If it were me, I would send the agents an email asking for an explanation. What is said over the phone really is worthless. What is typed in an email is a completely different story. You may then have something moving forward.
Zero, which is the point. When an agent tries to exclude me I send this pdf to the buyer. If I go in post-purchase and find something significant that was missed, is the agent liable for excluding me? We shall see.
Interesting. How many times has some agent tried to prevent you from inspecting a home? And how many of these notices have you emailed out?
I suspect that there are a few agents who talk their buyers out of hiring me if my name comes up, but don’t know of specific instances. I suspect because a few agents have told me that their buyers will use me over their dead bodies. I guess that would apply to their listings too, but so far, that hasn’t come up. I am in a big market, and I can go for years between inspecting a home listed by an agent that I know.
That is a good point.
The water is already poisoned. Best of luck changing their minds. They have moved onto their soft inspectors. You will not get a referral.
What you may get if you are lucky is the listing agent allowing access. That will take a heavy hand, not a blow-job.
So, do you wear knee pads or tell them to back off? Decisions decisions.
And for the record, they do not care about the client. They care about the deal. If that market is like my market, all the agents are starving. They literally cannot afford a deal to fall through.
2 Likes
Lon, I did not know he was in the Vail Area. I have a few retired inspector friends who live in Aspen and Vail and they started at the time those areas were beginning or booming. They are retired now but I just spoke to one of them and their question is, what did Ron do before to live in this very expensive area? They agreed its a click but that is created by the Realtors as you noted. If Ron has lived in Vail for a long time then he should have done his research for that area before venturing into Home Inspection. But oh well, wish him luck.
I will update after our meeting on Monday.
Yes, I am in Vail, I have been here for 30 plus years and don’t give a damn about clicks. I believe in doing good work, and it has paid off. Last year we did over 800 inspections and have a great following of realtors. Prior to inspections I was a general contractor in Vail but began as pure ski bum trying to figure out what to do with my life after I got out of the USMC.
1 Like
I should also add that I did not look at what other inspectors locally were doing before I started this business 10 years ago. I built out our inspection scope and list off of what I saw on Nachi and what I thought was important to buyers after building for so many years. After doing so I found that we had gone way beyond what was locally being done. While some love how well we take care of clients others are horrified by the depth we go into to take care of our clients. I don’t look to other inspection firms for benchmarks, we set the bar.
We take on some of the biggest and most expensive homes there are. Look at our sample reports on our website. You can see 80 million dollar 40k sqft house report
https://www.trueperspectivehc.com/your-report/
I work on our report software, comments, and details on almost a daily basis to improve them. The report we did yesterday has greatly improved over the one above. I insist we learn something new every day and improve our reports every day. We play this game for real.
I know I sleep well at night not worrying about my ethics or that a call with come that we missed something. If realtors don’t like it so be it, I don’t represent them, but we damn sure do our best to let our clients go into homes with open eyes and this prevents realtors from getting into trouble after closing.
I feel this approach is where the business is going and if realtors or inspectors don’t evolve and get on board they will go away.
1 Like
The seller can’t change the contract after signing, the buyer has a right to bring anyone they want to inspect per standard contact. If they are refusing to allow you after the contract is signed, have the buyers broker get in writing and signed by the seller. The broker has no leverage once the contract is signed. Offer a 1$ inspection after close. If your inspection reveals significant defects not found the buyer can call the real estate commission and ask what they should do. Get the buyers agent in on this so they don’t get thrown under the bus. They should be documenting everything and having buyer sign they advised to pick the inspector they want.
Get the buyers to post negative review on the listing brokerage based on the facts and share copies of the reports if appropriate. Get the buyer to review you or make a video testimonial saying the listing side wouldn’t let you inspect per contact so they hired you after close just to see the difference and we’re impressed to see how much better your inspection was.
1 Like
With that kind of gravitas, you definitely have some cards to play. Good luck.