Questions To Ask A Real Estate Agent – Inspecting a Property (Part 1/4)

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How do you talk to a real estate agent and what questions do you ask them to get better information to buy better properties at a better price. Book Your Free Strategy Session

Resources Related To This Episode

Inspecting A Property Series

Part 1 – Questions To Ask A Real Estate Agent 

Part 2 – How To Assess Street Appeal and The Surrounding Area

Part 3 – How To Inspect The Outside of a Property

Part 4 – How To Inspect The Inside of a Property

 

How To Inspect A Property Before The Open Home

Transcription:

When it comes to inspecting a property, there’s a lot of different things to think about and a lot of things that you need to look for as well as do as well as ask and so tonight when he was Ben Everingham from pumped on property, we are on a couch. That property is not the property, so it happened a lot about this before today’s video started company cash pick up the property can definitely not taking your pants from anywhere else that we know now, but we’d love those guys. Focus is also if you guys haven’t checked it out, but okay, when it comes to inspecting a property, there’s a lot of different aspects to it and so we wanted to break this into a few different episodes and the first one, this one here, we’re going to be talking about questions to ask the agent. So we’re gonna be talking about how to talk to that agent. Different things that you can ask the agent to really give you a good idea of where the property is, where the negotiating room is and all of that sort of stuff.

And this is the thing that we actually use, like we’re literally walking through this series of videos exactly what we do as a business just so that you’ve got a tool set that you can ask better questions to get better information to hopefully buy property at cheaper prices using this information.

Yeah. And the stuff that we’re going through has been built over a number of years. So ben and his team over here at pumped on property had built it and space within. Every time they went to an inspection and they miss something. It’s like, okay, we need to,

but there’s something. Listen, make sure we don’t miss it next time. How many mistakes can bend personally making these portfolio before he creates a full system to not make those mistakes

again, you’re getting this giant spreadsheet now. I’ll just try and remember it. Difference in how we work, but okay. When it comes to questions for the agent, we just want to say from the outset that it is really good to book an open for inspection rather than trying to do this at a open to the public open for inspection. So I did do a video with Simon on how to actually make that happen. So if you haven’t checked that out, we’ll leave the links in the description down below, but you want to talk about why that’s so important before we get into what questions are.

It’s so important because at an open home, one of two things happen. The agent is freaking out about nobody being there and then every single person that walks through the door, they have to have these meaningful conversation with or there’s just heaps of people there and you can’t spend meaningful time with them. The second reason and the most important reason to me why it’s important is you want to build a personal relationship with these guys and actually get, give them the sense that this is important to you, that you’re a serious buyer so that they treat everything that you say, you know as it’s going to actually affect us out.

Yeah, and so when you’re at an open public open for inspection, there’s so many things that can distract the agent and it can be so and distract you as well and having a meaningful conversation with the agent, it’s going to be more difficult. Whereas if you’re building that relationship one on one through an inspection that you booked, then it’s much easier to ask these questions and,

and to put that into perspective a business we have never actually attended a public inspection since we started because there’s absolutely no point in going there.

Yeah, and so we recommend that you do the same and it’s not very hard to do either to poker. So we’ve written down a couple of questions and by we, I mean all the work here. This is five years of Ryan’s mind coming onto the first question I absolutely love, which is asking the agent, when did the current

buy this property and for how much? Why do you ask that question when you can find it online? It’s so funny that you say that because I actually go and find it online before I go and then I asked the agent to see straight away the agent’s bullshitter or they actually earn openagent and secondly, if the agent actually knows anything about the property or not, I’m there to really, really good ways of saying who you’re dealing with very, very quickly.

Okay. So let’s go through this and break it down a bit. So firstly you can find out when the property was previously sold.

Hold Online. It’s not difficult to do. I used to use on the house, but there’s a whole bunch of new address now that real estate.com publicly releases all this data now afraid. Yeah. So you can see when the house was previously sold and how much it was sold for. So you can go in already knowing this. So let’s like talk through the different examples of things that could happen. So the agent knows it then analyze Babbitt. Yeah. Like do call them out on it hundred percent. I called them out on it because everything in negotiation is about leverage. Right? Sorry if I’m sounding super tactical in this video, but this is what we want, like I, I hundred percent want to know if the person that I’m working with has integrity because I come from a values based place personally where every single thing I try and do in my life is aligned to know helping people and actually being honest about shit and if I’m not working with something, someone that values aligned with me and I want to know before I, you know, put my heart on my sleeve and go out there and try to do the right thing.

And so when you call out the agent, how does that then affect how you deal with that agent moving forward? Will we only deal with the three agents in each cell but sell 95 percent of the property? So generally to be a top performer you have to have some form of integrity because you don’t have a longterm relationship with a market in the suburb if you just issued, they just, the best agents are bullshit. Basically. That will really happen that the agent will lie to you straight to your face. It really happens, it rarely happens and if it does, it generally an out of area agent, a rookie agent, a grain agent, all of those people we’ve talked about in other videos that we love to buy from. So just be careful if they do do that. And then obviously this might be an opportunity there.

