got to train people, you got to get them out there Amy calls you up and says, I want to learn from somebody that knows something and get some real-world experience. You got to respect that. So, John went with me and got the 10 inspections that he needed for getting his license. He looked at me, and he goes, I need way more in the field than this and he just kept riding with me. So, he rode with me for about two months. Yeah, the poor guy, right? Yeah, we dug some subjects in the rain. I don’t know how he didn’t get turned off by it but he’s, he’s stuck with it but the thing is, he stayed with me. He didn’t get his 10 and then try to get licensed up. He actually kept following up for training. Then one day he goes, I got something for you. So, he reached down this little bag and gave me this. So, every once in a while, we’ll sit down and have a nice bottle of bourbon. I think that was just a nice little nod. So, I appreciate it. You know.

Ian R: John’s a good guy, and he’s great, he’s a great inspector. We were actually talking about him just a moment ago because he’s helping me with my basement. He helped me put in my little sound booth slash what looks like a torture chamber. So that’s what makes my magical voice come through the microphone so well.

Jay Wynn: That velvety smoothness.

Ian R: Yeah, that’s not what it’s called. My wife tells me I have a radio face. So maybe this is I have a face for podcasts.

Jay Wynn: There you go.

Ian R: Yeah, basement face? Is that what you said?

Jay Wynn: No basement for radio.

Ian R: So, I’m actually drinking a little bit of OBAN tonight and for those of you who drink scotch, OBAN or don’t drink scotch, either way, OBAN has a nice introductory Scotch into the very peaty version of the Scotch realm. Sometimes you get a scotch and it just tastes like you know, Jameson Whiskey or something. That’s what most people’s palates like. I’m I like a very heavy Pete. I’ve said before I love Lagavulin, but OBAN is a nice in-between, like if you want to try PD scotches. It’s a nice intro introductory Scotch into it. You know, it’s, it’s something that I have. We’re recording this by the way, not at nine o’clock in the morning. We’re recording this after a hard day of work. I like OBAN, but have you ever had OBAN?

Jay Wynn: I have not but it sounds like you’re channeling your inner Ron Swanson.

Ian R: Oh, man. I have an inner Ron Swanson, and an outer Ron Swanson. If I didn’t like to look like a creeper and have a mustache, I totally have a mustache.

Jay Wynn: Probably better than all of them. No. No.

Ian R: No, back in the days when I used to have a white panel van. It would be even worse. So yeah, I got to stay away from the mustache but otherwise Yeah. I’m digging.

Jay Wynn: I got you. So you’re drinking scotch tonight and I’m going to do bourbon. So yeah. That sounds good. Do Irish

Ian R: Yeah, there you go. Nice. Dark Jameson would be nice.

Jay Wynn: Actually, the black barrel is phenomenal. Yes. I so we’ll have to just sit down one night. Do that. Do you know what I was thinking about? This whole little bit of drinking together and talking about it. I used to do a lot with my grandfather and my one grandfather, in particular, would sit down with his buddies and at the end of the day, they’d have a couple of beers and they would just start talking shop. You know, you’re a bunch of World War Two vets. You know, guys, we grew up during the depression. They sit around and talk about feelings or, you know what closed there. They sat around, they talked about work, but I picked up so many little gems and so many little nuggets, just listen to those guys have a couple of drinks and talk about things they would talk about the job, they talked about ways of doing stuff. My grandfather was a pilot and, and a heavy equipment operator and mechanic. So that was the kind of people he was hanging out with but they would talk a lot about business. They talked about making money, they’ve talked about just a lot of things that a young man really queues in on if he just shut up and listened. So, it’s kind of a neat concept too. I think maybe more people should do that. Sit down, have a drink or two, and just listen to one another.

Ian R: So, and that’s, and that’s what we’re doing. All the information is going to be free-flowing.I mean into the podcast? Well, we might like a little bit more inhibition by the end of the podcast, but

Jay Wynn: OK, we’ll see.

Ian R: I’m glad they weren’t talking about their feelings, though. I’m, I was raised to shove my feelings deep down inside of me, and then let them out in dark humor later on.

Jay Wynn: So yeah, that sounds about right.

Ian R: Works, coping mechanism but the last time we were drinking together, ironically, we were talking about this very subject. We’re sitting around the campfire, and we’re talking about cancellation fees. So I wanted to talk to you about that because not a lot of home inspectors do cancellation fees. I’ve seen three different camps of home inspectors, the ones that will staunchly say, I do not charge cancellation fees. That’s one way to put yourself out of business, and yada, yada, yada, okay, then I see the other ones that say, I would charge cancellation fees, but you can’t enforce them. So why bother? Then the third camp, which is very, very small, basically me you and like two other guys that I know, that will say, Yeah, I charged cancellation fees. I know both of us have done it for many years. We’ve done pretty well with it. What are you? What are your thoughts on the cancellation fees? Why did you start offering them or offering them I should say, enforcing them?

