A Smell at an Open House Turned Into a $17,000 Problem

Someone at an open house mentioned they smelled propane. The seller, who was living in that house every single day, said she’d never smelled a thing. We got it checked anyway, and that one decision uncovered more than $17,000 in problems on a house that was already under contract.

It could easily have killed the sale. It didn’t, and how it didn’t is worth understanding if you’re ever the seller when something like this surfaces.

When enough people mention the same thing, you check. So we called the fire department to come out, and thank goodness we did, because the gas hadn’t been plumbed correctly. That was the thread that unraveled everything else. Once the buyers completed their home inspection, the full picture emerged: the heating system had failed, the water system essentially needed to be re-plumbed, and the home needed a new water heater and a new heating system.

All in, that came to more than seventeen thousand dollars in repairs, on a deal that was already supposed to be sailing toward closing.

The inspection is where problems surface, and that doesn’t make you a bad seller. It’s simply the moment a buyer brings in a professional whose entire job is to find what you’ve been living with and stopped noticing. My seller genuinely did not smell the propane, and she wasn’t hiding a thing. When you live somewhere long enough, you stop noticing what’s right in front of you.

So if an inspection turns up something significant on your home, it doesn’t mean you did anything wrong. It means you have a decision to make.

You really only have a few options, and the right one depends on what broke. You can repair the problem before closing. You can offer the buyer a credit and let them handle it after they move in. You can renegotiate the price to reflect the cost of the work. Or you can refuse to do anything and risk the buyer walking away.

For cosmetic issues or smaller repairs, a credit or a price adjustment often makes perfect sense. When the problem is the heat and the water, that calculation changes completely. A buyer isn’t going to purchase a house without working heat or working water, so in a situation like that, the repair isn’t really optional if you want the sale to close.

Here’s what most sellers don’t know: you may not have to pay for it up front. When you’re staring at a seventeen-thousand-dollar repair bill in the middle of a sale, the panic is almost always about the cash. Most people don’t have that sitting in an account, and they haven’t been paid for the house yet.

In our case, I found a contractor willing to be paid at closing, out of the sellers’ proceeds. The work got done, the sellers were never out of pocket, and at closing, I took the invoice, signed by all parties, to the title company, and the contractor got paid directly.

This isn’t automatic. It depends on the contractor’s willingness and on all parties agreeing. But it’s a conversation worth having, and many sellers never think to ask.

The buyers stayed, and the reason is the whole lesson. They were willing to work with us because we took care of it. We didn’t argue, we didn’t try to hide from it, we handled it, and that’s what holds a deal together when something goes wrong. Buyers understand that older homes have problems, and here in New England, most of our homes have some age on them.

What buyers can’t accept is a seller who refuses to deal with what’s been found. So if an inspection turns up something serious, the instinct to panic or to fight it is understandable, but the move that actually saves your sale is to face it directly and figure out how to solve it.

Big problems come up during a sale more often than people think. It doesn’t mean the sale is over, and it doesn’t mean you’re stuck writing a check you can’t afford. There are usually more options than you realize, and part of my job is knowing what they are and who to call.

If you’re getting ready to sell anywhere from the Greater Concord area out to the New Hampshire and Maine Seacoast, and you’re worried about what an inspection might find, let’s talk before you list. You call or text me at 603-393-4605, email me at tina@heaney-homes.com, or visit heaneyhomes.kw.com.