Don’t worry—your ears aren’t deceiving you. Today’s episode of Million Dollar Playbook is an episode from Broker Brilliance, featuring Karen Greensweig and Spencer Krull. Today’s discussion is all about best practices for representing buyers. As an agent, your job is not just to assist a buyer in choosing and buying a property—your job is to protect them throughout the ENTIRE transaction, start to finish. Listen as Karen and Spencer share their experiences, and highlight the things they do to ensure they’re representing their buyers to the best of their ability. Listen to learn about the importance of home inspections, offer contingencies, and how to best manage buyers’ expectations—be they accurate or unrealistic.
3 Key Points
- Have clear and open lines of communication with the buyer.
- Check the property, hire certified inspectors, and evaluate the coms to make sure you’re getting a fair deal.
- Manage your clients’ expectations as best as you are able to—especially when it comes to disclosures.
Show Notes
- 00:09 – Today’s show is called Broker Brilliance with Karen Greensweig and Spencer Krull
- 00:40 – Spencer shares what he does as an agent to protect his buyers
- 00:53 – Spencer checks the coms of the property first
- 01:00 – There’s a buyer advisory that needs to be signed
- 01:20 – Spencer has 2 reasons for checking the coms:
- 01:23 – First is to makes sure that the offer isn’t out of line with the location
- 01:30 – Second, check coms whenever there’s a loan involved
- 01:44 – Karen believes that pricing is a strategy
- 02:48 – Confirming emails are an agent’s best friends
- 02:57 – Always put a call-to-action at the end of the email
- 03:20 – Communication is important for every transaction
- 03:39 – “Always give some kind of a question that requires a response in your confirming email”
- 04:05 – Aside from the coms, Karen requests a property profile
- 04:16 – You want to see the history of the property
- 04:47 – When filling out an offer, some people ask about the current loan rate
- 05:10 – Depending on the client’s credit history, the loan rate varies
- 05:27 – Usually, agents want their client to get pre-approved quickly
- 05:36 – Find out the loans that are being offered to your client
- 05:50 – Find out how much leeway you need
- 06:15 – You want to have a realistic loan contingency
- 06:45 – Nowadays, counter-offers are being written that may not have a loan contingency
- 06:58 – You may need an overqualified, sophisticated, competent, and knowledgeable buyer to deal with the issues
- 07:15 – If the buyer gives up their appraisal contingency, they should have sufficient cash in reserve
- 08:05 – The buyer should clear the no-appraisal or no-loan contingency with their lender
- 08:41 – Karen shares her experience with a condo
- 08:47 – A client can be qualified for a condo, but the condo association may have a problem
- 09:20 – There are certain instances where the HOA becomes the contingency
- 09:41 – It’s a risk for the buyer if there’s no loan contingency
- 10:02 – The client has 2 choices if there’s no loan contingency, buying in cash or facing the laws of the initial deposit
- 10:22 – It’s important to get as much information as you can from the lender as early as possible
- 10:28 – Ask your buyer how much of a down payment they can provide
- 11:28 – Every time a buyer writes a no-appraisal contingency without a loan contingency, you want a market condition advisory signed
- 11:53 – Spencer always uses market condition advisories in his transactions
- 12:00 – When the value suddenly drops, Spencer wants to have it on file
- 12:31 – Get a waiver form signed to demonstrate that you’re documenting every aspect
- 13:19 – Most clients won’t listen to their agents thoroughly
- 13:47 – Spencer was once dealing with a client where there were multiple offers and Spencer was $40K behind
- 14:15 – The client was really upset
- 14:28 – Spencer then learned how to properly manage the client’s expectations
- 14:42 – How to manage a buyer’s expectations
- 15:00 – Karen thinks that most agents are great in managing clients’ expectations after the inspection
- 15:14 – However, they agents struggle managing expectations regarding disclosures
- 16:40 – Karen deals with people who have their houses for many years
- 16:46 – They usually think that their small issues will not affect the price, but they’re wrong
- 17:10 – A small leak can lead to mold
- 17:45 – Agents have to educate buyers that not all disclosures are 100% accurate
- 18:27 – In many situations, disclosures are neglected
- 18:53 – “What’s material to one party may not be material to the other”
- 19:03 – Manage the expectations on disclosure forms
- 19:10 – Agents need to know that they’re making one of the largest investments in their portfolio
- 19:27 – Agents need to do significant inspections for their properties
- 19:38 – Hire a qualified inspector and ask them to inspect all the major aspects of the property
- 20:08 – If there’s a pool, have a pool inspection by a certified pool inspector
- 20:21 – A general inspector won’t ever check the sprinklers
- 22:08 – Encourage buyers to hire a third-party company to get permits before going through the inspection
- 22:21 – The agents should be the one reviewing the permits
- 23:23 – Spencer had a client put on a second story for his house with unfinished permits
- 24:00 – Spencer had another client with permits that hadn’t been signed
- 24:33 – The trouble with managing the clients’ expectations is that when they agree to buy a property as is, that means they take it in its present condition
- 24:53 – Sellers don’t need to adjust for anything outside of the initial agreement
- 25:22 – The seller can just say NO and you need to prepare your buyer for that
- 25:36 – The seller doesn’t have to negotiate
- 27:10 – Most of the time, people do the pre-inspection before they get termite control
- 27:29 – Karen experienced success and failure in advising agents
- 27:46 – Karen and another agent came up with the idea to ask a listing agent for permission to do their inspection prior to making an offer
- 28:03 – The buyer and agent were able to do this, but there were other listing agents who didn’t permit the inspection
- 28:57 – Get a waiver form and tell them what it means to inspect without a contingency
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Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives