Who Is Your Customer in a Real Estate Deal

Why this matters

On an ordinary service call the person who calls you owns the house, lets you in, approves the work, pays the bill and reads your notes. In a home sale those can be five different people, and some of them are on opposite sides of a negotiation. Shops that never separate them do work nobody authorized, bill people who never agreed to pay, and hand a report to the party it was supposed to be kept from. The fix is to ask four questions on every real-estate call and write down four answers, even when they are all the same name.

The four questions

1. Who can authorize work on the property? Only the owner of record, or someone with legal authority to act for them (a trustee, an executor or administrator, a court-appointed representative, an asset manager for a lender that owns it, a property manager under a written management agreement). Until closing, the buyer is not the owner, however committed they are. A buyer can order you to observe and test without changing anything; anything that alters the property needs the owner's permission.

2. Who pays? Whoever agreed to, in writing. Not necessarily the person who called, and almost never the agent unless the agent's brokerage explicitly accepts the bill.

3. Who owns the findings? Whoever engaged you. Your report is prepared for them, and who else sees it is their call, subject to the contract between buyer and seller. See related: The Buyer and the Seller Both Want Your Report.

4. Who controls access? In an occupied listing, the seller and listing agent schedule entry, usually through a showing service or lockbox. In a vacant home, the listing agent. A buyer's agent who gives you a lockbox code is passing along the listing side's permission; make sure that permission covers a trade visit and not just a showing.

The parties, one at a time

The seller. Owns the house until closing. Can authorize any work, pays for work they order, owns their own reports. Their agent will often place the call. The seller is the party with a disclosure obligation for what they learn, which is why some sellers prefer not to commission findings at all. See related: Your Findings and the Seller Disclosure Obligation.

The buyer. Orders evaluations during the inspection period and pays for them. Cannot authorize repairs, invasive testing, or anything that changes the house. Owns the evaluation they ordered. After closing, the buyer becomes the owner and an ordinary customer.

The listing agent. Represents the seller. Arranges access, collects repair quotes, and often orders work on the seller's behalf. Authority to approve work comes from the seller, so a listing agent's "go ahead" is only as good as the seller's instruction behind it. Get the seller's name and confirm the authorization reached them.

The buyer's agent. Represents the buyer. Places most evaluation calls. Has no authority over the property at all. Is often the person who sends your findings onward, which is fine, provided the buyer agreed to that.

The investor or flipper. Usually the owner, sometimes through an LLC whose name differs from the person on the phone. Authorizes and pays, often wants the minimum scope. See related: Working for House Flippers and Investors.

Estates, banks and relocation companies. Authority sits with a personal representative, an asset manager, or a relocation company's contract, not the person who answers the door. Each has its own sibling card. See related: Getting Authorization to Work on a Probate Property, Bank Owned and Preservation Work, Relocation Company Work.

A tenant in a listed rental. Lives there but does not own it, so cannot authorize work, and usually is not paying. What the tenant does hold is the right to notice before entry, set by state landlord-tenant law rather than by the sale: California, for example, presumes 24 hours' written notice is reasonable, while other states set different periods or leave it to the lease. The landlord or property manager owes that notice, not you, but a tech who walks in on a tenant who was never told has turned the landlord's compliance problem into your scene. Confirm notice was given before you go. See related: The Realtor and Property-Manager Pipeline.

The closing agent or escrow officer. Not a customer. Holds money and pays invoices the parties have instructed them to pay. See related: Getting Paid at Closing Without Getting Stuck.

What the job record should say

Put the four answers on the job before you dispatch. A shop that records only "contact name and phone" will discover the gaps on site or at invoicing.

