Bryan Vogt: Hey, welcome back to Ready, Set, Sold with your host Bryan Vogt. Thanks so much again for joining us today. I left you with us talking about the need for home inspections, and gave you the outline that a buyer is going to have those done. And they are quite extensive, they’re two to three hours long. And they go through everything, I mean, they’re up to 160 different items they look at. Good or bad, good or bad. There’s just a lot of things that are going to be looking at.
And the Radon and termite. One of the things that we talked about is, not only peace of mind, but there’s some other reason too. Peace of mind that once you have the inspection done beforehand, it gives such confidence to buyers. It says so much to them about it. Remember, buyers have never been in your home before. And just so you know, they’re also worried about that home inspection, for different reasons. They’re afraid there’s going to be something so horrific, which normally there is not, okay. Again, very seldom is there is, but they’re worried too that there’s going to be something terribly wrong and they can’t purchase your home, and now they spent all this time and some money, and whatever, and it’s not going to work out, and then go back to square one.
So again, it’s not only just the seller’s concerns, but buyers have those concerns too. And so being able to promote that fact that you’ve done the extra step, makes your house even that much more desirable for most buyers. They love that situation there. As I mentioned before in the first segment, but it’s really true, sellers just tend to relax. You know there’s nothing major going to be going on, yes, there could be some minor things, every … and maybe they’re like the IRS, I don’t know. But, every inspector, even if another inspector comes in, which does happen, so you’ve had it, your house inspected, and now the buyer comes in and has their own inspector come in. It’s minor stuff. It’s so simple to fix.
There’s nothing major going out there. because what we’ve seen, what we’ve seen happen, unfortunately, is water in the crawl space. Buyer can walk away, and buyers have walked away. They don’t always walk away, but they can. And we had a situation not too long ago, I think I talked about it on the radio program, where a buyer literally saw water in the crawl space and said, “I’m done. I’m walking away.”, and they got the report back from the home inspection. We just recently had a situation where the story of the termite inspection.
And what happened is the home inspection happened and there was evidence of termite damage, and the buyer just freaked out, and they saw where it was started at, but they couldn’t tell if it went up further into the house. And it’s one of those situations, you don’t know. Buyer immediately walked away. And they have the right to do that. No harm, no foul. Doesn’t mean they always will, doesn’t mean you can’t negotiate, but understanding is they do have a walk away position.
Another situation we know of is there was a strut in the roof, holding up the roof. I guess it’s a roof joist. And it was in the attic. And again, most people, depending on the type of your home, even if you go to the attic, you don’t pay much attention to what’s going on up there, but again, home inspections are very intense. They do, for the most part, a very good job. And they go through that house, again, with a fine tooth comb, and they found a crack. That’s considered structural. Guess what? In this situation, the buyers decided to walk away. It doesn’t happen all the time, I want to stress that. But boy, when it does, it creates a lot of havoc, a lot of, well quite frankly, pain for the sellers.
It’s just, you think you’re going someplace, your next adventure’s on the road, and all of a sudden it goes away. And that’s the other thing too, and maybe the third point that needs to be stressed, too, is … look, basically, yes they can have another inspection, but you’re not too worried about it, even if the buyer has one, guess what? You can keep on moving on with your life. Where your next adventure is, where you’re next going to be moving to, that you have the confidence. You have the confidence knowing that there’s nothing major wrong with it, that your air conditioning, heating systems are working in good order, or water heater. Your appliances, all those things that are working, that you probably, maybe already knew. But as I mentioned before, things that you don’t know, that’s the things that … the crawl spaces, the situations in the attic.
Sometimes, yes, there can be roof issues. Then again, you don’t know about it, it’s not leaking, but we had a situation where there was a big concern about the roof. And what happened was, is it had a major issue … I’m not a roofer, but what I remember was it had a crack or something in the roof. Wasn’t leaking, but was going to leak. Again, that seller … that buyer did stay the course, the seller was able to fix it, and so everything worked out. But that’s again, a situation where a buyer, if they wanted to, could say, “Hey look, it’s structural. I got to go.”
Situations we’ve had also, mold. Mold in crawl spaces. Again, many times those are houses that maybe haven’t been lived in for a while. So that could be three months or six months, but just so you know, mold can grow so fast and so quickly, it’s almost unbelievable. We had a house that recently had a water issue, didn’t get the water up as quick as they could, and it got into the drywall and within two days it was mold. Literally mold going up the walls, and again, that’s not going to work for most buyers. That’s just simply not going to work. That’s going to be an issue.
So again, recapping what we talked about before. The top three reasons. Number one, relax. Sellers can relax, have peace of mind, they know they have a good house. That’s fantastic. They know that whatever comes their way, it’s not going to be big. It could be some honey do things. Number two, buyers love it. Buyers absolutely love it. Again, it just gives them more confidence. We see that from buyers all the time when they know a home has had pre-inspections. They’ve done the Radon testing, and they’ve done the termite, and they’ve done the home inspection. That just makes them that much more confident in making their decision, and many times we see those houses that have the home inspections getting picked over houses that don’t.
And Radon, just briefly on to Radon. I wanted to talk about. If you don’t know, Radon is an odorless, tasteless gas that could, or has been proven in some cases, of getting cancer for people who lived in those homes. So again, that has happened also. Rare, but … Radon has been found from a buyer, and the buyer unfortunately doesn’t have the information they need, and perceptions and reality in real estate is so, so, so big. Perceptions and reality, and they presume that since it was in the air, it must have got into the walls, and they couldn’t live there. They had small children. Rare situation, but they walked away. And considering it’s an environmental defect, they can.
So again, getting that home inspection is so huge in so many ways to have a successful sale. Relaxing win for the buyers, also it just lets you get on with your life, and move on to your next adventure, whatever that may be. With that said, I wanted to also talk a little bit about the market. I failed to mention the first segment, market is going fantastic. This is the first time we’ve had this type of success, especially in the metro east for this long of time.
Having said that, I say this all the time. Three months, three months. Also go with the idea of three months as your cap. Something good or possibly bad can happen in that time. Hopefully good. Also, 60 days, it can flip around 50 50, it changes. 30 days, not likely to happen, so if you’re thinking about selling your home, now’s the time. And now’s the time also to get the book, Ready, Set, Sold dot org. Not dot com. Go to Ready, Set, Sold dot org. Not dot com and get the book.
Ready Set Sold with Bryan Vogt #15-02: Scott Miles of BarCom Security and Joanna Theismann of Delmar Financial: 3 top reasons to get your home pre-inspected
September 2, 2017