Expertise
By Jim Palmer Jr.

Years ago I was asked to perform a skit in a huge outdoor amphitheater for a regional Scout encampment. The skit included myself on a horse, along with several other actors and was to be done at night. Even though my big gelding was well trained and accustomed to participating in parades with lots of distractions, we had never done anything like this with such a rowdy audience at night. The script required that I ride and spin wildly in the aisles of the grassy amphitheater while shouting and chasing shady characters through the aisles. While rehearsing during daylight hours to acclimate my horse to this stage, I was confronted by an observer who exclaimed, “Is that a stud horse? He sure is acting up like a stud!” I assured the man that everything my horse had just done was controlled and directed by me with subtle leg cues. Those cues had gone unnoticed by the casual bystander who had no idea of the expertise and hours of training that had gone into what he had just seen.

I use that example as an analogy for the expertise that is required of many players in the real estate profession, including the vendors who provide much needed services related to a real estate transaction. We rely regularly on a variety of experts to facilitate a transaction, such as lenders and appraisers, well drillers, electricians, contractors, septic installers, septic pumpers and more. Their expertise is much appreciated by those who know what to look for, and maybe less so by the consumers who are most interested in the cost.

A great example of such expertise was manifest to me in a recent case where I had called in a trusted septic expert to find and certify a septic system that was many years old, but had never been used. Even though we had “as-built” drawings of the system layout and details about components, it was all invisible under the ground. The expert deftly wielded a heavy pry bar which he drove into the ground over and over again, probing for the lids and edges of the tanks, which were not in the location the drawings indicated. I smiled as his tool clunked against the hidden concrete tanks and lids because he could tell by the feel and sound exactly what was hidden there. No one but me will ever appreciate the expertise he exhibited that day by using that simple crude tool in that crucial task.