Like long story short, the reason why actually finding out the price point is important isn’t for anything to do with the agent, although it does help with that. It’s more around, let’s say the person bought the property 10 years ago in Sydney and they bought the house on Granola beach for 500,000 bucks. And then fast forward to today, that property is now worth $2,000,000. Um, you know, versus a person that bought it 12 months ago for two point $2,000,000 and now it’s worth 2 million bucks. It’s going to be very, very difficult for that person that bought it a year ago for two point 2 million bucks to sell it for anything less than what they bought it for. Plus the entry and exit costs where it’s going to be much easier to negotiate with someone where there’s actually some some wiggle room in there to negotiate. So what you’re trying to figure out here is how much margin in the deal for the current owner, which can allow you to negotiate more or potentially negotiated with less.

So the just bought the property recently and the market’s gone down. Even if it’s gone up a bit. Yeah. People are just highly unlikely to sell property for less than what they bought it for. When I see a great property that was recently purchased and I’m. I can say straight away if someone’s losing money to sell it or if they’re just frightened. Gabe and I’ll just making a little bit. I know human nature isn’t like we hate losing something and we hate feeling like it’s a lose situation in negotiation, so they’re far less likely, but those people also can hold out for a higher value for a longer period of time until their listings on the fifth page of real estate.com and all of a sudden they do get desperate and you can on the flip side of that, if you track a listing for long enough, finally, great deal as well, so those kinds of opportunities in that if you see that it’s been recently purchased for a certain price and there’s no wiggle room, then obviously just hold that deal lightly because they might not want to negotiate to the point that you want to negotiate.

It doesn’t mean you can’t have a crack at it. We’re not buying real estate. I buy them from people that are buying them for a long time because I made that that person is far more likely to give me a concession. I’ll just avoid the properties that were recently purchased that I have to wait for a long time for it. He who doesn’t want to buy at the right price, like I would rather miss a few and wait for the right one nine, then I can save myself 20, 30, 40 half. And the next question that we have for the agents is how long has the property been on the market? So it’s important to compare the average number of days for the suburb as a whole. So let’s say the average number of days, it’s 35 from the time it goes on realestate.com til the time it settles or cells.

Um, you know, if a property has been on the market for 60 days, it was either originally priced really high or it was just not the right type of property. Nobody in the market seeing value in it. So it’s important to know how long it’s been on the market for so that you can identify what type of seller and agent you’re dealing with and like how is this going to help people within negotiation? It’s mainly the property’s been on the market for a long period of time. That’s why we originally put it in our checklist because we wanted to find those properties that have been sitting there for a long time that have, you know, if you don’t, I know it’s in the data on real estate.com. If you don’t sell it probably within the first 30 days, the likelihood of you selling it for what you originally wanted it for over time, particularly the next 60 to 90 days after that dramatically drops and I know people start making significant concessions after that. Agents get far more pushier in their approach because they have the sheets with the property and start putting a lot more pressure on someone and they would have in the first 30 days. So I’m putting pressure on the seller, on the seller to accept a lower offer to accept a lower offer. So after this I looked for 30 days. As soon as it’s been on for 30 days, I’d just say money on a sliding

got the longer, the better generally. And then the next one is have you received any written offers? And I love this question so good. Because agents will often say, yeah, we’ve got a lot of offers on the table or a lot of interested parties that will come up with their own spin of how to create that urgency for you to try and get you to feel like you need to take action. You need to make a higher offer and so this question just cuts through all that.

That question is as opposed to have you received any other offers is they can legally bullshit if you ask the question about offers, but if you save written offers, at least in Queensland, I legally have to disclose that there was another written offer on the property and if there’s another current written off of they actually have to provide you with a multiple offers forming Queensland, which means you know, you immediately know that there’s absolutely no other true demand on the property right now. And surgery time leverage.

Yeah. Because if there’s a verbal offer on the property, that doesn’t mean nothing. Like I could walk in and say I want a buyer, but that doesn’t mean I can. So a written offer that just cuts through the clutter and just cut through the crap and you can say, is that actually other offers on this property? Do you need to take action on this with your own buyer or is the urgency not there and then that just gives you breathing room and it’s going to stop you being stressed because the agents putting all this false pressure on you.

Important to compare that against average days on market because they might not have a written offer today but they might have 20 groups show tomorrow and the reality is they might get six office the next day. So you’ve got to interpret that in the market in a slow market. You know like a Perth right now or in Sydney right now. You’ve got time in some of the suburbs in Brisbane and are really starting to heat up its properties are selling within two or three days.