Jay Wynn: So, a lot of it had to do with not so much even dealing with the clients, the clients or the clients, a lot of it had to do with training the agents. Frankly, that’s where a lot of it is a lot of it as you know, it’s really hard to enforce it. You really can’t get after people too much if they don’t do it but what it does is it says to the agents don’t waste my time. Yeah, what I was having to happen is agents like what I did, they knew I was very busy. They knew I booked up fast. So, before they would even have attorney approval or an accepted offer, they would call and schedule an appointment. Now, I didn’t know this, but they didn’t have any of their ducks in a row, any number of things could fall apart in that transaction but that time slot was now taken up by somebody that may or may not follow through on that appointment. So for a while I was having people two or three days before the appointment just called to say Oh, well, we never got a contract in place, we’re gonna have to cancel, or worse yet the day of finding out Yeah, so a lot of it had to do with, that’s fine but if you call me up, and you take my appointment, and you cancel for something that you didn’t do, you’re gonna have to compensate me, at least nominally for that time, we don’t make money on it. Like everybody else, there’s an expense, just wake up in the morning and go to business, you know, or go to your work, you know, we used to call it to cost you money to get in your truck between gas insurance overhead, you know you don’t make a whole lot sometimes. So, the cancellation fees were just a way of offsetting some of our operating costs for the appointments that we were losing but a lot of it had to do with training the agents that you can’t waste your time, get your stuff together, and then schedule with me. What it did is it did limit some agents, they stopped referring me but they also the agents couldn’t get a signed contract prior to. So, they weren’t exactly high quality, high producing people that I want to work with anyway. So, in a lot of ways, it started acting as a pre-screening filter. I didn’t have to deal with, frankly, people I didn’t want to deal with. So, it’s worked out pretty well. Then with the people that I charge, most of them do pay. Again, most of them understand where I’m coming from, they understand that if you cancel on your doctor, if you cancel an appointment that you’ve got, you typically are expected to cover at least some part of that. So, it’s getting more and more common.

Ian R: You know, it’s funny that you kind of answered several of my questions that I was gonna ask you. No, no, no, no, in a great way. Yeah. Did you explain that really? Well. As home inspectors, that’s one thing that we fear, am going to lose agents, so I liked how you put that those weren’t agents that I wanted to work with anyways. It’s the same concept is when we raise our prices, and we lose agents great. I did not want those agents anyways. To be perfectly frank, as much as I love the agents that I’ve worked with over the years. For the most part, they’re replaceable. I lose five agents and I gained five agents. So, if I lose five agents because I raise my prices, cool. Now I’ll just get five new agents to replace them. My prices are higher and the other ones that stuck with me, they’re like, Oh, hey, good for you, buddy but it’s the same with cancellation fees. I personally didn’t get any pushback, I don’t think I lost one agent. When I instituted cancellation fees for myself, I kind of put it in there and most clients noticed it. You know, my call center would tell people about it. I never really had a problem with it. I’d never really had to enforce it, though but you said you’ve had to enforce it. Right? Yeah.

Jay Wynn: Yeah. So, it’s, and here’s the thing, it really depends on the market, the local market. You know, when I’m in one area, geographically that I cover the, it’s almost like there’s a dividing line and once you cross it, you’re in a, you’re in a very professional, very progressive market where people are, you know, they use the internet, they use agreements, they’re, they’re tighter with their things. When when you go across the west side of that line, it’s a little more country, it’s a little more backward, it’s a little more I don’t know, any way of describing it other than less professional, probably what the market was about 40 years ago would be my guess, is like one group of realtors has really modernized and been real tight on things. Then the other one is, it’s like working with a bunch of country bumpkins. So

Ian R: You can say that because you’re from that area.

Jay Wynn: That’s where I live, but that was that it’s like, well, this is how we do things out here. Well, that’s not how I do things. You know, if you want to use me, you know, I’m in one service, I’m the best you’re gonna find you can if you don’t think so check out my reviews at this point. I have, you know, we’ve really worked to build that. So, we have hundreds of reviews on Google, anybody can look this up and see what other customers have said, or their clients have said, if you want to use me, that’s fine but this is how it’s going to be. So, you know, it’s kind of training people how to treat you. I think Tyler said, once, so you need to train people how to treat you. This is part of it. Respect my time. Yeah.

