Snapping my way through a home inspection

Getting a home inspection

So I am trying something new here. If you are following me on Snapchat, (if not click there) you now I have been snapping my way through typical days and showing you some of the things that go on behind the scenes in the life of a real estate agent. I know, <sarcasm font> super exciting </sarcasm font>.

Well yesterday, my adventures took me to a home inspection, among other places.

First, let me address something. I have been to dozens of classes taught by “experts” who say not to go to the home inspection. It is not the best use of your time. Well I guess that depends on what they mean by “best use of your time.” If they mean I could be on the phone hounding people for new business, well maybe they are right. But…

I think the best use of my time is protecting the best interest of my clients.

So that is where I disagree with the experts. I should say, that is where “we” disagree. I have been in the business for 8 years, but I am still a newbie compared to my business partners Shar and Nick. And guess what, they go to the home inspection walk-through, too.

The inspection yesterday was was for a client who currently lives out of state. As I have told all of my clients. You are buying a used house, it is not going to be perfect. A good home inspector is always going to find between 15-30 items on the house that need fixing. That is basically your honey-do list. What we are looking for are items that the seller is required to fix, called warranted items, or things that are going to cost you some good money that we may not have known about.

Once we go through the property with the home inspector, he said to us what need to be repair.

Should I ask for everything to be repaired from the home inspection?

Usually no, and here is why. I have seen it happen before where the buyer wants to ask for everything to be repaired. After advising them of what I think the best strategy is, they decide they want to go with their strategy anyways. I work for the buyer, so I do as they request.

The buyer asks for 17 items to be repaired. Of those 17 items, 3 are pretty significant items that will cost $250 or more to repair and 14 are really small things that could be as low as $5 to repair.

So the Seller sits down with their agent. Their agent tells them… “This is really ridiculous, they are asking for all these things, so lets do this. Let’s agree to fix 12 of these items. That is more than most sellers will agree to fix and we can say we are agreeing to fix a lot of items. I will get my handyman in here and we can fix those items for $350 total.”

Now the listing agent comes back and says to me that we are going to be more than reasonable and fix 12 of the requested items.

The problem? The problem is the 3 things you really wanted to have fixed are not getting done. Where if you had focused on those items right up front by hiring handyman services, you could have gotten them fixed up in no time. 

I am going to keep Snapchating things in and around Chandler, as well as what I do behind the scenes. Follow me and Snap me what you would like to see covered.

Meanwhile, Nick, Shar and I are going to keep protecting our clients best interest. No matter what the “experts” say not to do.

Here are some listings near where this house is.