Well that’s what you do with that information is then up to you. Like there are some tactics, you know, fast moving market. If you’re the first person to see that property, there’s no written offers you can put in a written offer and then put pressure onto closer before other people see the property. Whereas if it’s like a slow moving market and there’s no written offers, then you might more inclined to take your

time. How awesome his property. They’re like, I love these tactical. It is at perfectly right, so high brand, it’s like the same question or even the same and so I can meet so many different things. You asked the same questions 6,000 times in 6,000 inspections and you learn to ask it really well and so they’re kind of the key questions that we had that we wanted to share with you guys. Is there anything else that you would ask? I mean there’s a couple of other things that we do ask, but I think the 80 percent maybe you can just rattle off the others just cited they’ve got some contexts. They are the questions that I ask every agent on every inspection personnel. The other ones or why is that? I’m going to selling the property. So why do you think that’s not as important but not too important? What you’re looking for there is unfortunately, you know, buying as a property manager, you’re looking for, you know, death unfortunately divorced to say state type thing or mortgaging possession. That was the original reason I started asking that question. But you often also find interstate investor in a hard position, business enter and hard position. So it can just be a way of, you know, one out of every 10 properties finding that really motivated seller jerry quickly. Uh, the other one is what’s the agent’s feedback on the price expectation for the property.

The agent is going to artificially bloat the price so it’s not really relevant. You need to walk in knowing what the price of the property is based on the market research that you’ve done before you even say it. So you need to know what the property’s worth based on previous sales history, what you think the market’s worth, what you’re willing to pay. There is no set question is when you get an out of area agent or a grain agent, sometimes you hit garden and they’re like, I think it’s worth 4:50 and you’re like, I know this is a 500 k property, how about 4:30? And you know that you can sometimes squeeze a deal in a quiet market. So that’s kind of like to find these hidden gems. That’s for most of the time it’s a pointless question every now and then you strike gold.

Yeah, but again, like you’ve already looked at the profile of the person you’re buying from on the real estate.com listing by clicking their name. So this is just reaffirming all of the due diligence you’ve done behind the scenes before you even get there. You know that they don’t sell property. Anything that they say about selling property, if they’re doing one or two is housing here is complete bullshit. So it all gives you leverage during negotiations. And then the last question is, is the property currently tenanted? We’re investors. Sometimes finding property tenanted is handy sometimes, sometimes not if you want to move into it. Obviously sometimes it will properly is tending to or not occupiers, people who want to live in a that makes that property less desirable for them, which can be an opportunity for us, but 100 percent and the reason 99 percent of properties way by tenanted because I’m looking for either occupy grade property with what I buy, tenanted properties generally carry their whole own bag worms and so

they have some questions to ask the agent. We hope that this has given you guys some insight. I know a lot of people have stress and anxiety when it comes to talking to the agents and when it comes to asking the questions, again, being able to book in that inspection ahead of the public, open for inspection and being able to do that by yourself with the agent is just going to make this whole process so much easier. Trying to do this when there’s 20 other people inspecting the property, they’re asking forms for the agent. Are they asking the agent questions as well? That’s just going to be so much harder. So doing that step is key, so if you haven’t checked it out, do check out the video I did with Simon on how to get an open for inspection.

Can I just say something to summarize these because I have a. no, no, you ain’t got. Yeah, of course. I have like a very systematic approach because I’ve had to train people to do this that I may. I’ve had to really think about this stuff and the way that I have trained my team to do these things. You’d go into a property, you build rapport with the agent for the first five minutes and you get them to show you around the property. Then you go around the property with a fine tooth comb and you look at the inside and outside of the property, which we’ll talk about in future videos. Then you go back and ask the agent these questions and after you’ve gone through all of that, the agent knows you’re legit and sometimes all. Then wrap it up with a little bit more personal stuff and that’s where the agent, because the guard now down and because they know that you’re legit and because they know you’re a serious buyer, all these things that are coming out like these questions are just designed to get information so that later on when the agents talking socially about their life, they’re starting to drip things out about the property that they shouldn’t be telling you, but the guards down and they feel like they’ve already done the property thing in a structured way.

Now they can just talk to you about it and it freaking works. Like this stuff is so powerful. So I guess something that we didn’t talk about is when to ask these questions. Yeah, great. Great Point. So is that after you’ve done the inspection, build the rapport. When you first walk in, get the agent to show you around the property, do your own secondary inspection because the agents just showing you the benefits. You’ve got to go around and find the issues in the property. And then only after that, then you go back and say, can I please just ask you a few questions, ask those questions, then go back into rapport again, just before you walk out of the property and you can do that in 10, 15 minutes and walk out of the property with absolutely gold and knowing if it’s worth pursuing or worth walking away from.

So we hope that this has been helpful to you guys. Understanding what questions to ask the agent, and that’s going to help you in your inspections. We are going to do some future episodes on more about inspecting the property, inspecting the outside, expecting the inside, etc. I’ll put all of those over on property.com.eu forward slash inspect and he can see all the different videos over there. So we’ll just get a full lIst of everything that you need to do when it comes to inspecting the property. And if you haven’t checked it out already, do checkout. As I’ve said before, the video I did with simon on how to book that open for inspection by yourself. That is a golden video and it’s really easy to do so go ahead and check that out and until next time, stay positive.

 

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