Questions Don't Slow Down a Home Sale. Leaving Them Unanswered Does.

Imagine you’re on a date. The evening has gone brilliantly. Your date is handsome, funny, and charming, and you can feel yourself falling in love. A friend had already tipped you off that a few things were worth checking before you got involved, but you decided to trust the feeling. Three years later, it turns out they are a violent alcoholic.

Would finding that out in advance have been overthinking?

In Helsingin Sanomat, estate agents vented about a new phenomenon: buyers send them long question lists drafted with AI, and ask for documents before they have even viewed the place. According to the agents, this slows down home sales, and what they want from buyers is some common sense.

I disagree.

The biggest purchase of a life deserves questions

For most of us, a home is the single largest purchase we will ever make. We put our savings into it, take out a loan for a quarter of a century, and move the family in, maybe for a decade.

It is purely a good thing that people are taking this decision more seriously. If AI gets a buyer to actually read the housing-company papers and ask follow-up questions, it deserves thanks, not a scolding.

Who decides what matters?

The article asks whether, for example, moisture measurements taken before a bathroom renovation matter at all. Maybe they don’t. That call is not the agent’s to make.

The agent is not putting their savings on the line, not signing the loan papers, and not waking up a year later in the middle of water damage. The buyer does all of that. So the buyer also decides which information is relevant to them. When a professional starts deciding, on the client’s behalf, what the client is allowed to know, that is arrogant, however good the intention.

I’ll grant that some of the lists are over the top. The best answer to “does one of the taps leak?” is “I’ll find out.” You can invite the buyer to come and see the place at the same time. “That information is not available” is also a perfectly good answer. After that, the buyer decides whether it is enough.

In the article’s example, a sale collapsed because there were no documents for a water damage from fifteen years ago. That is not AI’s fault. That is a failure of documentation.

”We’ve always managed”

According to the agents, homes have always been sold on the housing company’s papers, and that information has been enough.

They also used to perform surgery without anesthesia.

Doing something badly for a long time is not a reason to keep doing it. Especially when deals made on incomplete information still produce more than enough disputes.

Threat or opportunity?

If buyers are more awake than they used to be, anyone in the business could treat that as a chance to improve both their own trade and life for their clients:

Housing companies and property managers: it is time to take documentation, and the keeping of it, seriously. Condition surveys, repair reports, moisture measurements, and minutes belong in a digital, searchable archive, not at the bottom of someone’s binder. I’m looking at you, property management firms.

Agents: the basic documents should be available the moment someone asks, and preferably already attached to the listing. That means the manager’s certificate, the financial statements, the maintenance-needs report, the minutes of general meetings, and the condition surveys. These days, when I ask for something as basic as the company’s financial statements, the reply arrives in two or three days. If it arrives at all.

Repeated questions are feedback, not a nuisance. If the same ten questions show up every week, the answers belong in the listing. The same AI the buyer used to draft the list can be put to work answering it.

”Long question lists mean a lot of digging for agents”

Oh, for God’s sake. So now we’re griping that the job should be done to even a bare minimum?

The digging is the job. An agent has a statutory duty to look into the property and to disclose what they find, and even though the seller usually pays the fee, answering the buyer’s questions is exactly how that seller’s home gets sold. If this is the standard of the profession, I am deeply puzzled as to why more people don’t just sell their homes themselves.

Good news for agents: with the bar on the floor, an agent who answers quickly and thoroughly now stands out more than ever.

Knowledge adds to the pain

“Knowledge adds to the pain,” as agent Harry Lockmer sums it up.

So does a cancer diagnosis. So does finding out the bailiffs are on their way. That is exactly the pain sensible adults volunteer for, to avoid a greater disaster. A little pain over a stack of paper now is vastly cheaper than a lot of pain later, with a surprise pipe-renovation charge.

“And you can never know what will happen tomorrow or next week,” says agent Heidi Luumi.

True. Which is why you should find out today the things that can be known.