Imagine if Buddy Franklin could kick straight, or if Steve Waugh hadn’t put away the hook shot what would his average have been when he finished. Tiger Woods had a golf stick in his hand at the age of 2 years and Sir Donald Bradman as a child would spend hour after hour hitting a golf ball against a rain tank…. would they have become the legends they now are without the practise they put in? Whilst ability matters, it is all about the practise and the end result is that it eliminates errors. Buying or selling a house is no different, the less mistakes you make the more money you will save and believe me, the stakes are high. For many people buying or selling a home only occurs once or twice in their lifetime so, it is almost impossible to develop the skill sets necessary to eliminate the chance of making a mistake/s. And who is going to tell you? If you are not aware of the mistakes you have made or are about to make, how will you ever know how much money you have squandered ? and given the long term nature of property transactions for long term gain, you will never know as it is buried in a time capsule. It is not like buying shares where the value of the share is monitored daily. I bet if I asked you for $10,000 for every mistake you made or were about to make your answer would probably be no because you don’t have the experience to identify what those errors are likely to be and herein lies the answer…. The true value or worth of an advocate is their experience and knowledge to eliminate the human errors that people make over and over again and by doing so, saving their clients tens of thousands of $$$ and often more. To qualify how much money we save our clients is purely subjective because by removing the chance of human error, the saving or cost benefit is not visible like on a scoreboard but here are some good examples of how things can go so terribly wrong:

• Why didn’t we get a termite inspection report? We knew it was in an area that was known for termites. Now, I will have to replace all the floorboards in the entire house. If only I had spent the money….
• Do we really need to spend that much in advertising? How can I be objective when all the agent’s submissions are identical….
• If only we had measured the land from the nearest cross street before settlement, we would have realised the fence was actually on the next-door neighbour’s property, now we have to pull down the garage which we built on the fence line and start again.
• Did you bother to check all the appliances were working when you did your final inspection? No. Why? The power was turned off. I wish the heating for the pool was working…I guess we will have to wait until summer. The kids are so disappointed.
• I thought the asking price was a bit steep. The agent suggested we meet halfway which I thought was reasonable. Right? Wrong. The price you paid was the reserve price, not the vendor’s bottom line.
• Am I getting the best price in a changing market? Is the price I am being asked to accept the same price that I was told at the beginning? If not, who do I turn to?
• We knew we should have sold our house before we purchased, now we are being pressured by the banks to sell our house for less than what we were told we could get.
• Why did we keep on bidding? Now we have to put off our trip to Europe with the family…. There goes my new car too.
• I thought slate roofs lasted a lifetime.
• We thought buying a beach house was a good idea at the time, now we can’t give it away.
• I will never ever buy off the plan again.
• I wish we had made the effort to find out who our neighbours were.