If you want to spend some time with a few hundred Realtors, they are all gathering in the same place these days.

It’s a place called “inspection hell,” and there you’ll find a number of home sellers and Realtors commiserating as to how they were banished to such a place and wondering if they will ever escape.

Much like Dante’s Inferno, these souls are suffering and in great anguish, their cries billowing into the skies.

Of course there were no home inspectors in Dante’s day. This first circle, limbo, is usually brought about by lawsuits from sellers and buyers failing to beware.

Inspectors are not satanic, not a Lucifer among them. In fact, they are kind, knowledgeable people performing the impossible. As the late Walter Jowers used to say as he began an inspection, “I cannot see through walls and I cannot predict the future.”

If an inspector cannot see through walls, he cannot detect what is going on behind drywall. In many cases, it is between the walls that the creatures crawl. Mold loves to grow in the darkness, and water slithers down studs and joists like serpents in the jungle.

Any home on a slope should have a moat around it capturing the water and sending it into the depths below. When those moats are covered, they are referred to as French drains, and they work.

The historic home builder John Eddie Cain always warned his troops: “Remember, there is no force of nature more powerful than water.” He was not referring to tsunamis, tidal waves or white water.

Rather, he spoke of storm water running down a hill or even the water pouring from the downspouts.

As any good inspector, and there are more good than bad, will tell anyone who will listen that water running from a roof can ruin a footing and a foundation.

Inspectors must identify any shortcoming of every house and cite these deficiencies and inform the buyers.

One other problem that arises is that most buyers know nothing of construction, and the words fall on naïve, unenlightened ears.

Even if the inspector explains that this crack in the brick are in a veneer and are not structural and that those cracks result from a faulty downspout, many a buyer will fear structural issues and walk.

Many of the inhabitants of “inspection hell” are worried that the buyers will terminate the contract if they do not fix everything. And that is when the devil begins to whisper into their ears: “These people are mean and evil and are trying to rob you of your hard-earned money.”

“Look around,” suggests the master of temptation. “There are others who would love to live in your beautiful home.”

He then adds the invitation: “Tell them to come visit me”

The Realtor acknowledges the requests are excessive, but warns other inspectors may have the same findings or that the buyer should make the repairs or he would have to disclose the issues.

“Tell your Realtor to tag along with the buyer on his way to my place,” the prince of darkness urges.

This story has several endings.

Sale of the Week

“Are there any deals left in Nashville?” is an oft-asked question. There are, and they are most prevalent in the multi-family sector.

This duplex with 2,440 square feet sold for $700,000 moments after Ryan Newby with RE/MAX Elite listed it. Newby, skilled agent that he is, priced it slightly lower than the market in order to bait the sharks into a frenzy to initiate the bidding war that ensued.

Robyn Morshead, one of the Tom Andrews disciples at WEICHERT, REALTORS, triumphantly led her buyer through the carnage to capture the spoils. With net income of $27,198 the return on investment does not fit the model, nor the cap rate that some desire.

When a buyers asks for the cap rate and an opportunity to cast a gander at the rent roles, his goose is cooked because it just does not matter in Nashville. Logic and math impede most investors in their quest to acquire rental property here.

Buyers must bet on the outcome and determine how much a bit of sprucing will impact the rent total.

Even at $700,000, the 2,440 square feet could be a steal for a single-family home. If a person spends $300,000 and adds 2,560 – I know, I know, but some of it can be walls, floors and ceilings – and has 5,000 square feet for $1 million on Belmont Boulevard, there is a quick $400,000 or so in equity.

Of course, these properties do not appear often, but when they do, the sky is the limit.

And then, there are the money pits, but that’s for another day.

Richard Courtney is a real estate broker with Christianson, Patterson, Courtney, and Associates and can be reached at [email protected].