Ian R: You know, it’s funny, you started that training before you had that great reputation before you because you’ve had cancellation fees for many years. Yep. So, it’s not like, Hey, I’ve had all these reviews and this great reputation you instituted early on, I think that’s important for home inspectors to realize that if you’re saying, Well, I’m newer, I can’t have a cancellation fee.

Jay Wynn: I think you should. Yeah, I really do. I think I think a new inspector should do it even more so than us, your time is even more valuable. You can’t have people wasting it. You know, you need to land every inspection but when you land, you need to have it follow through too, you know, you talk about marketing all the time, one of the best forms of marketing that I do is on-site, I’m talking to my agents, I’m talking to my clients, many times the listing agent is there and I’m talking to that person. If I lose that inspection, I’m not just losing the fee for the day, I’m losing potential contacts, and I’m losing an opportunity to build my business. I can’t have people wasting those appointments, frankly. There are bigger costs than just the finances there, too. I didn’t mean to cut you off at a point but yeah, I mean, it’s not just the money, you’ve got to think about what you are losing on the big picture.

Ian R: Yeah. That’s a fantastic point. So you go to an inspection, and you lose one referral from that person’s family from your client, and you lose a seller’s agent because you’re probably a lot like me. Most agents that meet us will typically start referring us so that agent represents 10 inspections a year for the next 10 years, I have lost 100 inspections by that person wasting my time.

Jay Wynn: That’s true. Lately, in particular, with the market, the way it has been, I don’t know what other home inspectors are finding but I’m finding more and more listing agents are asking for my card asking me for my contact information. They want deals to go through after they see how I talk to people, how I respond to things, how I inspect the house, how I discuss things and explain things, and even how I write them up. I’m having listing agents come up to me and go while you’re the guy we want to use. I’m ripping apart the house they’re listing. So, I’m adding you’re brutal. Oh, yeah, and I’m not I’m not soft-pedaling anything. There’s a way of doing it where you can do it in… if you’re doing your job, right, I think. I’m having that a lot. So, if I lose that appointment, I’m missing that potential to personally market directly, usually to two real estate agents.

Ian R: Yeah, and we’ll kind of get into the nuts and bolts of how it actually looks when I’ve had to deal with the cancellation fees, and when you’ve had to deal with them, but talking about training people to how they react to you how they respond to you. I went to a restaurant not too long ago, and as I did the reservation, they said if you cancel the reservation with less than four hours notice that then I will be charged $20 for this time period, or if you don’t show up at all times $40. There were several restaurants around. I didn’t say, Well, I’m not going to do that and go to a different restaurant. I’m like, I want to go to this restaurant. To be honest with you, I kind of respected that. Like yeah, that’s reasonable. Now, if I was the kind of guy that was like, oh well, I’m going to make four reservations. Whichever ones my friends want to go to, then that’s where we’re going to go. They didn’t want my business anyways, because I was likely going to cancel and just make trouble for them. So, they saved themselves from a bad customer and gained a guy that, to be honest with you, I’ve been back there three times. I like the place. I if I ever missed the reservation, sure, I’ll pay the 20 bucks. 40 bucks. That’s, that’s on me. You’re a good restaurant. So, it trains the right people to come to you. It trains the right people that come to you in the first place. What did you expect of them? Yeah, we don’t. Yeah, we don’t have to be the clients. This is gonna come off really bad, but we know it to be the client’s dog. A lot of times we let people kind of treat us badly as home inspectors like, I need their referral, I need them to like me, you know, what? If we’re good at our job, they’re gonna want to hire us. Yeah. We don’t have to beg at their feet and say, please refer me.

Jay Wynn: Yeah. So this, this goes into a kind of one of the other pet peeves that I have more with home inspectors, you know, and that’s maybe a different subject for a different time but if you are in my attitudes, if you’re investing in yourself, even if you’re new, alright, well, let’s take John, for instance, he’s just starting out, he doesn’t have a lot of in the field experience but he was smart enough to go, I need to tap into some people that know a lot more than I do and he did, right. So he’s investing in himself, he’s getting more education, he’s getting more training, he’s really putting it where it needs to be right. If he’s doing that, all the other stuff will follow for him, it will take the time it will have to build but that’s my attitude on it if you’re focusing on what you can do to be the best inspector possible, if you’re networking with other inspectors, if you’re talking to professionals, frankly, that know more than you. When they talk, you shut up and listen, when they tell you Hey, can’t do this, and you do it. If you’d putting all that into place, the other stuff will follow. So I’m not unlike you said, I’m not going to be groveling at people’s feet and begging for work. I’m going to be trying to make myself the best inspector I can be run the tightest crew, I can run, put out the best report I can put out, and then my attitude. My experience is if you do that, the work follows. So that’s my approach to it but that also comes from contracting, I think we talked about is it, there are just certain people you don’t want to work for and at some point, you get to the point where you’re like, it’s just not worth this a long time ago, maybe this is an advantage of getting old and grouchy is that I realized I didn’t want to be begging people to work for them. You know. So if I ever have to do that, I’m going to find another line of work where I don’t have to. So that’s you know, but again, not I’m getting older and grouchy here. So that helps.

