Posts from June 19th, 2026

Terry came home the other day with a story that immediately made me think about homeowners and the parts of their homes they rarely see.

Someone had recently scheduled routine maintenance for their air conditioner. The HVAC technician completed the service, gathered his paperwork, and was getting ready to leave when he mentioned something unusual.

"Before I go, you may want to have a pest company take a look at your attic. I thought I heard rats running around up there."

Now, if someone tells me there might be rats in my attic, I'm probably heading for a ladder and a flashlight pretty quickly. That's exactly what this homeowner did.

What he found wasn't rats.

It was bats.

A lot of bats.

A missing inspector, a crawlspace adventure, and an unexpected plumbing leak became a reminder that some of the most important parts of a home are the parts homeowners rarely see.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in a living room with some sellers while their pre-listing inspection was taking place. The inspector had gone into the crawlspace, and after quite a while we realized we hadn't seen him come back out. At first, we laughed about it, but after calling for him several times and getting no response, we started to wonder if we should check on him.

We walked around to the crawlspace entrance and called again. Nothing. I called his phone twice and still didn't get an answer. We looked around the house for another access point but couldn't find one. Finally, I did something that probably wasn't in any real estate training manual. I crawled under the house.

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