Home Systems

The integral interior systems of a house are those that are the most confusing and baffling to everyone. They’re also the systems that are the most important in the day-to-day operations of the household and can only be repaired or replaced by Licensed Specialists. This is as it should be because receiving a license requires years of education at an accredited school, followed by a ton of hours working under the supervision of a professional who’s been working in the field for about 150 years.

The laws that require us to hire only people who have licenses to work on certain interior systems also tend to save ourselves from ourselves. I can just imagine the guy who knows a little bit of electricity from the shop class he took 40 years ago in high school. Something short circuits in the house one day and he decides he can fix it himself. It can’t be all that hard, he reasons. After all, he learned all about this very thing on one of those rare days he actually payed attention to the shop teacher.

And isn’t learning electricity just like learning to ride a bike? Learn it once and it comes back to you faster than, well, faster than the speed of light! His wife is immensely grateful for the life insurance policies they bought not long after they were married.

So, there are systems you barely see the tip of that are curently running your household. They can only be worked on or repaired by licensed individuals. Of course, I’m talking about things like the electrical system, the plumbing system, the HVAC system, and the structural integrity of the home. My personal response to having difficulties with any of the systems in my home, has always been to pick up the phone, which is exactly what I am suggesting you do.  

Personally, I don’t know very much at all about electricity, and the only thing I know about plumbing is that water seeks its own level. Any time an electrician is talking to me about something as simple as running a line to an outlet, it sounds to me like an ancient dialect that’s been lost to civilization for centuries. I think I’m a little bit better with plumbing, but you’ll never see me trying to replace a length of pipe that has a pinhole leak in it. My role is to clean up the mess it makes.

The one thing I do know about plumbers, electricians, HVAC technicians, or structural specialists, is that they are harder to find than hen’s teeth. That is, unless you are selling a home that is going through the probate process and you make one phone call to George Wallace at Estate Settlement Partners. While creating one of the most amazing home craftsmanship partnerships in the entire known universe, we certainly would not be a fully integrated Partnership if we neglected to add several independent Plumbers, Electricians, HVAC, Basement Waterproofing, as well as other specialists whose domain is the interior of the home, to our growing network.

As often happens in estates that need to be settled in Probate Court, there’s a home that needs to be sold, with the net proceeds being distributed among the heirs that have been named in the Last Will and Testament. Very often the home has been unoccupied for some length of time. The approach we need to take in maximizing its Market Value usually depends on how long it has been unoccupied.

We also become involved in cases where the home has been occupied by the same people for several decades, and the occupants have neither updated the crucial operating systems, nor have they paid much attention to “keeping up with the Joneses” as far as the look and feel of the home’s interior. Sometimes the home falls into both categories I just mentioned. In which case the only answer available is a Magic Wand!

The goals and objectives of the Personal Representative, the heirs, and other possible interested parties, are the most powerful factors in determining the scope of work that’s either acceptable or necessary, to realize the greatest return possible on the dollars invested. This is precisely where Estate Settlement Partners displays the greatest value we offer to the beneficiaries of the estate.

Our specialty is in locating the exact tipping point, the place where the addition of every extra dollar invested, places increasingly less than a dollar into the pockets of the heirs to the estate. I am, of course, referring to The Law of Diminishing Returns.

We are uniquely positioned to provide such an amazing value to all of our clients because we bring you such a broad and deep array of White-Collar Estate Specialists, as well as Blue Collar, Hands-on Real Estate experts, resources, skills, knowledge, and imagination, all guided by every partner’s enthusiastic acceptance of, and adherence to, The Estate Settlement Partners Unique Code Of Values that you can find on the home page of this website.

Our overarching mission is to do what is necessary to bring estate homes into the condition comparable to houses of a similar size and style that have been recently sold in the surrounding market area. Then marketing and selling the property for the highest dollar value possible, for the benefit of the heirs.

Sometimes we use the services of home inspectors to walk through the house with us and point out all the things they can find that could be a significant issue to anyone seeking to buy the house. This service is invaluable because we never know what an inspector is going to find and are very often surprised. Another invaluable resource that is part of The Estate Settlement Partners network are appraisers that we hire independent of any banks, so they give us a very close approximation of what the appraisal value will be of the home we’re selling. It gives us a distinct advantage in the marketplace that way.

The big problem occurs when the buyer agrees to pay a certain price for the house, and it does not appraise correctly. So, the buyer either walks away or covers the gap between the appraisal number and what they offered to pay for the house. Sometimes these gaps can be substantial and the buyer either doesn’t have enough credit available to them or doesn’t have enough money to be cover the gap, and the deal blows up. In the meantime, somewhere around 45 days or more has gone by and the seller needs to go back and start at the beginning again which isn’t any fun for anyone involved.

Estate Settlement Partners can mitigate this problem by having the property pre appraised so we know what we’re dealing with. We then work closely with the Personal Representative of the estate to create a strategy for selling the home that will work and return more money to the heirs than would otherwise be returned if it was sold in the “as is” condition.

The following is a partial list of the “Systems” professions that are represented in the Estate Settlement Partners burgeoning network:

·      Electricians

·      Plumbers

·      Handyman

·      HVAC technicians

·      energy efficiency experts

·      insurance specialists

·      basement waterproofing

·      structural engineering

·      home inspectors

·      home appraisers

·      moving services

·      moving pods/dumpsters

·      logistics consultation

·      Logistics management

TAKE A STEP BACK

The above list contains more real estate firepower from a single source, placed at your disposal with one phone call, than is possible to imagine.

Now, I will ask you to please take a step back and in your mind, add the awesome services you see on the above list, to those you find on the list below.

·      The Interior Craftsmanship Page

·      The Exterior Craftsmanship Page

·      The Legal Specialists Page

·      The Financial Specialists Page

·      The Personal Property Disposition Specialists Page

·      The Home Preparation Specialists Page

·      The Home Sales Specialists Page

Then, try to imagine the sheer length, depth, breadth, and width of unimaginable creative and restorative power, all bound together by an amazing and immutable code of mutually held, important personal values. Any part, or the entire service, is gladly placed in your hands, and all you need to do is push 10 buttons on your phone. Call George Wallace at Estate Settlement Partners. That which you see as a problem, the entire network sees as sees as an amazing opportunity.