Ian R: And you’re drinking bourbon,

Jay Wynn: I’m drinking bourbon after a day. You know, I’ve been out inspecting all day too, so that helps, too.

Ian R: Yeah, it gets the blood boiling, and I love it. I’m talking about John, the only problem I have with John, he’s a Red Sox fan. I just don’t know work through that. He’ll work through that. Oh, I don’t get it eventually.

Jay Wynn: First thing I told him when he showed up on the first day of inspections is he had his Red Sox cap on him like get that off.

Ian R: No don’t. We’re in upstate New York.

Jay Wynn: Don’t fly any of those flags.

Ian R: See, he’s listening to this podcast right now. He’s just like these guys. It’s okay, John, we’ll have you on the podcast. You can defend yourself but right now we’re just gonna make fun of you.

Jay Wynn: What it’s like training with bozos, that’ll be the title of that podcast.

Ian R: Can you imagine working with the two of us? Okay.

Jay Wynn: Oh, poor guy.

Ian R: Yeah. No, John’s awesome. He’s good-natured, even though he’s a Red Sox fan but hey, you know,

Jay Wynn: No, he’s good-natured. He talks with people and again, I think he’s gonna do really, really well but like I said, it’s he’s also focusing on building the skill set building the business. He’s focused on everything that it’s going to take to be successful. He’s not running out there begging for work. He’s putting everything in place where he’s going to do well. I say that with confidence. I’ve actually trained a couple of guys and a couple of them have done really well and a couple of them frankly, got into it and just, it’s not what they were expecting. So not everybody I trained follows through. I think he’s gonna do well.

Ian R: We should call this podcast all about John.

Jay Wynn: Sounds creepy and weird. It’s a good thing you don’t have a mustache.

Ian R: Anyways, getting back to our subject of cancellation fees. So looking at the nuts and bolts of a cancellation fee, I’ll be honest with you. I’ve not had anybody just rock cancel on me since I came up with the game insulation fees because that kind of knocks those people out of the ballpark but I have had people cancel on me in the contract fell through, I’m sorry, I’ll pay the fee. I don’t charge them. I’m like, that’s not what this is for, you’re not playing around with me, you didn’t go out and find a cheaper home inspector the day before. You’re not calling me the day of saying, Oh, I forgot about that. Your legitimate was saying this was out of our control. I’m going to do the honorable thing. I had that happen several times. Like, don’t even worry about it. You’re not being billed, we’ll catch up on the next one. Agents call and thank me, the client leaves me a nice review. Then I do the inspection for them and to be honest with you, if it’s a day off because the sellers locked them out of the house. Cool. I’m gonna go to the park with my daughter, and we’ll go hang out. So I get half a day off or something like that. You know, it’s not to be used as a club but there’s going to be that one or two guys, that will be like, Oh, well, hey, we’re canceling on you. You’ve had people actually pay the cancellation fee, right?

Jay Wynn: Oh, yeah, no, they’ll. It’s the same thing. If somebody calls me up and says something like, I didn’t have attorney approval, I expected it. Now. I’m gonna have to cancel this, then, you know, you should have had that together. I will charge the fee and most people will pay it. If it’s something they did, if they sometimes I’ll call, they’ll call me up and say, we decided we’re not buying the house. We thought it over, we’ve got this, we’re just we’re not going through the transaction. Sorry about it, we’re canceling everything, I’ll pay the fee. In that case, yeah, if you change your mind, if you know, you don’t get your stuff together, you don’t do your due diligence, I’ll charge the fee. I’ll just give you, for instance, about a month ago, we were out in Dodgeville and it’s an agent that I know very well I like working with her. She’s very responsible, we get to the house, start the outside, we’re finding things it’s a nice family. It’s a husband and wife, they’re living in a beat up, you know, apartment, and there’s not taking care of things that got a daughter, she’s got some special needs. We’re talking about things. The agent couldn’t get into the house because the listing agent gave her all the wrong codes and then he couldn’t bother to show up. So she comes to you know, after almost an hour trying to get into the house, she’s like, we can’t get in today. She’s just frustrated and upset. Those people offered to pay the cancellation fee and a rescheduling fee. So they’re like, we’re sorry about this. We don’t want to waste your time. What is it? What’s it gonna chart and it’s like, we’re good people. This is okay, it’s way outside of your control. The same thing, they were trying to do everything they could to make this happen. It wasn’t them, there’s no way I’m charging those people. Not at all. So sometimes you do it, sometimes you don’t. I think the bigger thing is the message that it sends in particular to the agents and to the clients to respect your time.

