Why Buyer Agents Should Attend Home Inspections

From what I’ve seen and heard within the real estate community, some Buyer Agents attend their Buyer client’s home inspections while some do not. Personally, I believe that a Buyer’s Agent should attend every one of their Buyer client’s home inspections for a variety of reasons.

1) A home inspection almost always brings up questions and concerns that are best answered by the Buyer Agent, not necessarily the Home Inspector. For example, the Home Inspector finds out that there is a condensation leak in the HVAC unit and that the unit is near the end of its life expectancy. How does a Home Warranty affect that? And if an item is noted on a home inspection report, will the home warranty company consider it a “pre-existing condition” and not cover it in the future if it’s not fixed prior to settlement?

2) Being at the home inspection saves a lot of future emails, texts and calls back and forth between the Buyer’s Agent, Home Inspector and Listing Agent. Having everyone present at the home inspection allows the Buyer and Buyer’s Agent to get all their questions and concerns out on the table and answered right then and there. This is especially important if you’re coming up on the home inspection contingency deadline and need to submit your home inspection addendum and inspection report right away.

3) As the Buyer’s Agent, it is you who will conveying and negotiating the home inspection items with the Listing Agent. If you don’t have first hand knowledge of the issues, it will be difficult to properly explain the issues to the Listing Agent and negotiate them properly. Home inspection items can range from a few bucks to thousands of dollars so negotiating them properly is not a “small” deal.

4) As a Buyer’s Agent, your Buyer client is paying you thousands of dollars to represent and guide them throughout the entire real estate purchase transaction. Even though your Buyer’s Agency Agreement with your Buyer clients may not say, “I will attend the home inspection”, go the “extra mile” – your Buyer clients will love you that much more.

RE BarCamp Virginia “Big Announcement” Gets Leaked Ahead of Time

One of the highlights of RE BarCamp Virginia was supposed to be a big announcement as to who was hired as NAR's Social Media Manager. Many of us, including local and state Realtor associations, were told that RE BarCamp Virginia had the honor of making the announcement and we all acted upon what was told to us.

Unfortunately, the announcement was intentionally made ahead of time – for what reason, I don't know. For details, check out this post over at VAR buzz.

Nevertheless, RE BarCamp Virginia will still be packed with lots of hands on training, labs, tips and tricks, peer-to-peer learning and networking. I'll be there on Monday, 3/2 for the group dinner and happy hour starting at 5:00pm as well as the actual event on Tuesday, 3/3. See you there!

RE BarCamp Virginia Brings Lots of Knowledge, Big Annoucements

RE BarCamp Virginia, a peer-to-peer event for Realtors who want to hone their social media skills, is almost here! It's being held at the Fredericksburg Area Association of Realtors on March 3, 2009. The seats have all been RSVP'd and there's a waiting list - and for good reasons.

Why all the fuss?

Since RE BarCamp Virginia is a peer-to-peer event, the more experienced and more knowledgeable your peers in attendance are, the more everyone gets out of it. The list of attendees this year is bigger than ever - the knowledge being shared, the lessons that will be learned and the announcements being made are all huge!

There are folks flying in from all parts of the country (even as far as California) and include successful Realtors, Realtor Association execs/staff, social media heavy-hitters and reps from companies such as Altos Research, Onboard Informatics and ML Broadcast.

The amount of talent and information that will be together at one time is amazing. Everyone should walk out of RE BarCamp Virginia better at what they do than before they walked in.

As for one of the announcements…

NAR has hired a social media director and will be making the announcement as to who it is at RE BarCamp Virginia. Since Daniel Rothamel and Ben Martin are currently stable and happy at their jobs, it won't be either of them (sad yet, happy at the same time). But I do hope that it's someone at least remotely as capable and independent-thinking as either of them or the others coming to RE BarCamp Virginia.

Looking forward to seeing old and new faces at RE BarCamp Virginia next month!

P.S. If you're on Facebook, check out the RE Bar Camp Virginia Facebook event page.

 

Social Media, Social Networking Presentation For VA Realtors

Are you a Virginia REALTOR®? Interested in learning how to use social media and social networking within your busines to increase your success? Then come check out the "Social Media for the Technologically Challenged" presentation on Saturday, September 27th at the Virginia Association of REALTORS® convention in Baltimore (don't ask why it's in Maryland).

A fellow Realtor and I will be giving the 90-minute presentation beginning at 2:00pm. We're leaving the last 30 minutes open in order to answer your questions and show real-time examples of social media and social networking at work.

I'll be posting a comprehensive list of social media and social networking resources from the presentation tomorrow so come back to check that out.

Hope to see you there!

***UPDATE: The list of social media and social networking resources is now available.

RE Bloggers: See How You Stack Up Against Other RE Bloggers

Are you getting direct results from your blogging efforts? Are you getting the same, fewer or greater results from blogging than other real estate bloggers? What is the correlation between things such as tenure, subscribers, quantity of posts and actual clients. These are the types of questions getting answered in the Center for Real Estate and Social Technology’s (CREST) second survey, which is focused on results.

Participation in the first survey was well above expectaions. And the results were eye opening in a lot of ways – check out some of the reactions and analysis. We look forward to participation in the second survey being just as big, if not bigger than the first especially since this one is focused on the "bread-and-butter" – results.

Those who take the 5-minute survey will get a free copy of the aggregated results*. This will allow you to compare your results to those of others across the US and perhaps tweak your blog and efforts accordingly. No matter how long you’ve been blogging, you can always learn from others.

If you’d like to see the full results of the survey, just take 5 minutes to take it by clicking here. The deadline to take the survey is coming up soon so don’t procrastinate (not that agents are known for procrastinating).

*All responses and personal information will be confidential and will not be shared with any third parties.

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The Center for Real Estate and Social Technologies (CREST) is the definitive research and education resource for social technologies in the real estate business, conducting surveys and other projects to generate benchmarks and best practices that REALTORS® can employ to improve their social networking, blogging, and social media marketing efforts.