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How to Keep a Realtors Home Inspection from Killing a Deal
1. Make sure you have a Professional Certified Home Inspector with excellent communication skills.
- A good inspector will help your clients deal with emotions based on accurate non-emotional decisions helping them and you decide if this is the right home for them.
If the house simply needs too much work and the value is not there, let’s serve, protect and value your clients with every tool that we have.
2. You and the Home Inspection
Much of keeping the deal together is about helping with fear, especially for first time home buyers. Even if the Home is a wonderful value and investment, fear can be fickle.
There are many things that attack a buyers emotions during a home inspection such as: safety items (will my children be hurt), cost to maintain (are there too many expensive items to fix), is this a money pit (am I being suckered), is the home eaten up with termites, are there are asbestos fibers in the air, will my children get brain damage from lead poisoning, is there hidden mold that will make us all sick? Will I get lung cancer from radon? Will the sewer back up the first night I’m there? Will the roof leak and drip on me while I’m sleeping? The seller insulted me and I’ll not buying this home to get back at them.
Note: If any doubt please have the Radon and Sewer Scan. We have a hard time sleeping thinking that we have let anyone live in a house with a dangerous level of radon or water sewage problems.
3. Celebrate purchasing a new home. It should be fun and exciting.
- Keep the process positive. Buying a home is a great decision. It’s hard to make a bad decision when buying a home. Even if a home needs maintenance this is a heck of a lot better than renting for another five years and throwing away one’s money and investment.
• They’ll spend their life in this home and share holidays, graduations, births and all of life’s events. It’s a great and wonderful thing they are doing, financially and personally … don’t lose sight of that over a paint job, carpet, GFCIs that need to be installed, or even a $5k item.
4. Prepare Your Buyers For The Inspection
- Explain to them that the Inspection is about the major items.
- There are no perfect homes and some things will be discovered that might be concerning, that will be the case with all homes.
5. Some sellers can be contrary and insulting, be prepared for that and don’t take it personally. If you do your emotions might cause you to make a bad decision.
6. Select the Right Inspector/Company (The Best Home Inspectors like HIS has will quickly understand what kind of personality your client has)
- The home inspector’s experience and training matters when it comes to selecting the correct inspector. It does not matter what’s on their resume, what matters is their knowledge, personality and communication skills.
• A company with poor client service is an irritation which raises emotions complicating the entire process.
• Information in the report must be accurate.
7. Encourage Clients to Attend the Inspection
- Just reading an inspection report can be alarming. Have your clients at the inspection to meet the inspector and hear and see the deficiencies; they’ll understand the magnitude of the items, most of the time lowering unnecessary fears
- When emotions get high, educate about the subject. People immediately assume the worst case “that the house will burn at night killing my entire family.” “The roof will collapse three hours after closing.” Help them understand that it’s the not case through education about the subject. Education will remove the fear.
8. Dealing With The Report
- Remind them that the building inspection is about attaining knowledge of the home and identifying significant deficiencies.
- Remind them that every home has defects or areas of needed improvement.
- Remember, sellers will almost always fix things that don’t work, i.e. a defective dishwasher, a furnace that won’t work, a leaking roof, a toilet that leaks or won’t flush. These are easy negotiations. Try to avoid negotiations about things that are not black and white or, are working but might fail in the future.
- Take the report and use a yellow marker to highlight things that are concerning. Then go through the report again with a red marker and red line things that are concerning and important. Then go through again and circle the things that are really important and that you want the seller to fix. This process will boil only the important items to the top making the process manageable.