Ian R: Yep. Make it apparent so that people aren’t surprised by it because you want people to know, hey, there’s a cancellation fee. So they come up and say we’re going to pay this, you just made a great impression on that client. You just I’m waiving the cancellation fee. Now if there was no cancellation fee, that changes their expectations. Oh, I can cancel willy nilly and you know, reschedule, but now it’s like, Wow, you did a really good thing for me, they’re gonna leave you a great review. They’re gonna hire you when the house next house comes up that wants to be inspected, the agents gonna love you. This guy way does him, you know, reinspection fee and cancellation fee.

Jay Wynn: I think what it says is, if you’re doing you’re trying to do your job, I’m with you. I got your back. I’ll have your back this whole process. I’m working for you. Here’s what I need from you. If you’re going to give that to me. I’ll give you everything that I can. So I think it just reinforces that you’re the man they want to use.

Ian R: Yeah, it makes a really good impression on people. You know, every market is different but I know other home inspectors that have cancellation fees in other markets. They have never run into the hardships that home inspectors worry about. Yeah, I forget who said it. There’s a famous saying that anxiety is worrying about something that’ll probably never happen. Yeah. I’m probably butchering the saying but basically, we worry too much about things. Every professional that I know has a cancellation fee. As you said, my dentist, my doctor, restaurants, and engineers charged cancellation fees. You don’t show up for something. You’re getting charged. Why wouldn’t we? It didn’t destroy my business. It didn’t destroy yours.

Jay Wynn: Oh, no, it helped. It really helped. I think that the thing to is this we talked about last time how you fire clients, how you identify some of the red flags. This is another level filter that helps get rid of the agents that are here. responsible to begin with, and then it helps weed out the clients that are going to waste your time now because that’s the way we talked about it, there are some people that are just not worth working for. That’s the reality of that.

Ian R: In conjunction with that, do you keep track of your cancellation numbers? Did your cancellations go down, or stay about the same once you do the cancellation fees?

Jay Wynn: It depends on the market when things were getting really hot and heavy and crazy. You know, every inspection appointment was just booked solid. People were pushing deals through that they weren’t ready for them. They didn’t have attorney approval, but they were so excited to get in the house, instead of having a 10-day inspection contingency, they only had five. So I had a lot of people that were scheduled when we were really pushed, and things were falling apart last minute. So it kind of depends on the market. In a more neutral market where the buyers and sellers are more even the numbers actually went down. So I would consider a more normal market. My numbers for cancellations went down quite a bit. So when I got crazy things were just crazy. I think we all got to agree that you know, for the last year, a year and a half things have not been normal. So I don’t really take what’s happened the last year, year and a half.

Ian R: Yeah, it’s been a wee bit crazy.

Jay Wynn: Yeah, it’s irregular, let’s just put it like that but in general, my cancellations went down.

Ian R: Mine went down. Yeah, mine went down to like noticeably. We didn’t have a lot of cancellations but they went down. Just so you know, as you’re listening to this, Jay talks about attorney approval, New York’s, and attorney state. So before you can actually close on a house or any real estate transaction, you have to get two attorneys involved, which is probably the most annoying part of the whole transaction.

Jay Wynn: That’s where you’re reaching out to a bigger audience.

Ian R: So yeah, well, yeah. Then it’s like that old joke. I have attorney friends, but you know, what you call a busload of attorneys going off a cliff? A good start? Yeah, good day. So, if you haven’t considered a cancellation fee, in your repertoire in your agreements, and outlined it, clearly, you should consider it. Now you might be sitting here thinking listening to Jay and I ramble on about all sorts of things and inspectors that you don’t know that we’re mentioning. You might be wondering, what are our fees? What do we charge? What do you charge for cancellation fees, Jay?