REAL ESTATE JOB             Ticket 24-3318
Property:     77 Birch Ct
Owner of record:   D. and L. Hale (seller)
Ordered by:        P. Khan, buyer's agent
For / pays:        S. Mendez (buyer)
Payment:           card on file, at booking
Authorized scope:  sewer camera, findings
Invasive OK?:      YES, toilet pull approved
                   by L. Hale via listing
                   agent, text 6/3 4:12 pm
Access:            lockbox, listing agent
                   confirmed trade visit
Findings to:       S. Mendez, cc P. Khan
Not to:            seller side unless buyer
                   approves in writing
Deadline:          option period ends 6/7

Every line answers a question someone will ask later. "Invasive OK" carries who said yes, through whom, and when, because "the agent said it was fine" is not an answer a seller has to accept when their bathroom floor is wet.

Worked example: the sewer camera on someone else's house

A buyer's agent calls a plumbing shop: the inspector recommends a sewer camera inspection on a 1960s house with mature trees. The buyer will pay. The agent says the house has a cleanout.

Run the four questions.

• Authorize. Running a camera through an existing cleanout is observation; it changes nothing. But on site the tech finds the cleanout cap seized. Removing a seized cap risks breaking it, and the alternative access is pulling a toilet. Both alter the seller's property. The tech stops and calls the office, and the office calls the listing agent, who reaches the seller. The seller approves the toilet pull and declines any attempt on the cap. That approval is recorded with name, channel and time, as in the record above.
• Pay. The buyer pays the camera fee at booking. The toilet reset is the shop's cost of access and is included in the evaluation price; the shop says so on the quote so nobody argues about a separate charge for putting the toilet back.
• Own. The video and findings belong to the buyer. They show a root intrusion at a joint about 40 ft out and a belly with standing water near 55 ft.
• Access. Confirmed through the listing agent for a trade visit, so the seller was not surprised by a plumber.

Two days later the listing agent asks the shop for a copy of the video so the seller can get a second opinion. The shop does not have the answer to give: the buyer owns it. The office tells the listing agent it will pass the request to the buyer's agent, and does. The buyer agrees to share it, and the shop sends it with a note naming the buyer's written permission. Whether sharing helps or hurts the buyer is the buyer's decision, made with their own agent.

When the answers disagree. If the seller had refused the toilet pull, the camera could not be run, and the findings would have said exactly that: "Not evaluated, access to the line declined by owner." That is a complete and useful answer, because a seller refusing access to the sewer line is itself information for the buyer. What the shop must not do is improvise, for instance by forcing the cap because the buyer's agent said to.

The traps

The agent as customer. An agent calls, you do the work, the deal falls apart, and the agent says the buyer was supposed to pay and the buyer says nobody told them. Payment terms agreed with the paying party, at booking, end this. See related: The Sale Fell Through After the Work Was Done.

Authority by enthusiasm. A buyer who has fallen in love with the house asks you to "just fix it while you are there." You would be altering a property they do not own, without the owner's permission. Say no, and offer to quote it to the seller.

The friendly listing agent. The listing agent asks what you found during a buyer's evaluation while you are standing in the driveway. Your findings belong to the buyer. "You'll want to ask the buyer's agent" is the whole answer.

The new owner's assumption. After closing, the new owner calls about the work you quoted for the seller and expects you to honor the seller's price. Your agreement was with the seller; whether the price stands is your decision, not an obligation they inherited. Your warranty on work already done is a separate question your own terms answer.

How to verify you know your customer

Before dispatch, read the job record and check that each of the four answers names a person, not a role: an owner name, a payer name with agreed terms, a findings recipient, and the person who confirmed access. Then check one cross-condition: if the authorized scope includes anything invasive, there is a record of the owner's approval. Whether a given approval binds the owner in a later dispute is a legal question for your own attorney; what you can control is that the record shows who said yes, and when.

References

• State real estate license law and the agency disclosure forms used in your state, which define whom each agent represents
• The purchase contract's provisions on inspections, access and sharing of reports, as drafted by the parties
• See related: The Real Estate Job Intake SOP, The Buyer and the Seller Both Want Your Report
• See related: The Realtor and Property-Manager Pipeline, Getting Paid at Closing Without Getting Stuck