Lying Weasels

Something that I have repeated again and again to my students is that in this business (as with just about any other, I would assume) EVERYONE lies to me. That may be a particularly pessimistic view of people in general, but it seems to be a universal law in this business.

Sometimes, the lies told are very small and insignificant. People simply feel that they need to get the best deal possible for their property, so they make up a little white lie to make the deal appear slightly better. Many people also fear a loss of profit. They feel that they will end up losing on the deal and not making as much money as they could have if they had lied about one little detail and made the property seem more valuable.

Just recently, I went to go take a look at a triplex with a student of mine. We checked it out and based on the asking price and the property's condition, it appeared to be a good deal. We told the seller that we would be preparing an agreement and would call him back shortly to set up a time to sign it up.

After preparing a VERY simple agreement with a contingency of the property actually appraising for what the seller told us it would, we met with the seller again. He read over our agreement, set it down, then began talking. The more he talked, the more my internal lie detector started going off.

You see, after years of doing this business and hearing so many different lies from so many different people in so many different situations, I have developed an internal lie detector. (Unfortunately, it seems to only work on business deals and negotiations!) This guy said so many things that made me sit back and wonder what he was hiding.

He told us that all he needed to make the deal happen was a handshake. After we tried to make the point that it would be a bit difficult to go to a bank and show them a handshake in order to secure a mortgage, he then made a point that we didn't even need an attorney to close the deal. He insisted that all we had to do was go to a notary to close the deal! I am assuming also that we were expected to show up with a suitcase full of cash to hand to him!

One of the major points he made was that he was selling the property "As Is", which was fine with us, but he kept on making a big point of this. He also went on to say that there were absolutely no problems with any government work orders or citations for anything on the property. It's kind of funny how many times people who are lying inadvertently tell you what they are lying about!

Now, this gentleman was Chinese. I've got no problem with dealing with ANYONE, regardless of where they come from. However, people from different cultures often approach things in a different way, so I wanted to be sure about what I was detecting. I told my student that while I was detecting all these lies, it may also just be that there was a cultural gap that was making it seem as though he was lying, when in fact, he was just nervous about signing a contract. We decided on an experiment. My student decided to call this seller back the next day and say that before we got our appraisal done, we had asked the local building inspector to come with us to take a look at the property. Our theory was that this seller may have done some un-permitted work to the property and this is one of the things he was trying to hide.

The seller nearly had a heart attack when he heard this! He quickly made an excuse about wanting to "fix up the exterior" before the inspector came by. He said he would let us know when he was done. I do not expect to ever hear from this guy again!

Any way, it is just a simple fact. People are going to lie to you. You MUST do your homework and confirm EVERYTHING when entering into a deal. That's just business, folks.