Jay Wynn: $75, for 72 hours. Then like $100 for 24 hours and 150 for less than 24? Nine, so it’s kind of a graduated scale, you know, if you three days before, because the other thing I don’t do a lot of in fact, I don’t want to do ever again, these next day appointments are short and disappointing. I’ve always found that disastrous. So if somebody gives me enough notice where I can potentially fill that appointment slot, you know, prior to 72 hours, if something goes wrong, there’s no cancellation fee, 72 hours, or sooner or less. There’ll be a nominal charge of like 75, and then 100 for 24, prior to 24. Then 24. Less, just say 2359 or less. So $100 fee, you know what I mean? We haven’t graduated, so okay, I had one guy, I had one guy that canceled at 24 hours and three minutes specifically, so he didn’t have to pay that extra.

Ian R: That’s awesome.

Jay Wynn: He was paying attention. Yeah. He thought it was the same thing. He was speculating. He thought he had his stuff pulled together. It didn’t come through. He found out and as soon as he found out, he called me because he didn’t want to click that 24-hour period, and spend that extra 50 bucks.

Ian R: Did he pay?

Jay Wynn: He absolutely did.

Ian R: All right. So and there’s the point

Jay Wynn: He paid and I did her inspection form.

Ian R: There it is because you’re worth your time. It didn’t kill your business. You got a higher-end client that was obviously taking things through but you also, but you also made those fees apparent to him. Oh, yeah. Here’s the outline of the fees. We should never hide cancellation fees. The whole point of a cancellation fee is not to make money off of it. You’re not making money off a cancellation fee. You wasted that money scheduling and overhead like Jay said, all that leads up to the inspection. The cancellation fee is just a deterrent. Yeah. Treat people fairly with it.

Jay Wynn: Treat people fairly and then like I said, when it goes through, it’s basically covering the expense to do business. You don’t make money when people cancel, so it’s not like yeah, 150 bucks. I get to lie in bed today. Well, that was a good morning. No, because by the time you do your insurance, and you factor all those things into running a business, you don’t make money on cancellations, but at least it keeps you from losing. You know, the overhead of that day, or that appointment, I should say So that helps take some of the stings out of it too.

Ian R: I really can’t emphasize enough, the point that you made of the potential money that you lose by not being on that inspection, you lose future inspections, you’ll lose your inspection is their biggest marketing piece, whether we like to admit it or not, we have two agents, and we’re demonstrating our skill in front of them. Then a client who literally has brothers, sisters, a friend, a peer group, I should say, and all sorts of stuff going on that. That’s where we get our work from. You get referrals from those three groups of people on a transaction, and from our state attorneys. I’ll be I think you’re probably a lot like me, where we get referrals from a lot of attorneys. Like, hey, the agent recommended this guy. I hate this guy. Make sure you take my client on. I only want you cool. Yeah.

Jay Wynn: Yeah. That some of that comes down to like, I’ve had attorneys recommend they go with the guy with the bird. I’m serious. They go Oh, yeah. Go with the bird guy. What do you mean, his logos, a bird something? They don’t even know my name and they can’t but they know the logo. When they see that, oh, blue Jay Yeah, that’s the guy we’re talking about.

Ian R: Getting people the bird.

Jay Wynn: Yeah, well, but you know what I mean? It’s all linked together. Is it? So I think you’re the big marketing guy. So I’ll let you geek out? Not but

Ian R: I want to hear it. I want to hear your thoughts.

Jay Wynn: Well, you mark it differently to those different categories like you when you’re on section and you’re talking with a buyer’s agent. I tried to dignify their job. You know, they have a hard job. In fact, today I was talking with an agent, and she was saying that she’s trying to close on the house that $60,000 She got the lead off one of these lead services. Apparently, if the deal goes through that lead service takes 35% of her Commission, which is only one to 2% Anyway, then her broker takes 40 So I mean, here this lady is literally driving around and working her tail off trying to get this deal closed and she’s not even gonna make expenses ass. You know that’s, that’s a hard line to be in, and she’s a good communicator. She’s a good waiter, people, she’s good with her clients. I try to give her as much credit as I can. When I’m out there. This lady has a hard job respecting what she does, you know, they appreciate that. When I’m on a listing, or when I’m on an inspection and listing agents, they’re watching how I’m presenting things, how I’m finding defects, what I’m doing, when they have questions, how I feel them if they’re civil questions that are being presented so that they can feel the situation out, figure out what needs to be done to correct the problems? I can answer them, they love that. I can’t tell you how many listing agents have asked me for cards and started referring me after seeing me work with my clients where the House talking with them, you know, the whole thing and they like this guy we can use. So it makes a difference. When I knocked on that appointment, I am missing my biggest marketing opportunity, period. I mean, the internet’s great Facebook is fine Instagrams lovely, but face-to-face, when people can see what I do. That makes the biggest impression. So if I lose these appointments, I’m losing a whole lot more than just the daily fee.

