Page 10 - Pipeline JanFebMar2020

HOUSE HUNTERS: RISK ASSESSMENT EDITION
by Alex Martin
“What do you think? Do you like it?” I already knew that she did, which explained the frog in my throat when she asked me.
“Uhh... I mean... I like it... but I don’t love it. Ya know?”
“What do you mean? What’s wrong with it?” Her voice had that tone; we all know that tone. The one that sounds like a contained can of rage that’s about to burst and explode all over the room.
“Ahem,” I cleared my throat while grabbing the neck of my shirt and beginning to feel the heat. “I can’t tell you exactly what’s wrong with it, but...”
“But what?” She cut me off, and then the can had opened, “See! You can’t even tell me what’s wrong with it. I wish you would be more open-minded when it came to this stuff...” I stopped listening. I knew where this was going. This was at least the 2000th house we’d looked at and we just couldn’t see eye to eye.
I kept hearing her use words like ‘mid-century modern design,’ and ‘formal dining’ and my all-time favorite ‘charm.’ I still don’t know what that means, I think its just a term she uses to reject the houses I like. In fact, as we move throughout this story I will continue to refer to it as “charm” because in my view it’s a mythological, intangible, unquantifiable being, following
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us from open house to open house ruining my home buying plans. I’m sure that she would want a house boat with a hole in it if it had enough “charm.” Meanwhile, I was saying things like ‘budget,’ ‘taxes’ and ‘price per square foot.’ I don’t want to paint a picture of me being completely conservative, I think I may have mentioned ‘mancave’ a few times too. We weren’t speaking the same home buying language.
“You don’t think the formal dining room here is loaded with charm?” Double whammy. House shopping with a partner, or any big decisions, can be challenging. Things that you value are unimportant to them and things they may value are seen as afterthoughts in their minds. How do you ever reach a consensus?
Maybe it helps to think of it like this: your shopping partner is assessing risk differently than you. You may be looking at
the same home, but the way you’re identifying, analyzing, evaluating and ultimately identifying and weighing the risk involved with the house is completely different. There’s risk involved in almost every decision we make and buying a home is certainly no different. But how do we identify the risks? Fortunately, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), the American Society
of Safety Engineers (ASSE), and the Internal Organization for Standardization (ISO) teamed up to create a document to help with risk management
appropriately titled Risk Management Principles and Guidelines or ANSI/ASSE/ISO 3100 (Z690.2-2011) for short.
So, what is happening when you’re looking for houses? Whether you realize it or not, you’re identifying the risks associated with each house. Can we afford this house? What’s the crime like in this area? Is it move in ready? What will need to be repaired before we move in? What are the taxes like? Is this in the flood zone? Are we better off just staying where we are? This is a process that the aforementioned standard refers to as Risk Identification. The standard says that “the aim of this step is to generate a comprehensive list of risks based on those events that might create, enhance, prevent, degrade, accelerate or delay the achievement of objectives.
So, if proximity to a body of water, or tax costs, or quality of schools might affect the house you choose, good, bad, or otherwise, then those are all risks that you should certainly identify prior to purchasing your home.
The next step of risk assessment is Risk Analysis. ANSI defines this as “developing an understanding of the risk. Risk analysis provides an
input to risk evaluation and
to decisions on whether risks need to be treated, and on
the most appropriate risk treatment strategies and methods. Risk analysis can also provide an input into making