Ian R: Yeah, I think that’s critical to emphasize. So if you’re listening, and you don’t have a cancellation fee, again, think about me because our cancellations went down, especially as the markets now starting to normalize. Whether we listen to our last podcast on podcast or two ago about the market outlook, it is normalizing it will reduce the number of cancellations, it will give us a better impression on our market, and Jay and I are both doing really well. You know, so don’t worry about it too much. Test the water a little bit. Maybe make it simple at first $75, cancellation fee $50 cancellation fee, or do something tiered as Jay does, you know, whatever you can do. It’s worked out well for us. You’ll find that most guys that say oh, never do that, oh, shoot yourself in the foot. They’ve probably never done a cancellation fee. So how do they know? You know, if it doesn’t work in your market? Cool. Take it away. You can always backtrack on that.

Jay Wynn: Do you remember the days when contractors had new free estimates? Oh, yeah. was expected. I don’t know of any contractors anymore. That’s doing a free estimate. It’s pretty rare. Yeah, it’s like all those guys now. I mean, 20 years ago, it was unheard of for a contractor to charge for an estimate. Now it’s pretty standard. They’ll go out, they’ll look at a project for you, and they’ll charge you 250 $300. Then a lot of them are rolling that into if you take the job with them, they’ll include that in the overall but they want to be compensated for their time. So I think some of what has been accepted as normal business practices have really changed and I think this is just one of them. Cancellation fees have become normal with so many other aspects of so many other industries that why not apply them to ours? There are some really good benefits to it. You know, like we said We talked about it, I really liked the one that we’re it just is another filter for people who don’t want to work with. Yeah. That includes agents.

Ian R: So I think those are great points about cancellation fees but earlier today, you said you wanted to talk about a little something extra. So if you’re listening in, stay tuned, because Jay wants to talk about owning your report. So there’s gonna be a little side point to our podcast. So I don’t know what that means. I am super excited. Okay, and I still have a little bit of Scotch left.

Jay Wynn: Okay, well, so I’m gonna pour another half glass, and I’m gonna let loose because we were last time we talked about firing clients. Last time, we talked about firing agents. Now I’m going to talk about something that really annoys me that home inspectors do. Okay, and this is for all, I’m not going to name names but if you self-identify with this, that might be argued.

Ian R: This is gonna be terrible or awesome? I don’t know.

Jay Wynn: Now, here’s the thing. So many inspectors, especially when they’re starting out are taught, trained, and told everything. Qualified Contractor to do this qualified electrician quality profile and professional column professional calling a professional, I literally had to read some reports, because agents will call me up and they’ll say, Have you ever seen this person before? Have you ever had, they’ll send me the report, and I’ll read it. It’s stuff like, outlet cover was missing, a qualified electrician should put the outlet covers on but it’s like 75 items like this, it’s like every little thing, they want a contractor to come in and take care of it. My thing is calling a contractor for the major problems. Don’t be so gun shy with it, that you need to have a professional come in for everything. To me, what that says is, you know, I think the school of thought is if you have a professional command, and you’re shifting the liability on that professional, and you’re dodging all liability because I said to call on a contractor I said calling a contractor right? In my mind, it’s kind of like the little boy that cries wolf all the time. If you want a contractor to come and look at everything, I mean, every little thing that’s going on, it really washes out the majors because there’s just it’s hard to sort out what actually is a major problem when you want 75 different professionals in this house. Do you know what I’m saying? So for the smaller stuff, this is a maintenance item, get it fixed. Let’s keep this in mind and take care of this, here’s a suggestion. Okay, we have a major problem here. This is why it’s a major problem, you should have somebody that really knows what they’re doing the estimate and look at this. I think in the end that if you do it that way, you’re actually absorbing less liability than if you just call it a professional for everything. It drives me nuts when I see guys doing that though.

Ian R: I teach a report writing course. That’s one of the things I talked about in the course. I used a little boy who cried wolf, a scenario real, especially with hazardous stuff. It’s just like, oh cracking sidewalk, hazardous, hazardous, hazardous, you know, hazardous piece of siding hanging off the house, okay. Now, when you get into an electrical panel, and there are live wires hanging out of it, and eyeball height, and you say hazardous, what is more hazardous? People don’t know anymore to be honest with you, for the most part, they’re not going to walk in and be like, Oh, well, that’s obviously a bigger issue. People are gonna go is that bad? Or I don’t know but we still want to mitigate risk. We actually did a podcast a few weeks ago with Isaac Peck from Oh, Rep. He and I talked about something that actually I think you do, too, is a rating system is good for that because you want to put a maintenance item. Now the rating is anything that goes under a maintenance item automatically calls for a contract, you want to mitigate risk. Cool, but you don’t have to write it out on every single item. It’s a maintenance item. So now you’re worried about sitting in a courtroom. Okay, cool.You can say, well, if you look at my rating system, it says maintenance items should be evaluated by a qualified contractor. Oh, well, there it is but you didn’t have to write it out on every single line of your report. Is that what you’re kind of getting it?

Jay Wynn: Exactly what I’m getting at because, in mind, I actually have that in like in the maintenance section, qualified, professional, or competent, prepared individual, which they’re not necessarily the same thing, right? Yeah. The thing is, there are a lot of potentially qualified professionals that can handle most things. You know, a competent homeowner can handle a lot of it but that’s the key. Had it stated somewhere in the report, but I will see some of these reports at home inspectors are writing and there are 25 hazards and there are 15 majors and there’s and you look at it and it’s just the same stuff. reworded or minor stuff that because they’ve been told this we know they were taught and turn everything over shift all liability, you want to put it all on a contract you want to? I don’t think it does. I think it actually puts you on the hook deeper for a whole report.

Ian R: You can shift liability without sounding stupid in your report by writing that every two seconds, I think, and that’s not stupid but to be honest with you when an agent or is reading that or an attorney. You have that in there. 50 times qualified contractor. Yeah, it doesn’t sound Intelligent, you know,

Jay Wynn: No. So it’s just, I’ll just give you a for instance, I had a client, who we were doing the inspection, the deck was failing, like one of us walked across and the thing is bouncing and it wasn’t a high deck, but it was two by six spanning like 1820 feet something ridiculous. It wasn’t safe. I mean, I’m serious. I’m you know, I’m 200 pounds I’m walking across, but things sponging like a trampoline like this is not safe. This is a structural issue. This is a structural major, we walked into the house in the pan, and we found aluminum wiring, we call that out as a major because aluminum wiring is potentially hazardous. We had a hot water heater that was rusted out rushing through the bottom, we call that out and another one. Well, the client actually called me up upset. He said, My attorney, can’t get this undone because you didn’t flag the roof as a major and you didn’t flag more majors. If you had we could do this and I said, Hold on, slow down, slow down. So first of all, not everything in that house is major. Okay, so we’re not flagging everything. As a major, we’re not turning small things into big things, just but what that also means is those items that I did flag as a major, it’s because they are of serious, legitimate concern. We’re not making stuff up. We’re not patting this out. I’m, you know, the other stuff I’m writing up as I see it. I’m owning that 100% owning that, you know, your roof was older, but it wasn’t failing the shingles weren’t lifting you had decent granule on it. So I’m not writing up a bad roof so your attorney can get you out of the contract and the fact that we wrote that up in some kind of real-world context, to me says that means the stuff that I’m saying is a big problem you better listen to. You see, what I’m saying is that it gives a lot more force that when you find stuff, is it you’re not calling everything a big problem. I really drive me nuts, guys do it. Find the big problems, and call them out appropriately. Have some language in there, like you said, for the maintenance stuff. You can put it somewhere else like in the rating system. That’s a great place to have it but own your report. You know,

Ian R: That’s a nice soapbox speech, Jay, and I appreciate it. Sorry. No, I really do. Just to kind of clarify, when Jay is talking about majors in our area of New York, contracts are written so that a defect is not a defect, they distinguish a defect of a light switch versus a defective roof. So there’s always going to be what’s called a major in our area, just one of those little niche things about New York.

Jay Wynn: Thanks for putting that into context, because I have a very limited view of this.

Ian R: I don’t think it’s limited at all. You have an on-point view of what’s going on. Owning a report is an important thing, and so are cancellation fees but I tell you what, this is still one of my favorite segments drinking with Jay and it did not disappoint. So we’re gonna have to have Jay on another time when he’s had a rough day. I’m all out of scotch. Thank you so much, Jay, for being on. I appreciate it and thanks a lot. We’ll talk soon.

Outro: On behalf of myself, Ian, and the entire ITB team, thank you for listening to this episode of inspector toolbelt talk. We also love hearing your feedback, so please drop us a line at info@inspectortoolbelt.com.

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